Pole Nets and Prises: A Newly Published Charter of John de Warenne to the Burgesses of Wakefield, 4 October 1307

Abstract

The Latin text and a translation of a second charter of 1307 granted by John de Warenne, seventh earl of Surrey, to the borough of Wakefield, following an earlier charter of the 1190s, has not previously appeared in print. It extended the rights of the burgesses but also had a feature of more than local interest in its slight regulation of the lord’s rights of prise taking, or purveyance. This unusual provision appears to be related to the prominent military role of the sixth earl in the Scottish wars of Edward I and the burden of supplying military needs which fell heavily upon Yorkshire.

Keywords:

• borough
• burgesses
• charter
• earl of Surrey
• Edward I
• fishing
• game
• Grantham
• prise
• purveyance
• Scottish wars
• tolls
• Wakefield
• Warenne
• Welsh wars

Notes

1. See, for instance, G. H. Martin and others, Doncaster: A Borough and Its Charters, (Doncaster, 1994) especially the chapters by G. H. Martin and P. J. P Goldberg; G. Sheeran, Medieval Yorkshire Towns (Edinburgh, 1998), chapter 3; and Medieval Scarborough, Studies in Trade and Civic Life, ed. by D. Crouch and T. Pearson (Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Occasional Paper No. 1, 2001), pp. 41–8.

2. Evidence of burghality was collected in M. Beresford and H. P. R. Finberg, English Medieval Boroughs: A Handlist (Newton Abbot, 1973).

3. C.T. Clay (editor), in Early Yorkshire Charters, Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series, Extra Series, volume 6 (Leeds, 1949, reprinted Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 116–17.

4. British Library, Lansdowne Manuscripts 972, Bishop Kennett’s Collections, volume xxxviii, folio 92.

5. For information about the members of the Warenne family mentioned in the course of this article, see the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004) vol. 57, pp. 392–410.

6. As on previous occasions, I am most grateful to Mrs. S. Thomas for the correction of the Latin text. I am also grateful to further suggestions for the improvements in both text and commentary to my anonymous referee.

7. University of Leeds, Brotherton Library, Special Collections, Collections of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society, YAS/MD 225/6/4 and 5.

8. The history and content of these volume will be considered in more detail in a future volume in the Wakefield Court Rolls Series of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society.

9. University of Leeds, Brotherton Library, Special Collections, Collections of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society, YAS/MS 722b.

10. The significance of this story is astutely analysed in M.T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307 (London, 1979), pp. 21–8.

11. See M. Prestwich, War, Politics and Finance under Edward I (London, 1972), chapter V and W. R. Jones, ‘Purveyance for War and the Community of the Realm in Late Medieval England’, Albion, vol. 7, No. 4, Winter 1975, pp. 300–16.

12. B. English, Yorkshire Hundred and Quo Warranto Rolls, 1279–1281, Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Record Series (Leeds, 1996), vol. 151, p. 258. The entry for John de Warenne appears on pp. 176–78.

13. Prestwich, pp. 121, 125, and 133.

14. Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield, vol. 1, 1274–1297, ed. W. P. Baildon, Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Record Series, vol. XXIX (1901, reprinted Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 253 and 257.

15. The charter of 1312, written in French, is printed with a translation in G. H. Martin (ed.), The Royal Charters of Grantham (Leicester, 1963), Appendix A, pp. 234–39.