PastPresented.info

Eskdale customary tenants in ?1547

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The Leconfield archive at Cockermouth Castle contains a tantalisingly incomplete book (Ref. D/Lec/314/38, available via Whitehaven Record Office) which appears to record a General Fine levied on the manors in the Honour of Egremont, at a time when the Lord of the Honour was the King. This would date from the Tudor period, when the hereditary Lords, the Percy family, were frequently at odds with the Crown, and on several occasions had their estates confiscated. One such confiscation happened in 1537, when the heir of Henry Percy, 5th Earl of Northumberland, was denied his inheritance because he had supported the pro-monastic rebellion called the "Pilgrimage of Grace". The family estates remained under Crown control until 1549- during which time King Henry VIII died, triggering the levy of a General Fine on all the tenants in 1547. This was almost certainly the event documented in this book.
Unfortunately, the Eskdale entries were compiled and written by three different people, who had different working methods, terminologies, and, most frustratingly, handwriting. The abstract which follows misses out various pieces of information which I just can't decipher, and should really be checked against an independent interpretation of the original. By no means all the properties are named; I have tried to identify them (in green) by reference to later sources, but note, for example, that Randle How seems not to have been a customary tenement at this time.
N.B. One of the clerks chose to add information about who formerly held the properties he was writing up; he doesn't indicate when "formerly" ("nup.") was supposed to be, but this may refer to the date when the property came under Crown control- 1537.

Eshedaill



Dregge & Carleton & Rauynglass
Note that this list seems to be very incomplete