Information from Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society:
‘TRANSCRIPTS AND OBSERVATIONS TOUCHING THE MANOR OF WAKEFIELD’
For more than six centuries from before the Norman Conquest the huge Yorkshire manor of Wakefield was owned either by the Crown or one of its great nobles. In 1630, Charles I granted the manor to one of his courtiers, Henry Rich, first Earl of Holland. This major manorial archive was presented to the society in 1944.
The society has been publishing the manorial court rolls of Wakefield for over a century. Now it is issuing a book containing forty of the deeds and documents relating to the manor that the Crown’s Duchy of Lancaster office compiled into a volume, probably in the 1620s. This book of ‘Transcripts and Observations’ contains forty documents dating from the Domesday Book of 1085-86 down to the early seventeenth century.
Here they have been supplemented by sixteen other documents, dating from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth century. These have been taken from complementary versions of the manuscript that have been located in the British Library and in local record offices. Among them are documents relating to Jacobean schemes by the Crown to increase revenue from its manorial tenants. As a result, this new volume contains a wealth of documents which concern the history of this extensive Yorkshire manor.
In addition, the volume contains a guide to the manorial archive as well as documents relating to the manor to be found in the National Archives and elsewhere. The transcripts and the research for this volume were undertaken by Dr Brian Barber, the general editor of the Wakefield Court Rolls series from 2012 to 2022.
It can be obtained by sending a cheque to the society’s address as above. It is also generally available on the society’s website at a price of £15, including p&p.
Transcripts and Observations Touching the manor of Wakefield and Wakefield Manorial Records: a Short Guide,Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society, 2022, xiii + 162 pages.