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Some Late-Medieval Eton College Wills
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2011
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The religion of the people is the foundation of the Church and basic to the study of church history. It is in this belief and in the recognition that where direct expression of religious ideas is lacking any material which may shed light on them must be used, that the following study is offered. The evidence on which it is based is drawn from the archives of Eton College and consists largely of wills drawn up before 1500. They number seventy-three, and they fall into two main groups. The first comprises fourteen wills found among the deeds which came to the college as the result of its acquisition of land and property by the gift either of the founder, Henry VI, or of local benefactors in the early sixteenth century. Three of these wills are of the fourteenth century; the remainder are spread throughout the fifteenth century from 1401 to 1497. Six were made in the diocese of Salisbury: five in New Windsor, one in Cookham (Berks.). The other eight wills in this group are those of residents in Lincoln diocese, three living in Eton and five in Buckinghamshire villages to the north—Iver, Langley, Farnham, Burnham, and High Wycombe. The second group, comprising the remaining fifty-nine wills are contained in the first of the college registers, and were proved before the provosts, who had been granted archidiaconal rights of jurisdiction in the parish of Eton by Thomas Bekynton, archdeacon of Buckingham, in 1443.
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References
page 387 note 1 Eton College Records (hereafter cited as ECR), 10/24, 143, 259; 11/188, 232; 13/703, 854; 34/119; 35/20; 36/57, 113, 114; 41/265.
page 387 note 2 They are dated 1313, 1369, 1384.
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page 387 note 4 The Rolls and Registers of Bishop Oliver Sutton 1280–1299, iv. ed. Rosalind Hill, Lincoln Record Society, 52 (1958), 80.Google Scholar
page 388 note 1 Only six survive from the episcopate of Henry Burghersh (1320–40), and two from that of John Gynewell (1347–62): Gibbons, Alfred, Early Lincoln Wills, Lincoln 1888.Google Scholar
page 388 note 2 Vol. i, 1271 to 1526, Lincoln Record Society, 5 (1914).
page 388 note 3 Normally it was the wills only of testators of substance which came to the attention of the diocesan or provincial court, or were entered in city records.
page 388 note 4 Eton College Register (hereafter cited as Reg.) 1 fols. 47v, 51, 55v.
page 388 note 5 Ibid. fols. 51v, 56.
page 388 note 6 The careers of the six graduates—John Bonor, William Capell, John French, John Saunder, William Strete, John Townyng—are set out in the A. B. Emden, Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A.D.1500, Oxford 1957–9.
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page 390 note 1 Ibid. fol. 52.
page 390 note 2 ECR 10/259.
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page 390 note 8 ECR 36/114.
page 390 note 9 ECR 13/703.
page 391 note 1 William Samborn and Hugh Chapman chaplain (1479), John Fremley (1481), Alice Jurdeley and Richard Astholf (1483), Alice Ryall and John Lent of Eton Wyck (1486), John Boraston and Thomas Mede (1493): Reg., 1 fols. 50v, 51, 52, 53, 55, 55v, 57v.
page 391 note 2 ECR 36/113.
page 391 note 3 ECR 35/20.
page 391 note 4 ECR 13/703.
page 391 note 5 Reg., 1 fol. 55.
page 391 note 6 Ibid. fols. 51v, 53, 57v, 58. The parishioners of Eton were not provided with their own church until 1875: Maxwell Lyte, History, 545.
page 392 note 1 Ibid. Cols. 48v, 56.
page 392 note 2 For this paragraph see Maxwell Lyte, History, chaps, i-iv, especially 4, 17, 25, 33–5, 63–6, and Introduction 2–4.
page 392 note 3 ECR 9/3 m.7. Transcript by N. H. Blakiston, catalogue vol. 9, 67.
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page 392 note 5 John Norfolk (1448), John French and William Capell (1457) were unusually vague about the resting place for their bodies: Reg., 1 fols. 46, 47v.
page 393 note 1 The road between Eton and Slough was mentioned in wills of 1468, 1483, 1485, 1493; Ibid. fols. 49, 53, 54v, 57v. The transporting of building materials to Eton is discussed by Knoop, D. and Jones, G. P., ‘The Building of Eton College, 1442–60’, Trans. Quatuor Coronati Lodge, XLVI (1933), 12–13.Google Scholar
page 393 note 2 Four clergy left money to relieve poverty: Reg., 1 fols. 46, 47v, 48v, 57v. Particular paupers in Eton, called Cecily and Claude received bequests: Ibid. fols. 52, 57v, 58.
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page 393 note 4 Ibid. fol. 53.
page 394 note 1 Ibid. fol. 56(2).
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page 394 note 4 Maxwell Lyte, History, 24.
page 394 note 5 ECR 9/2 m. 3. Transcript by N. H. Blakiston.
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