Handwritten manuscript in Latin on parchment, dated Westminster 31. October 1558. 55,3 x 22 cm (total) (48 x 16 cm (manuscript). 15 lines in a professional chancery hand, signed "lennard" as witness at end. Perfectly preserved. A few 18th century notes on verso, including an erratic attribution of the document to William and Mary (1689-94).
Royal wax seal appended on vellum tab. Height: 9,7 cm. Parts of edge missing, losing sections of the royal titulature in the circumscription on averse and averse. Main fields well preserved. Averse: Philip and Mary enthroned with regalia. Reverse: Royal arms; name of seal in bottom exergue: "Sigillum pro brevibus coram iusticiariis" (i.e. Seal of the Court of Common Pleas).
*lnteresting English document from the very end of catholic Mary Tudor's (Bloody Mary) reign. The queen died on November 17th, leaving the throne to her protestant sister Elizabeth. Mary, however, was active in her last days; the last heretics were burned at Canterbury on November 10th. In 1554 she had married Prince Philip (II) of Spain, thus making him King of England. If the odd couple had produced a child, European history might have turned out quite differently.
** The document establishes the rightful claim to the property - "a house (mesuagium), a barn, 20 acres of land, 20 acres of meadow, 30 acres of pasture, 30 acres of forest and 30 acres of heath and scrub with their appurtenances" - of the plaintiffs Thomas Peers Benos (?) and Edward Tyndalh (Tyndale), suing through their attorney John Redston against one Robert Mason, whose claim rests on a conflict begun with the said Thomas and Edward by Hugo Hunt ("unjustly and without proper sentence" barely 30 years before (i.e. around 1530)."
The fold across the bottom of the document covers some text. The text under the fold was not captured to avoid damaging the document.
Full pdf available, https://dl.mospace.umsystem.edu/mu/islandora/object/mu%3A439207/datastre...
