On 21/06/16 11:22, Tompkins wrote: > From: JuneM via [gen-medieval@rootsweb.com] > Sent: 19 June 2016 13:19 >> >> I am a volunteer researcher with a village history group in Barnsley, Yorkshire, and am currently researching the Dodworth/Dodsworth/Dodworthe family of Gawber Hall, Manor of Shepley, & Lascelles Hall in the 14th, 15th & 16th centuries. I have traced family members mainly through their witnessing of documents and have formed the opinion that they are legal people. Another document - an appointment of Attorney - has further convinced me that I'm on the right lines. However, as I'm still in my infancy as a medieval researcher I'd welcome the list's thoughts on this. >> >> June M >> > ------------------------------- > > That sounds very interesting, June. It is now recognised that there were many levels of provincial and local lawyers below the elite London attorneys, apprentices-at-law and sergeants, and there is a small literature on the problems of identifying them in the records. The footnotes to pages 83-85 of this article will guide you to some of them: > > https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=8Vq_-ZFRtnkC&pg=PA73&dq=%22employ+lawyers+when%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwibjb7t67jNAhXMVhoKHZ5AAf8Q6AEINjAA#v=onepage&q=%22employ%20lawyers%20when%22&f=false > > Unfortunately it's only a Preview, so at least one of those pages will probably be unavailable. If you'd like to see it all, I can send you the text as an attachment. > > Witnessing charters and other documents would not in itself normally be evidence that an individual was acting as a lawyer - anyone could be a witness. Appointment as an attorney could sometimes be a pointer to a lawyer, but it depends very much on the circumstances - could you describe the document you have found more fully? Matt, I'd be grateful if you could send me a copy also although. One thing I've noticed looking through manorial court rolls for the years around 1300 (Wakefield) is that some individuals will frequently present essoins and act as pledges. Whilst neighbours might well act as pledges for each other* it seems likely that someone doing so on a regular basis suggests that he is being paid some sort of fee; after all there is a risk involved as I've seen one pledge for a debt left stranded when his "client" failed to appear and he had to stump up the value of the wool that was at issue and pay a fine. At the same time these individuals were not referred to as attorneys. I've even seen one enter an essoin on behalf of an attorney who had been accredited as such at a previous court. I'm interested in understanding the status of such men. In the C17th Almondbury rolls the lord of an adjacent manor was regularly represented by his attorney in the list of those present. Given that they were both called John Kaye and so were a number of other villagers this must have made life interesting. However as there was a 100% correlation between such representation and the presence of a specific John Kaye as identified by his address it wasn't difficult to identify the individual, nor to identify his house as being somewhat larger than the rest in the street on a contemporary map. It was also possible to identify him in the parish registers and to note that his appearance at that address coincided with the disappearance of a John Kaye at a different address. There's no indication of him being legally qualified; it looks as if he had been employed by his principal to look after the latter's affairs in the village and given a house befitting his status as his employer's representative. *When a batch of enclosures where being licensed in 1309 pairs of neighbours, as judged by their abodes and the land they were enclosing, were pledges for each other. Sometimes they may have been family members but usually their surnames differed. -- Hotmail is my spam bin. Real address is ianng at austonley org uk