<<Any ideas on what those references to these apparently illegitimate heirs might be and why they are always mentioned before anybody else?>> Hello again, Alejandro. What a fascinating story! Robert Hesketh must have been a very unusual man. He must have had considerable local notoriety, and someone somewhere must surely have written about him - I'd love to know more. As to your question, it might make it all less puzzling to remember that an IPM wasn't a document created by Robert Hesketh himself, or by any of his family or heirs. It was the record of an official investigation into the property he owned at his death, and who it descended to. Investigations of this sort were carried out whenever someone died who was a Tenant-in-Chief, ie whose land was held directly from the king. Certain financial benefits accrued to the king whenever one of his tenants-in-chief died, so when that happened royal officials would hold an Inquisition post Mortem (ie an investigation after death), to find out just what the man had held and what payments or other benefits were owed to the king. So what the IPM of Robert Hesketh is doing is listing all his assets and then explaining how owned them, who they passed to, and why. I infer from the bits of the IPM which you quoted that Hesketh divided his lands into at least 4 portions, probably 5. Four of them he intended to go to his illegitimate children by his four mistresses. The first portion went to the children of Anne Blundell and their male heirs (but in case they had no male heirs he specified who should then inherit - which was the children of his other mistresses, in succession, and if they also didn't have male heirs, then to various members of his legitimate family, and finally the bastard Robert 3). [This, by the way, is an entail] I suspect the next 3 portions went to the children of one of the 3 other mistresses (but in each case he no doubt provided that if they had no male heirs then the properties would go to the children of the other mistresses in turn, then to his legitimate family etc etc). For each of these 4 portions there was presumably a deed similar to the one you quote from (or maybe they were all dealt with in the same deed). The fifth portion would have been the lands he wished to go to his legitimate family (and this may well have been the lion's share). There may have been no deed dealing with them, because he dealt with those properties in his will. Or it may be that even his will doesn't mention them, because if it didn't then the law of inheritance would operate to pass them to his heir (subject to his third wife's dower), and that was exactly what he wanted to happen. Conversely, the will wouldn't have mentioned the properties included in the 4 portions going to the illegitimate children, because when he signed the deeds creating the entails in their favour he removed his ability to leave them under his will - he had already given them away (by transferring ownership to the trustees, and reducing his own interest to just a life tenancy, so that the properties transferred to the bastards automatically on his death). The IPM would have dealt with each of these parts of his estate in turn, in each case setting out the terms of the relevant deed or the will or the fact that they descended to his lawful heirs under the laws of inheritance. It may have just been accident that they listed the illegitimate children's portions first, rather than the main part of his estate which descended to his legitimate family - or they may have been following some system which dictated the order (since the legitimate family's portion was a residuary one - ie it was everything not given to the bastards - it may have made sense to list the other four portions first). A chunk of the IPM seems to be a quote from the text of the Deed(s) which established the entails - here of course we do see wording created by Hesketh himself, but it has to remembered that in that Deed he mentions his illegitimate children before his legitimate family because the purpose of the Deed is to entail those portions of his estate which he wishes to pass to his bastards - the legitmate family's portions were to be dealt with in other documents. The above is in part something of a guess, since I haven't seen all the documents, but I hope that if you re-read them in the light of the above they'll make more sense. Matt Tompkins Blaston, Leics