Having transcribed and translated, we began to learn from the documents.
Where? Places of many scales make their appearance in both the will and sasine, which mention counties, cities, private property including farms, houses and businesses, and some natural features, like moors and hills. Where were all these places? We turned to modern and historic maps to find out.
An English manor was easy to find.
Sir George’s home, Wentworth Woodhouse manor, for example, is in York. The current Wentworth-Woodhouse manor is one of the largest privately owned houses in Europe and a major tourist attraction today. We found the manor on both seventeenth-century English maps and GoogleMaps.
Detail, “The Rest Ridinge of Yorkeshyre,” in John Speed,The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine. …London. Printed for Thomas Bassett and Richard Chiswell. 1676. David Rumsey Collection.
However, the house itself is Georgian, built starting in the early eighteenth century. Only one gate remains from the original building. However wo prints published in the nineteenth-century from earlier originals suggest what the house and grounds likely looked like in Sir George’s time.
We were also able to locate the small town of Sarre, Kent, where the Wentworth/Ruishe family owned Pococke Farm.
Detail: John Speed, The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine. …London. Printed for Thomas Bassett and Richard Chiswell. 1676. David Rumsey Collection.
In Scotland, other places were a challenge to locate on modern maps.
Places have been renamed, spelling has changed, or they seem to have vanished. After much searching, we found “Manuel-Foulis” or “Crounnerland” in the sasine in the Barony in Sterling (now Mid-Lothian) county near Linlithgow. Today, the name only applies to a creek (burn) in the area.
From space to place.
The Scottish documents of sasine mostly described property located a few miles from Linlithgow, many around the town of Torphichen. In these texts, both people living on the land and witnesses all listed towns from this area. They were neighbors. The scope was local or regional, attesting to close ties between landlords and tenant.
Similarly, the principal towns mentioned in the Scottish sasines, Linlithgow and Edinburgh, are easily located.
But many places are impossible to find on modern maps, as they have been renamed, the spelling has changed, or they seem to have vanished. “Manuel-Foulis” or “Crounnerland” in the sasine initially seemed unfindable and is not on GoogleMaps. On old maps of Stirling (now Mid-Lothian) county, we found the barony near Linlithgow. Today, the name applies to a creek (burn) running in the area
A 1752 large-scale map by xxx Roy goes farm by farm, bridge by bridge through the Scottish lowlands, and shows Crownerland with landowner WIlliam Ker’s residence at Hillhead, witnesses homes in Gillandensland, Woodcockdale , the castle of Allmond (Haning). Although fantastic for historians, and the impetus for the UK’s famed Ordnance Survey, the document is an important part of English mapping project meant to help surveil the country after the recent Jacobite uprising that had culminated with the bloody battle of Culloden in 1748. National Library of Scotland.
No early maps shows the particular properties described at length in the documents. But this 1820 map of the property belonging to the Livingston family at Parkhall shows the elusive Barony of Manuel-foulis and the Barony of Haning. National Records, Scotland (Scotlandplaces.uk)
Spatial Relationships
Once we identified and mapped place names, we studied the spatiality of relationships. Wentworth’s will listed property and places near York in northern England, and Pococke Farm in Sarre, Kent, on the southeast coast. Also, some witnesses had addresses or near London. Locating them, the will revealed national relationships, connecting Sir George throughout the kingdom. In addition, he signed the Codicil in Dublin, Ireland, where we learned that he was working,
The Scottish documents of sasine mostly described property located a few miles from Linlithgow, many around the town of Torphichen. In these texts, both people living on the land and witnesses all listed towns from this area. They were neighbors. The scope was local or regional, attesting to close ties between landlords and tenants.
These views from Stirling near the Barony of Manuel-Foulis include houses, yards, gardens and boundaries marked by stone walls, showing what the sasine describes.
Sasines in the Lee Collection identify the town where the land is located, former owners or tenants, buildings and natural features, as well as special rights or privileges. Often, it describes the limits –‘bounds, meithes, and meaches’—of the property. Finally, it identifies any conditions for use, such as rent. The landowner and witnesses are present and sign the document.
This farmhouse at Compston, whose mill is discussed in some of the sasines, is recorded as dating to sixteenth-century. Scotlandplaces.
