Ramsey Court Rolls and Census Data

This page contains supplements to Ramsey: The Lives of an English Fenland Town, 1200-1600 by Anne Reiber DeWindt and Edwin Brezette DeWindt, published by the Catholic University of America Press in January 2006 (ISBN 0-8132-1424-6).

Court rolls

The court roles referenced in the above title were previously published on microfiche in The Court Rolls of Ramsey, Hepmangrove and Bury, 1268–1600, edited and translated by Edwin DeWindt and originally published by the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (Toronto) in 1990 as vol. 17 of the Subsidia Mediaevalia series (ISBN: 0-88844-366-8). In addition to the fiche, this book contains an extensive introduction and comprehensive index of the rolls, including people, places, and subjects. This edition is still available from PIMS.

The court rolls have been republished as digital text by the Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan University Library.

Census data

Below are the appendices to Ramsey: The Lives of an English Fenland Town, 1200-1600, upon which the study of the town of Ramsey has been based. The sources for that data are the account rolls of Ramsey Abbey, the court rolls of the town of Ramsey and the vills of Hepmangrove and Bury, personal charters, records of the courts of Common Pleas, King’s Bench, Chancery, Star Chamber, the justices of Assize, Gaol Delivery, the subsidy rolls of the royal Exchequer, preserved in the collections of the British Library (London) and the National Archives of the United Kingdom (formerly the Public Record Office), located at Kew. Additional sources are the parish registers of Ramsey and Bury from 1559 and 1560, respectively, to the beginning of the seventeenth century, preserved in the Cambridgeshire Huntingdon Record office (Huntingdon), and the wills of inhabitants of Ramsey and Bury/Hepmangrove between the years 1527 and 1613, which are on deposit in the Cambridgeshire Huntingdon Record Office and The National Archives. Detailed listings of these records can be found in the Bibliography section of the book.

Finally, after the dissolution of Ramsey Abbey in 1539, the village of Hepmangrove, which had consistently been linked with the town of Ramsey to such an extent that its brewing and other activities had been included in the Ramsey court rolls, was henceforth associated with the neighboring village of Bury. By the end of the sixteenth century, Hepmangrove was well on its way to being absorbed into Bury, which is its status today. Even its name has vanished from maps, and, now called "Owl’s End", it is a part of Bury itself. As early as the middle of the sixteenth century, Hepmangrove’s baptisms, marriages, and burials were being recorded in the Bury parish church, and the activities of its residents were reported in the Bury court rolls. To emphasize this dramatic alteration in Hepmangrove’s status following the dissolution, the authors have chosen to indicate the village’s new relationship with Bury by employing the combined term "Bury/Hepmangrove" in Appendices dealing with post-dissolution data. This conveys most succinctly its loss of what had earlier been a distinct and quasi-separate identity from the town of Ramsey.

The data sets are available in two file formats: Microsoft Excel 2000 (.xls) (readable by Excel 97 or later) and comma-separated values (.csv). The CSV files are in UTF-8 encoding with Microsoft Windows-style newlines (CR+LF). Fields are delimited by commas, and text is delimited by double quotation marks.

• Appendix 1: Surname Presence in Ramsey, Hepmangrove and Bury, 1268-1600 ( Excel | CSV ) – The word "NEW" indicates surnames whose initial appearance in local records can de dated to the decade in question. "OLD" refers to surnames present in the current and in previous decades. "NEW (Dis)" indicates surnames appearing in the decade that did not continue into the next decade, and NEW (Rem) designates surnames appearing in the given decade and still present at the end. Finally "OLD (Dis)" designates surnames present in the current and previous decades not continuing into the next decade.
• Appendix 2: Surnames In Ramsey, Hepmangrove, and Bury, 1260-1600 ( Excel | CSV )
• Appendix 3: 1524 Subsidy Assessments and Church Contributions of Ramsey Parishioners, 1520-1525 ( Excel | CSV )
• Appendix 4: Disruptive and Aggressive Behavior in Ramsey, Hepmangrove, and Bury, 1268-1600 ( Excel | CSV )
• Appendix 5: Officeholders in Ramsey, Hepmangrove and Bury, 1268-1600 ( Excel | CSV )
• Appendix 6: Tenants In Ramsey, Hepmangrove And Bury, 1260-1600 ( Excel | CSV )
• Appendix 7: Retailers and Occasional Sellers in Ramsey, Hepmangrove and Bury, 1268-1600 ( Excel | CSV )
• Appendix 8: Ramsey Abbey Employees ( Excel | CSV )
• Appendix 9: Cromwell Manor Employees ( Excel | CSV )
• Appendix 10: Non-Abbey/Manorial Employment in Ramsey, Hepmangrove and Bury, 1280-1600 ( Excel | CSV )
• Appendix 11: Taxpayers in Ramsey, Hepmangrove and Bury, 1290-1599 ( Excel | CSV )
• Appendix 12: Will-Makers and Their Wills in Ramsey, Hepmangrove and Bury, 1527-1613 ( Excel | CSV ) – In the column entitled "Preambles", the letter "P" incidates a probable Protestant will, "C" indicates a probable Catholic will, and "?" indicates a preamble where the religious sentiments are either unknown or non-committal. In remaining columns, which represent categories of bequests, the letter "Y" stands for "Yes".
• Appendix 13: Beneficiaries, Executors and Supervisors of Wills in Ramsey, And Bury/Hepmangrove ( Excel | CSV ) – In the columns designating executors and supervisors, "W’ means "Widow", "F" stands for "Father", "S" indicates "Son", "D" means "Daughter", "B" indicates a brother, "R" designates a relative whose precise relationship to the testator is unknown, and "O" means "Other", someone with no apparent familial relationship to the testator.
• Appendix 14: Bequests in Ramsey and Bury/Hepmangrove Wills, 1527-1613 ( Excel | CSV ) – The following letters are employed in the column indicating testators’ status: "T"=tradesperson (retailer, artisan, craftsman), "L"=laborer, "Y"=yeoman, "H"=husbandman, "W"=Widow, "G"=gentleman, "C"=cleric.
• Appendix 15: Tax Assessments and Inventory Values of Ramsey and Bury/Hepmangrove Will-Makers, 1527-1613 ( Excel | CSV )
• Appendix 16: Inventory Values Of Ramsey and Bury/Hepmangrove Intestate, 1565-1600 ( Excel | CSV )
• Appendix 17: Baptisms, Marriages and Burials in Ramsey, 1559-1600 ( Excel | CSV ) – The column "F/M1st Name" stands for "First Name of Father or Mother."
• Appendix 18: Baptisms, Marriages and Burials in Bury/Hepmangrove, 1560-1600 ( Excel | CSV ) – The column "F/M1st Name" stands for "First Name of Father or Mother."