Introduction: the project

About the project

The Court of Chivalry 1634-1640: the project

The work of researching and editing the records of the Court of Chivalry, 1634-1640 was carried out at the University of Birmingham by Professor Richard Cust, project leader, and Dr Andrew Hopper, research fellow, over the period 2003-6.

It would not have been possible without funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The project leader and research fellow would like to thank the AHRC for all their support.

As the project has developed it has increasingly become a collaboration with the College of Arms in London who are the custodians of the bulk of the surviving records of the High Court of Chivalry. We wish to thank the Chapter of the College of Arms for permission to edit and calendar the manuscripts in their possession. From the inception of the project in 2002 Mr Robert Yorke, Archivist at the College of Arms, has been enormously helpful and supportive. He has always made us welcome at the college and has shared with us his expertise on the records in his care. We are immensely grateful. Mr Timothy Duke, Chester Herald, has also taken a keen interest in the project from the outset and, as secretary and treasurer to the Harleian Society, has overseen the production of our companion volume to this resource : R.P.Cust and A.J.Hopper (eds), Cases in the High Court of Chivalry, 1634-1640 (Harleian Society, new series vol. 18, 2006). Again we would like to thank him. Dr Clive Cheesman, Rouge Dragon Pursuivant, and Mr Joe Edwards recognized at an early stage the possibilities of developing this project as part of a larger website covering the history of the Court of Chivalry (www.court-of-chivalry.gov.uk). Again we are very grateful for their support and expertise.

The other main archive where Court of Chivalry records are housed is amongst the Earl Marshal's papers at Arundel Castle, Sussex. We would like to thank Dr John Martin Robinson, Maltravers Herald Extraordinary and Librarian to the Duke of Norfolk, and the Arundel Castle trustees for permission to edit and calendar the manuscripts in their possession. Whilst researching at Arundel we were able to draw on the expertise of Mrs Heather Warne, Archivist, and Mrs Sarah Rodger, Assistant Librarian. We are very grateful for all their help and hospitality.

In the initial stages of the project we worked with Dr Peter Robinson and Mr Andrew West at the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing at the University of Birmingham. The conversion of the original website so that it could be hosted by British History Online has been overseen by Jonathan Blaney and Sarah Milligan. Without their expertise and hard work this would not have been possible and we are very grateful to them.

We would also like to thank the historians who have provided us with material and taken an interest in this project. Dr Clive Holmes has shared with us his expertise on all matters relating to the gentry and the legal system; Dr Paul Hunneyball provided us with material from the Edgecumbe papers; Dr Stephen Roberts has helped us out with Welsh place names; and Dr Alex Shepard has given us valuable feedback.

Finally, it should be emphasized that this research project and original website would not have been possible without the pioneering work of the late Mr G.D. Squibb, Q.C., Norfolk Herald Extraordinary, a barrister who turned himself into a historian. His High Court of Chivalry (Oxford, 1956) remains an indispensable guide to the court's history and procedures, and in addition he published a series of Reports of Heraldic Cases in the Court of Chivalry 1623-1732 (Harleian Society, vol.107, 1955). We are greatly indebted to him.

About the resource

The aim of the resource is to make available to scholars, researchers, local historians and genealogists the records of the Court of Chivalry during its heyday between 1634 and 1640. Over this period the court dealt with well over a thousand cases of which it has been possible to recover details of 738. These cover a wide variety of topics relating to the social, political and cultural history of the period, from ship money and the Bishops' Wars to pew disputes and duelling, from heralds visitations and grants of arms to brawls in the street and quarrels at race meetings. The majority of cases relate to defamation and slanderous words against gentlemen or noblemen, and they provide a rich source for the contemporary vocabulary of insult. But they also offer insights into gender relations, processes of litigation and dispute settlement, and contemporary understandings of what it meant to be a gentleman, as well as a wealth of biographical detail on plaintiffs, defendants and witnesses.