A foot of fine (plural, feet of fines; Latin: pes finis; plural, pedes finium) is the archival copy of the agreement between two parties in an English lawsuit over land, most commonly the fictitious suit (in reality a conveyance) known as a fine of lands or final concord. The procedure was followed from around 1195 until 1833, and the considerable body of resulting records is now held at The National Archives, Kew, London.
In the reign of Henry II of England, the royal justices first began the practice of registering the settlement of disagreements over land by having both parties bring a suit before the royal courts. The resulting decision was thus given royal sanction.
At first, two copies of the agreement ("fine") were made, created as chirographs: i.e. the text was written in duplicate on a single piece of parchment, which was then cut in half, one copy going to each of the litigants. Under Hubert Walter's justiciarship, probably about 1195, the practice was started of writing the text in triplicate, so that a third copy could be filed in the Treasury. This copy of the text was written at the foot of the piece of parchment, and so became known as the "foot of the fine", or simply "foot of fine".
The first recorded foot of fine is endorsed with the statement "This is the first chirograph that was made in the king's court in the form of three chirographs, according to the command of his lordship of Canterbury and other barons of the king, to the end that by this form a record can be made to be passed on to the treasurer to put in the treasury." [1] The agreement concerns Walter's brother Theobald, who was the plaintiff. [2]
Within a few years, the practice of recording feet of fines had spread widely, and even to Scotland, as in 1198 an agreement between William de Bruce of Annandale and Adam of Carlisle over eight ploughgates in Lockerbie, Scotland was filed with the English treasury, recorded with those from Northumberland. [2] While early fines could be made in the Exchequer, after the early 14th century, fines were always made in the Court of Common Pleas.
The practice survived until fines were abolished by the Fines and Recoveries Act of 1833.
| FINE Final concord Court's decision recorded three times on one face of one document | |
|---|---|
| Decision copy 1 Litigant one | Decision copy 2 Litigant two |
| Foot of Fine Decision copy 3 Court archive | |
Many feet of fines have been published by antiquarian, text publication and other societies.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Sir John Seymour, Knight banneret was an English soldier and a courtier who served both Henry VII and Henry VIII. Born into a prominent gentry family, he is best known as the father of Henry VIII's third wife, Jane Seymour, and hence grandfather of king Edward VI of England.
Sir Bertram de Criol was a senior and trusted Steward and diplomat to King Henry III. He served as Constable and Keeper of Dover Castle, Keeper of the Coast and of the Cinque Ports, Keeper of the receipts, expenses and wardships of the archbishopric of Canterbury, Constable of the Tower of London and Sheriff of Kent.
Nicholas de Crioll, of a family seated in Kent, was Constable of Dover Castle and Keeper of the Coast during the early 1260s. His kinsman Bertram de Criol had distinguished himself in these offices during the preceding 20 years and both were near predecessors of the eminent Warden of the Cinque Ports, Stephen de Pencester.
Joseph Hunter was a Unitarian Minister, antiquarian, and deputy keeper of public records now best known for his publications Hallamshire. The History and Topography of the Parish of Sheffield in the County of York, the two-volume South Yorkshire , still considered among the best works written on the history of Sheffield and South Yorkshire, and his 1852 pamphlet on Robin Hood in which he argued that a servant of this name at the court of Edward II was identical with the famous outlaw. His name was adopted by the Hunter Archaeological Society.
Heraldic visitations were tours of inspection undertaken by Kings of Arms throughout England, Wales and Ireland. Their purpose was to register and regulate the coats of arms of nobility, gentry and boroughs, and to record pedigrees. They took place from 1530 to 1688, and their records provide important source material for historians and genealogists.
Sir William Stafford, of Chebsey, in Staffordshire was an Essex landowner and the second husband of Mary Boleyn, who was the sister of Anne Boleyn and one-time mistress of King Henry VIII of England.
Levett is a surname of Anglo-Norman origin, deriving from [de] Livet, which is held particularly by families and individuals resident in England and British Commonwealth territories.
Sandon Hall is a 19th-century country mansion, the seat of the Earl of Harrowby, at Sandon, Staffordshire, 5 miles (8.0 km) northeast of Stafford. It is a Grade II* listed building set in 400 acres (1.6 km2) of parkland.
St Peter's Collegiate Church is located in central Wolverhampton, England. For many centuries it was a chapel royal and from 1480 a royal peculiar, independent of the Diocese of Lichfield and even the Province of Canterbury. The collegiate church was central to the development of the town of Wolverhampton, much of which belonged to its dean. Until the 18th century, it was the only church in Wolverhampton and the control of the college extended far into the surrounding area, with dependent chapels in several towns and villages of southern Staffordshire.
Farewell Priory was a Benedictine nunnery near Lichfield in Staffordshire, England. Although it received considerable episcopal support, it was always small and poor. It was dissolved in 1527 as a by-product of Cardinal Wolsey's scheme to establish a college within Oxford University.
Lapley Priory was a priory in Staffordshire, England. Founded at the very end of the Anglo-Saxon period, it was an alien priory, a satellite house of the Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Remi or Saint-Rémy at Reims in Northern France. After great fluctuations in fortune, resulting from changing relations between the rulers of England and France, it was finally dissolved in 1415 and its assets transferred to the collegiate church at Tong, Shropshire.
Sandwell Priory was a small medieval Benedictine monastery, near West Bromwich, then part of Staffordshire, England. It was founded in the late 12th century by a local landowner and was only modestly endowed. It had a fairly turbulent history and suffered considerably from mismanagement. It was dissolved in 1525 at the behest of Cardinal Wolsey – more than a decade before the main Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII.
Butley Priory, sometimes called Butley Abbey, was a religious house of Canons regular in Butley, Suffolk, dedicated to The Blessed Virgin Mary. It was founded in 1171 by Ranulf de Glanville, Chief Justiciar to King Henry II (1180-1189), and was the sister foundation to Ranulf's house of White canons (Premonstratensians) at Leiston Abbey, a few miles to the north, founded c. 1183. Butley Priory was suppressed in 1538.
Campsey Priory,, was a religious house of Augustinian canonesses at Campsea Ashe, Suffolk, about 1.5 miles (2.5 km) south east of Wickham Market. It was founded shortly before 1195 on behalf of two of his sisters by Theobald de Valoines, who, with his wife Avice, had previously founded Hickling Priory in Norfolk for male canons in 1185. Both houses were suppressed in 1536.
English county histories, in other words historical and topographical works concerned with individual ancient counties of England, were produced by antiquarians from the late 16th century onwards. The content was variable: most focused on recording the ownership of estates and the descent of lordships of manors, thus the genealogies of county families, heraldry and other antiquarian material. In the introduction to one typical early work of this style, The Antiquities of Warwickshire published in 1656, the author William Dugdale writes:
I offer unto you my noble countriemen, as the most proper persons to whom it can be presented wherein you will see very much of your worthy ancestors, to whose memory I have erected it as a monumentall pillar and to shew in what honour they lived in those flourishing ages past. In this kind, or not much different, have divers persons in forrein parts very learnedly written; some whereof I have noted in my preface: and I could wish that there were more that would adventure in the like manner for the rest of the counties of this nation, considering how acceptable those are, which others have already performed
Ralph Fitzwilliam, or Ralph, son of William de Grimthorpe, Lord of Greystoke, was a feudal baron with extensive landholdings in the North of England, representative of a manorial lordship seated where Grimthorpe Hill rises to commanding views a mile to the north of Pocklington in the Yorkshire Wolds. He gave sustained military service and leadership through the Scottish and Welsh campaigns of Edward I and was summoned to parliament from 1295 to 1315. His marriage in c. 1282 brought him other manors including Morpeth in Northumberland and its appurtenances. In 1297 he was enfeoffed as tenant-in-chief of the entire barony of Greystoke, seated at Greystoke in Cumberland but with Yorkshire estates, through his matrilineal Greystok descent. He entered upon these in his own right in 1306. Having served in the retinue of Aymer de Valence, during the first decade of Edward II's reign he remained dependable as a military leader and royal lieutenant in the defence administration of the northern counties and Scottish marches. His descendants adopted the Greystoke name, and their inheritance continued in the male line until the end of the 15th century.
Black Ladies Priory was a house of Benedictine nuns, located about 4 km west of Brewood in Staffordshire, on the northern edge of the hamlet of Kiddemore Green. Founded in the mid-12th century, it was a small, often struggling, house. It was dissolved in 1538, and a large house was built on the site in Tudor and Jacobean styles by the Giffard family of Chillington Hall. Much of this is incorporated in the present Black Ladies, a large, Grade II*-listed, private residence.
John de Echingham S.T.D. was an English medieval Chancellor of the University of Oxford, who held that dignity for three consecutive years.
The Record Commissions were a series of six Royal Commissions of Great Britain and the United Kingdom which sat between 1800 and 1837 to inquire into the custody and public accessibility of the state archives. The Commissioners' work paved the way for the establishment of the Public Record Office in 1838. The Commissioners were also responsible for publishing various historical records, including the Statutes of the Realm to 1714 and the Acts of Parliament of Scotland to 1707, as well as a number of important medieval records.
Sir Arthur Hopton of Cockfield Hall in Yoxford, Suffolk was an English knight, landowner, magistrate, and Member of Parliament.