Google Books can be damn frustrating.
There are times you’re hot on the scent of discovery and think you’ve sniffed out that rarest essential truffle of info in one of those obscure books that Google has scanned and put up on the Web for all us micro-market researchers. Last night, I was probing for records of the men around our Jacobi de Templetone de Achendolosk. What happened with them before the time of the Charter? What became of them after? I was hoping to get a hint of whether those mentioned as being on the lands that were becoming “Tenendas et habendas dicto Roberto” with the king’s warrant — whatever that means — whether they were going to get to keep their lands and just deal with a new Lord, or whether they were SOL.
A search for one of the guys, combined with a word or two that are designed to tantalize the search algorithm, puts you onto a juicy mention of your quarry.
You bring up the page — there’s the book’s cover over on the left — there’s a title/author description — and then there’s the notice, “snippet view”:
Ar-r-r-rgh! That’s all you get: a “snippet” of the page. A taste. A provocative slice of explanation of how a Charter is written. The hint that perhaps the book has more of a complete translation.
But, wait — this is an interesting fragment, in itself. It may hold the answer to the question I came looking for:
[…] which is constructed thus: various lands are listed according to their former holders, ‘with pertinents’. The tenendas clause follows, holding in barony by right bounds, ‘with freeholders of the aforesaid lands namely of the land of Meneforde’ and various lands are listed, running straight into ‘freely, quietly…’. Plainly this is a clumsy construction separating the lands […]
“Tenendas clause”? What is that? Is that the separator between the unfortunate “former holders” and a description of the “right bounds” of the grant by mention of the freeholders … of smaller land holders whose hold on their property is not affected by the transfer of lordship?
I click back to my copy of the Latin Charter mentioning James Tempilton, and discover that his name follows the words “Tenendas et habendas dicto,” and wonder if this means what I think it means — that James was tenant upon the lands being bestowed on Boyd, and the mention is merely a way to describe the contours of the bequest — and the names of Balliol, Ros and Mora which come before those words are clearly the Great Lords whose lands are being confiscated in order to make the gift of barony.
But, it is only a fragment of a description of how a charter is structured. It’s very suggestive, but it’s not definitive.
It may be inter-library loan time.
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UPDATE 2010.08.30 — The inter-library loan arrived.
