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I. Northamptonshire
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 October 2009
Extract
Pyel's first acquisitions in his native county took place in 1348. It was in this year that his father, John senior, died, and left to his son a plot of land in Irthlingborough. The details of this and of other purchases in the village were apparently recorded elsewhere, possibly in another register, and so, unfortunately, the cartulary gives no further account of them. In the same year John Pyel junior also began making small purchases in the neighbouring parishes. He bought some nine acres of arable land, meadow, a dovecote and some land held in dower in Little Addington, a settlement lying barely two miles north and east of Irthlingborough. These he increased in desultory fashion over the next few years, as opportunity arose, adding 2½ virgates in 1351, 7½ acres in 1352 and a messuage with a further virgate of land in 1354. He also bought small plots of land in Great Addington and, a little further afield, in the hamlets of Slipton and Twywell. Yet although he continued to buy land in the Addingtons and became a respected patron of Little Addington church, he never acquired the manor itself, content to remain a substantial landholder and rentier. Pyel's piecemeal acquisitions here, however, contrast with his principal purchase of 1348, the manor of Cransley.
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References
1 Pro3.
2 P104–107. Pyel was also augmenting his holdings in Irthlingborough at this time (P108–110).
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16 P92.
17 A copy of the rental for 1358 of their joint holdings in the county is contained in the cartulary (P247).
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42 P45.
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55 1 (ii) above.
56 P247.
57 As in the case of the exchange of land with John de Keteringge; see above.
58 P63–4.