The purpose of this chapter is to argue that we can have greater confidence in the descriptions of land contained in inquisitions post mortem than previously held. Whilst there may be significant problems with individual descriptions, IPMs can become a very useful source of quantifiable data, if employed quantitatively, in conjunction with other sources of evidence, and with a realistic acknowledgement of what they can and cannot reasonably be expected to reveal. The evidence on which this assertion is based is drawn from a case study of Berkshire which looks backwards to the earlier period at the beginning of the fourteenth century, before considering the data from the fifteenth century. It is based on a comparative analysis of the descriptions of land contained in the IPMs and those of the legal record commonly known as feet of fines. Having established the comparability of the two sources, the chapter employs their data to demonstrate their potential for an investigation of agricultural change over these two centuries.

Discerning fact from fiction in many of the formulaic documentary sources of the medieval period remains a perennial problem for historians. A previous attempt was made to get behind the language of the (in that instance manorial) documents to conditions on the ground in the two contrasting regions of Norfolk and Berkshire. The conclusions reached were that legal structures were not detached from the underlying economic situation and that when manorial documents were employed in conjunction with other sources of evidence a more accurate account of conditions could be obtained.