JOHN, FIRST BARONET, 1591–1612

In the last third of the reign of Elizabeth, a number of changes in the ownership of land took place in West Coker, of which we have knowledge through an Act that had been passed in 1535 ‘concerning inrolments of bargaines and contracts of lands and tenements’, to the effect that no estate of inheritance or freehold or any use thereof should be conveyed by bargain or sale ‘except the same bargaine and sale be made by writing indented, sealed and inrolled’ (that is, officially copied on a roll of parchment) ‘in one of the king's courts of record at Westminster, or else within the same countie or counties where the same manors, lands or tenements so bargained and sold lie or be…the same inrolment to be had and made within six months next after the date of the same writings indented’. In the course of time lawyers, as we shall see later on, succeeded in defeating the intention of this Act, which was to secure that land should be dealt with by the public registration of deeds. Such registration, however, has given us a useful record of deeds, affecting land in West Coker, enrolled by the clerks of the peace of the county of Somerset between the years 1591 and 1601. The names of the parties to these and certain other documents enable us to trace in the first instance who lived in the village during this decade and presently the ownership of property there.