Name Index

"Fees of the Bishop of Exeter" in "Testa de Nevil"

Trans. Devon Assoc., 1902, Vol XXXIV, pp.566-574.

by

Rev. Oswald J. Reichel, B.C.L. & M.A., F.S.A.

Prepared by Michael Steer

This important paper was presented at the Association’s July 1902 Bideford meeting. Medieval bishops made money by various means, primarily from the income generated by the lands and estates they controlled. As high-ranking officials in the Church, bishops held both spiritual and temporal power. The Paper’s author provides a detailed analysis, together with lists of fee-payers as one of the several working drafts produced by the Association’s Domesday Committee. This particular working group had for several years focussed on transcribing and accurately translating the Devonshire section of Domesday, as well as its relationship to the Testa de Nevil Tax roll for Devon. A great many of Devon’s ancient place names are tied to the names of the original landowners, so the paper becomes a treasury of very early Devon individual and family names associated with land possession in the county, thus providing a cornucopia of inestimable value to the genealogist and historian. The article, from a copy of a rare journal can be downloaded from the Internet Archive. Google has sponsored the digitization of books from several libraries. These books, on which copyright has expired are available for free educational and research use, both as individual books and as full collections to aid researchers.