Mapping the Medieval Countryside: The Fifteenth-Century Inquisitions Post Mortem

验尸后调查(IPMS)是王室租户在死亡时持有的土地的记录。它们是研究中世纪晚期英格兰土地社会的唯一最重要的来源，其次是研究都铎和斯图尔特英国的土地社会。数千人幸存于英国皇家植物园的国家档案馆。1236-1447年和1485-1509年的日历被编入29个大卷(CIPM)。这些书籍非常昂贵，很难用现代学术所要求的方式进行处理，现在使用计算机技术是可行的。这个项目是温彻斯特大学的迈克尔·希克斯教授和伦敦国王学院人文计算中心合作完成的。优先考虑的是电子出版物、更广泛的传播和提高已出版的CIPM的最佳现代标准。由马克·惠誉基金、温彻斯特大学和英国学院资助的三个较小的项目已经确定了提议的可行性。该项目建立在CCH丰富的经验和专业知识的基础上，这些经验和专业知识来自精细卷轴和加斯孔卷轴项目。该项目将把所有的CIPM(1236-1447,1485-1509)数字化，并在英国历史在线上开放获取，使世界上任何地方的研究人员都能更广泛地获取它们。因为没有哪个时期的IPMS比15世纪更重要，15世纪被描述为“英国农业历史上形成最多但研究最少的时期之一”(Campbell，1993)。幸运的是，跨越1399-1447年的最新卷册已经按照最高标准进行了日历，以满足现代历史学家最苛刻的要求。该项目将根据需要使用复杂的结构和语义标记来加强这些卷，这些标记将能够对其内容进行分析和绘制，从而将它们转换成一个数字界面，作为与绘图系统相连的网上互动数据库运作。这将允许通过地图对目前几乎不可用的所有数据进行复杂的搜索、分析和可视化。这将把这些材料和对中世纪农村的研究建立在一个根本改善的基础上。该项目将包括一项全面的来源研究，该研究将测试数据的可靠性，并确定在哪里值得信任，在哪里打折。将识别从以前的文件复制的IPM，从而使它们能够被排除在计算之外。两个深入的案例研究将展示IPM数据的价值和潜力，并将就如何最有效地利用这类材料提供指导。将举行一次特邀专家会议，为未来的用户提供在线和硬拷贝出版指南。该项目将对了解15世纪上半叶的英国农村社会做出重大贡献。它将使人们能够更详细地追踪农业历史上众所周知的发展，如从耕地到牧场的转变。它将使历史学家能够详细追踪不断变化的土地价值和贵族收入的变化形式，它将为在人口下降导致女性和附属继承人大幅增加的时期，家庭为保留和分配遗产而采取的策略提供至关重要的洞察。它将促进对陪审员的身份和活动进行更详细和更广泛的研究，这些陪审员的裁决构成了IPMS的基础，从而促进了对15世纪农村“中等类型”的研究。在这一项目完成后，它打算将其他已出版卷的电子文本提高到相同的标准，以便它们也能得到充分利用。

Inquisitions post mortem (IPMs) are records of the lands held at their deaths by tenants of the crown. They are the single most important source for the study of landed society in later medieval England and, to a lesser extent, of Tudor and Stuart England. Thousands survive in The National Archives at Kew. Those for the years 1236-1447 and 1485-1509 have been calendared in 29 large volumes (CIPMs). These volumes are highly expensive and difficult to manipulate in the ways required by modern scholarship and now feasible using computer technology.This project is a collaborative venture by Prof Michael Hicks of the University of Winchester and the Centre for Computing in the Humanities at King's College London. Priority is being given to the electronic publication, wider dissemination, and enhancement to the best modern standards of CIPMs already published. There have been three smaller projects funded by the Marc Fitch Fund, the University of Winchester, and the British Academy that have established the feasability of what is proposed. The project builds on CCH's vast experience and expertise arising from the Fine Rolls and Gascon Rolls projects.This project will digitise all the CIPMs (1236-1447, 1485-1509) and publish them on open access on British History Online to make them much more widely accessible to any researcher anywhere in the world.For no period are IPMs more important than the fifteenth century, which has been described as 'one of the most formative but least researched periods in English agrarian history' (Campbell, 1993). Fortunately the most recent volumes spanning 1399-1447 have been calendared to the highest standards to meet the most demanding requirements of modern historians . This project will enhance these volumes as necessary with sophisticated structural and semantic markup that will enable analysis and mapping of their content and thus convert them into a digital interface that operates as a web-mounted interactive database linked to a mapping system. This will permit sophisticated searching, analysis, and visualisation through maps of all the data that currently is almost unusable. This will place this material and the study of the medieval countryside on a radically improved footing.The project will include a full source study that will test the reliability of the data and establish where it is to be trusted and where discounted. IPMs copied from earlier documents will be identified, thus enabling them to be excluded from calculations. Two in-depth case studies will demonstrate the value and potential fof the IPM data and will provide guidance on how such material can be most effectively used. There will be a conference of invited experts that will generate a guide to future users for publication both online and as hard copy.The project will make a major contribution to understanding of English rural society in the first half of the fifteenth century. It will enable well-known developments in agrarian history, such as the shift from arable to pasture, to be traced in much greater detail. It will enable historians to trace in detail the changing value of land and the changing shape of aristocratic incomes, It will provide vital insight into the strategies used by families to preserve and parcel out their inheritances in a period when demographic decline led to a considerable increase in female and collateral heirs. It will promote more detailed and extensive research on the identities and activities of the jurors whose verdicts formed the basis of IPMs, and thus on the rural 'middling sort' in the fifteenth century.Following the completion of this project, it is intended to enhance the electronic text of the other published volumes to the same standard so that they too can be fully exploited.