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Downes Surname Ancestry Results

Our indexes 1000-1999 include entries for the spelling 'downes'. In the period you have requested, we have the following 1056 records (displaying 1 to 10): 

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Cheshire Court Rolls (1259-1290)
Civil and criminal cases for most of Cheshire were handled by the county courts. Here we have the county court rolls for November 1259 to August 1260, December 1281 to September 1282, and December 1286 to September 1289. The city of Chester exercised its own jurisdiction, and here we have crown pleas and presentments from 1287 to 1297. The royal manor of Macclesfield in the east of the county had three independent jurisdictions - the hundred, forest and borough. Royal justices in eyre dealt with civil and criminal cases from the hundred and forest during their yearly visits, and here we have records from 1284 to 1290. Also covered by this index is an Inquest of Service in Time of War in Wales of 1288, listing knight's fees in the county.

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Cheshire Court Rolls
 (1259-1290)
Inhabitants of Cheshire and North Wales (1350-1359)
The county of Cheshire had palatine status, being in some measure independent of the rest of England: moreover, from the Statute of Wales of 1284, after king Edward I's subjugation of North Wales, until the union of England and Wales in 1536 to 1543, much of the administration of North Wales (county Flint in particular) was directed from Chester. When the Chester Recognizance Rolls were moved from Chester to the Public Record Office, they were placed among the Welsh Records. These rolls, so called because they do include recognizances (of debts &c.) among their contents, are in fact the Chancery Rolls of the palatinate, containing enrolments of charters, letters patent, commissions and other documents issued under the seal of the palatinate. Deeds and other evidences of a private nature were also enrolled on them. A calendar of the Recognizance Rolls from their commencement to the end of the reign of Henry IV was prepared by Peter Turner and included in the 36th Annual Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records in 1875. We have now indexed this, dividing the enrolments into decades. This is the period from the 23rd to the 33rd years of king Edward III.

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Inhabitants of Cheshire and North Wales
 (1350-1359)
Inhabitants of Cheshire and North Wales (1380-1389)
The county of Cheshire had palatine status, being in some measure independent of the rest of England: moreover, from the Statute of Wales of 1284, after king Edward I's subjugation of North Wales, until the union of England and Wales in 1536 to 1543, much of the administration of North Wales (county Flint in particular) was directed from Chester. When the Chester Recognizance Rolls were moved from Chester to the Public Record Office, they were placed among the Welsh Records. These rolls, so called because they do include recognizances (of debts &c.) among their contents, are in fact the Chancery Rolls of the palatinate, containing enrolments of charters, letters patent, commissions and other documents issued under the seal of the palatinate. Deeds and other evidences of a private nature were also enrolled on them. A calendar of the Recognizance Rolls from their commencement to the end of the reign of Henry IV was prepared by Peter Turner and included in the 36th Annual Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records in 1875. We have now indexed this, dividing the enrolments into decades. This is the period from the 3rd to the 13th years of king Richard II.

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Inhabitants of Cheshire and North Wales
 (1380-1389)
Inhabitants of Cheshire and North Wales (1390-1399)
The county of Cheshire had palatine status, being in some measure independent of the rest of England: moreover, from the Statute of Wales of 1284, after king Edward I's subjugation of North Wales, until the union of England and Wales in 1536 to 1543, much of the administration of North Wales (county Flint in particular) was directed from Chester. When the Chester Recognizance Rolls were moved from Chester to the Public Record Office, they were placed among the Welsh Records. These rolls, so called because they do include recognizances (of debts &c.) among their contents, are in fact the Chancery Rolls of the palatinate, containing enrolments of charters, letters patent, commissions and other documents issued under the seal of the palatinate. Deeds and other evidences of a private nature were also enrolled on them. A calendar of the Recognizance Rolls from their commencement to the end of the reign of Henry IV was prepared by Peter Turner and included in the 36th Annual Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records in 1875. We have now indexed this, dividing the enrolments into decades. This is the period from the 13th year of king Richard II, who had intended to raise the earldom of Chester into a principality, to his overthrow by Henry IV.

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Inhabitants of Cheshire and North Wales
 (1390-1399)
Inhabitants of Cheshire and North Wales (1400-1409)
The county of Cheshire had palatine status, being in some measure independent of the rest of England: moreover, from the Statute of Wales of 1284, after king Edward I's subjugation of North Wales, until the union of England and Wales in 1536 to 1543, much of the administration of North Wales (county Flint in particular) was directed from Chester. When the Chester Recognizance Rolls were moved from Chester to the Public Record Office, they were placed among the Welsh Records. These rolls, so called because they do include recognizances (of debts &c.) among their contents, are in fact the Chancery Rolls of the palatinate, containing enrolments of charters, letters patent, commissions and other documents issued under the seal of the palatinate. Deeds and other evidences of a private nature were also enrolled on them. A calendar of the Recognizance Rolls from their commencement to the end of the reign of Henry IV was prepared by Peter Turner and included in the 36th Annual Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records in 1875. We have now indexed this, dividing the enrolments into decades. This is the period from the 1st to the 11th years of king Henry IV.

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Inhabitants of Cheshire and North Wales
 (1400-1409)
Close Rolls (1447-1454)
The close rolls of the 26th to 32nd years of the reign of king Henry VI record the main artery of government administration in England, the orders sent out day by day to individual officers, especially sheriffs of shires: they are an exceptionally rich source for so early a period. There is also some material relating to Wales, Scotland, Ireland and the English possessions in France.

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Close Rolls
 (1447-1454)
London and Middlesex Feet of Fines (1198-1485)
Pedes Finium - law suits, or pretended suits, putting on record the ownership of land in London and Middlesex.

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London and Middlesex Feet of Fines
 (1198-1485)
Kent Charters (1490-1499)
A large accumulation of documents preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, formerly constituted the antiquarian collections of Anthony a Wood, Roger Dodsworth, Ralph Thoresby, Thomas Martin of Palgrave, Thomas Tanner bishop of St Asaph, Dr Richard Rawlinson, Richard Furney archdeacon of Surrey, and Richard Gough. A calendar of these was prepared by William H. Turner and published in 1878 under the title 'Calendar of Charters and Rolls preserved in the Bodleian Library'. The word 'charters' is here used in a very general sense, including virtually any manuscript or copy of a manuscript, but the bulk of the contents consists of mediaeval deeds of conveyance. Turner's calendar deals with each briefly, naming the principal parties and the nature of the deed, but hardly ever lists the witnesses. Many of these charters were undated (dating of deeds did not become standard until around 1350) or so damaged or defective ('mutilated' is Turner's usual description) as no longer to display a legible date. However, he contrived, from the style of the script and/or the nature of the contents, to estimate dates in such cases. The sample scan is from the start of the Bedfordshire list.

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Kent Charters
 (1490-1499)
Lichfield Diocese Ordinations: Priests Secular (1505)
The diocese of Coventry and Lichfield at this period included the whole of Cheshire, Staffordshire and Derbyshire; all Lancashire south of the Ribble; northern Shropshire (including Shrewsbury); and northern Warwickshire (including Birmingham and Coventry). Ordinations took place on the four Ember Saturdays in the year, and on certain other occasions; lists of ordinands to the degrees of acolyte, subdeacon, deacon and priest were preserved in the ordination registers, a distinction being made between those clerks who were 'regular', i. e., monks, friars, &c., and those who were 'secular', the main body of the clergy. All ordinands were celibate, and those regular, and the secular who obtained benefices, remained so, but only a minority of the secular ordinands ever obtained benefices, and most will doubtless have married later in life. No man might be ordained to subdeacon or higher without proving either that he was of independent means or that he was sponsored by an institution or a gentleman. Most entries in the register of such ordinations therefore have the words 'ad titulum' followed by the name of the religious house that was the sponsor. This is an important indication of the man's origins - boys whose families were monastic tenants, and who were educated by the monks, would naturally be sponsored by the abbey. Only men who were born and bred in the diocese could be ordained by the bishop, unless producing letters dimissory from the bishop of the diocese of their birth. These are the ordinations celebrated on Ember Saturday, 20 December 1505, by bishop Geoffrey Blythe, in Longdon prebendal church.

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Lichfield Diocese Ordinations: Priests Secular
 (1505)
Patent Roll 1 Henry VIII (1509-1510)
Royal grants of all kinds were enrolled on the Patent Rolls of England. Many of these grants originated as signed bills (S. B.) or privy seals (P. S.). J. S. Brewer calendared the rolls for the first year of the reign of king Henry VIII (22 April 1509-21 April 1510) for the Master of the Rolls, including all the surviving signed bills and privy seals (some of which had never led to enrolment), in this volume published in 1862. We have reindexed this: most of the names that occur are of those granted royal offices, or wardships or ecclesiastical preferments that were in the hands of the Crown, and often the names of those whom they superseded.

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Patent Roll 1 Henry VIII 
 (1509-1510)
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