THE CATESBYS IN COVENTRY: A MEDIEVAL ESTATE AND ITS ARCHIVES

Abstract

William de Catesby (c. 1310–1383) was a member of a Warwickshire peasant family which had managed to acquire some land. He rose from insignificance to a position of prominence with remarkable rapidity in the 1330s, becoming a knight of the shire in 1339, and an escheator in 1340. Naturally, he was extending his property interests at the same time. As well as rural estates (including the manor of Ladbroke, Warwickshire), he acquired an urban base in the most important midland city of the period, Coventry; his purchases comprised a substantial town house and thirty to forty city tenements, whose rents conveniently paid the running costs of the mansion. His tenants no doubt also provided support in local affairs, should this be needed by such a powerful man. This pattern was surely repeated many times, but his example is unique for us because of a much later occurrence, the attainder of his descendant, Robert Catesby, the Gunpowder Plot conspirator. In 1605 the Catesby estates were forfeited to the Crown, together with the complete family archive, which is now scattered among numerous classes of documents in the Public Record Office.2 Their survival makes the Catesby estates among the best documented of medieval England. For Coventry, the documents relate to the period before 1485, when this part of their property was lost following the attainder of William Catesby, councillor to Richard III. They provide unique evidence for the creation and management of a small secular estate in one of the principal cities of medieval England, and they contrast in particular with the more general survival of deeds, cartularies and accounts concerning the corporate estates of religious houses or guilds.