This collection of essays arises from the “Mapping the Medieval Countryside” project, which is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, of which Michael Hicks, the volume's editor, is Principal Investigator. The project is intended to create a digital edition of the inquisitions post mortem (IPMs), which survey the lands held by tenants-in-chief of the English crown at the time of their deaths, for the period c.1236 to 1509. So far 23 printed calendars of the IPMs for the years 1236 to 1418 and 1485–1509 have been made available on the British History Online website. In addition, the Mapping the Medieval Countryside website provides a digital edition of the printed calendars for 1399 to 1447, enhancing their content for the reigns of Henry IV and Henry V to the level of detail contained in the volumes for 1422–1447, most notably by including the names of thousands of jurors. This volume, which is a follow-up to the excellent The Fifteenth-Century Inquisitions Post Mortem: A Companion (2012), which was also edited by Professor Hicks, arises out of a conference which was held in 2014 and, after a brief introduction, includes 12 studies exploring different aspects of the IPMs.

Traditionally, historians have been sceptical about the reliability of the IPMs, especially about the accuracy of the manorial valuations which they contain. However, in recent years a more positive view of these records has emerged, most notably in B. M. S. Campbell and K. Bartley, England on the Eve of the Black Death: An Atlas of Lay Lordship and Wealth, 1300–49 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006). After all, in contrast with the surviving manorial records, the IPMs contain evidence of the estates of lay lords and lesser landowners, provide information about areas of the country, such as Staffordshire, for which there are few manorial sources, and continue into the late-medieval period when manorial records become less plentiful and are less detailed. Inevitably, a number of the contributions to this volume directly address the issue of the reliability of the IPMs. Janette Garrett's study of the IPMs for Northumberland for 1422–1447 emphasises that the information supplied by the IPM juries was not compiled by the jurors themselves and that, in practice, the role of the jurors was to endorse information provided by the family or estate officials of the deceased tenant. Likewise, Simon Payling shows how families could use this system to manipulate the findings of juries in cases where the identity of the heir was an issue. While setting out the limitations of the IPMs, for instance their tendency to under-estimate the profits of pastoralism, Chris Dyer's wide-ranging study of Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire demonstrates how much they can reveal about land use and manorial structure, particularly when used in conjunction with other sources such as feet of fines. Matthew Holford's useful chapter on fairs and markets in the IPMs is also even-handed in its assessment of the utility of these sources, noting how they often undervalue these forms of revenue, but also showing what they can reveal about where markets were held and on what days and about how their numbers rose and fell over time. Matthew Tompkins's study of milling in the decade from 1427 is also cautious in its conclusions. It notes how the IPMS only include demesne mills rather than those in the expanding tenant sector and how they under-represent horse-mills, tidal-mills, and industrial milling, but nonetheless outlines the useful information which they provide about changes in the numbers, values, and locations of mills. Similarly, in examining the 178 manorial extents from 79 individuals which survive for IPMs held in Ireland, Paul Dryburgh argues that, for all their difficulties and problems, these records are a key source for the economic geography of medieval Ireland.

Other chapters are more speculative in their conclusions. Stephen Mileson, for instance, offers a pioneering study of how the personal bynames, field- and place-names contained in the IPMs which attempts to show that this evidence can be used to reconstruct peasant perceptions and landscape and sense of identity. William Deller's chapter examines 10,036 proofs of age of heirs for the period 1246 to 1430 and convincingly argues that since the memories which they include had to be credible, they do reveal much about contemporary society, even when they are not literally true. However, whether the 1.1 percent of these proofs of age which refer to the buying and selling of good and services do actually provide valuable insights into an “individualistic approach to life” once seen as typical of early modern capitalism (pp. 146, 152) is perhaps less certain (the mysterious “Saint Nicholas bishop” noted in this chapter (p. 147) was presumably a parody “boy-bishop” as these were elected on the feast of St. Nicholas (6 December)). Wine is one of the commodities most commonly referred to in the proof of age testimonies and the wine trade, particularly in expensive sweet wines, is also examined in the chapter by Michael Hicks, alongside a discussion of what the IPMs can tell us about the regular clergy and about the social ties of bastard feudalism. Hicks is also the author, along with Katie Clarke, of a fascinating study of baptism and churching which offers much to social and religious historians, although its claim that up to 40 percent of laywomen did not marry (p. 169) seems to be based on a misunderstanding of the evidence. Political historians will be interested in Gordon McKelvie's use of the two surviving Scottish IPMs from the English chancery as evidence for the nature of the attempted Edwardian colonization of Scotland as well as in his discussion of the IPMs for Calais which the Crown administered as though it were part of England. Finally, Jennifer Ward's study of the honour of Clare examines the workings of an honorial court in the fourteenth century and shows how the crown's tenants could hold inquisitions post mortem for their own tenants in order to protect their rights to wardships and feudal incidents. This volume has much of value for the historians of medieval Britain, particularly about the social and economic history of England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and can be wholeheartedly recommended both as a volume in its own right and as a contribution towards the Mapping the Medieval Countryside project's wider aim of making the IPMs accessible and of encouraging their assessment and use by medievalists.