The Court of Chivalry 1634-1640

The Court of Chivalry web site has been created through a collaboration between the Centre for Reformation and Early Modern Studies and the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing, both at the University of Birmingham, and the College of Arms in London. Funding for the project was provided by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the research and editing of documents has been carried out at Birmingham by Professor Richard Cust and Dr Andrew Hopper. This project provides abstracts, calendars and transcript of the surviving material relating to 738 cases heard in the Court of Chivalry (otherwise known as the Court of Honour or the Earl Marshal’s Court) between 1634 and 1640. The original case papers are located at the College of Arms in London and the Earl Marshal’s archive at Arundel Castle, Sussex. The cases cover a wide variety of topics relating to the social, political and cultural history of the period, from ship money and the Bishops Wars to pew disputes and duelling, from heralds’ visitations and grants of arms to brawls in the street and quarrels at race meetings. The data archived here represent two standalone implementations of the original website launched in 2006 using the Anastasia software (.zip for Windows, .dmg for Mac) and an XML file containing the entire transcription of the court records. The online Anastasia site had to be taken down in 2015, and the present standalone files were created as an alternative. A searchable version of the material is currently available online at British History Online (https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/court-of-chivalry) There is a companion volume, containing an account of the court’s history and summaries of the cases for this period: R.P. Cust and A.J. Hopper (eds), Cases in the High Court of Chivalry, 1634-1640 (Harleian Society, new series vol. 18, 2006)