Bulwer family deed, England, 1331

Image of Bulwer family deed

The library owns several medieval deeds and land charters, but this one is special for its local importance: it records the sale of land to Thomas Wynning by Thomas Bulwer, an ancestor of the same Bulwers who would, centuries later in 1887, immigrate to British Columbia. Note the more cramped and hastily-written letter forms, which were necessary because these documents were so common; the seal was attached to the document by a thin strip of scrap vellum. Like many notary documents, this was dated according to the year of the current monarch’s reign, in this case the fourth year since King Edward III assumed the throne of England.

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