Short title: Attorney General of the Duchy of Lancaster v Kirke. Plaintiffs: Attorney...

Short title: Attorney General of the Duchy of Lancaster v Kirke.

Plaintiffs: Attorney General of the Duchy of Lancaster [at the relation of Thomas Eyre].

Defendants: Charles Kirke, Ashton, Lingard, Woolley, Bowden, Bennett and others.

Documents: depositions concerning Bowden Middlecale, Derbyshire. The plan of Bowden Middlecale with Whittlewood commons, showing householders, and field names, is now kept at MPC 1/14.

Taken in 1677.

Deponents for plaintiffs: John Kinder of Kinder, yeoman, aged 65, deposed that in 1640 the wastes and commons of Bowden Middlecale were surveyed by Duchy of Lancaster Commissioners and the commons were divided amongst freeholders; Thomas Mellor of Mellor, husbandman, aged 70; Francis Ratcliffe of Mellor, gentleman, aged 44; Samuel Barton of Sheffield, Yorkshire, govenor of the hospital, aged 70 years or more; George Shirt of Bowden Chapel, yeoman, aged 72, deposed that he remembers being involved in a hunt led by the Earl of Devon and Duke of Newcastle. [He recalls his grandfather's information on forest laws]; Thomas Lowe of Chapel-en-le-Frith, yeoman, aged 70 years and more; James Cheetham of Mellor, yeoman, aged 43, deposed that he had heard 'by antient people' [by ancient people] that when the forest laws were read in Hayfield chapel that then the freeholders took their beasts off the common, knowing that the King's officers were coming to drive the commons. Randolph Hibbard told him that they used to make such haste therein 'tht the sd Randolph hath some times rune by his fathers command till he was almost bursten as he hath expressed himselfe' [that the said Randolph hath some times run by his father's command until he was almost bursten [ruptured] as he had expressed himself].

Deponents for defendants: German Bowden of Charlesworth, husbandman, aged 72, whose memory goes back 60 years [to 1617]; William Richardson of Mellor, mason, aged 65, whose memory goes back 60 years [to 1617], [agreement of 13 Charles I was produced at court]; William Hoe of Bakewell, husbandman, aged 70, whose memory goes back 40 years [to 1637]; George Kirk of Chinley, yeoman, aged 65; Ralph Clayton of Dishley Standley, Cheshire, yeoman, aged 43; Nicholas Harrington of Haigh in the parish of Glossop, yeoman, aged 50 years and more; Robert Ridgeway of Edale, yeoman, aged 55; Robert Carrington of Bugsworth, yeoman, aged 50; John Kirk of Chapel-en-le-Frith, blacksmith, aged 50 years and more; Edmund Bradley of Combe Head, gentleman, aged 40; Thomas Bowden of Bugsworth, husbandman, aged 33; Nicholas Creswell of Edale, yeoman, aged 69; Robert Hinchcliffe of Kinder, husbandman, aged 53; Francis Gee of Roe Side, yeoman, aged 60 years and more; Ralph Barber of Edale, yeoman, aged 72; John Hibbert of Bowden Middlecale, husbandman, aged 50; John Waterhouse of Whitfield, yeoman, aged 62; George Beard of New Mills, shearman, aged 56; John Slack of Wirksworth, gentleman, aged 30.