Introduction

The Courtenay Archive project makes available for the first time excerpts from a remarkable sequence of medieval and early modern manuscripts which provide a unique witness to the political, social and cultural history of England between the reign of Edward I and the outbreak of the Stuart Civil War in 1642. These manuscripts provide the only detailed record of one of the oldest of England’s lordships, the earldom of Devon, whose origins can be traced to the aftermath of the Norman Conquest and even, by repute, to the very Norman knights that fought for William at Hastings. The sequence offers a rare insight into the formation of the identity of an elite family in the centuries either side of the Reformation. The Courtenays’ curation of their lordship reached far beyond the evidence of their property holdings. They traced and retraced their complex genealogy, which by the beginning of the fourteenth century had brought them not only their claim to an earldom but also kinship with the royal line. Above all, they formed a fascination with their remote past, and their French homeland. There is perhaps no other elite family whose historical imagination can be documented so vividly over such a period.

The manuscripts are also an important record of the craft and art of manuscript production in a secular context in the west of England before and after the introduction of print. The earliest volume, made between c.1350 and c.1425, contains a genealogy visualised as a verdant tree, and a series of finely painted coats of arms decorated with gold leaf; the 1549 manuscript carries another series of arms and a miniature, showing a knight and a castle, of exceptional quality; and at the foot of the Balle roll is a frieze showing the kings of England and France and the Courtenay’s original castle.