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BALLARD DNA PROJECT
1200s Geoffrey Ballard - Ramsey Cartulary.
Elton Village, Elton (Aethelintone, Adelintune, Aylington), Huntingdon , Camebridgeshire. (“the village of the Aethelings,” or “the village of Aethelheah’s people.”).
Dwelling uneasily on the fringes of the village, outside its organization, were a shifting set of “strangers.” Several times villagers were fined for “harboring” them. They are characterized as “outside the assize”: day laborers, itinerant craftsmen, and vagabonds, the latter a class who turn up frequently in the royal coroners’ rolls. In 1312 six villagers were fined and commanded to desist from harboring strangers. Richard le Wyse harbored Henry the Cooper and his wife “to the harm of the village”;
Robert Gamel harbored; Margery daughter of Beatrice harbored Youn the Beggar;
John Ballard, Geoffrey atte Cross, and Richard le Wyse commonly entertained strangers “to the terror of the villagers.”39
One of the lord’s most valuable privileges aroused little resentment: his right to license markets and fairs, granted him by the king or sometimes by another overlord. The abbot of Ramsey’s fair of St. Ives was internationally famous, patronized by merchants from Flanders, France, Italy, and Scandinavia.13 Such fairs and markets enriched both lord and tenants, at least the luckier and more enterprising. (In 1279 the abbot of Ramsey contemplated a weekly market at Elton, and successfully negotiated an agreement for it with the abbot of Peterborough, but for some reason the project was never carried out.)14
[Joseph and Frances Gies’s classic bestseller on life in medieval villages.]
Manorial courts sometimes had to rule on complicated inheritance questions. In the Bedfordshire village of Chalgrave in 1279, Richard son of Thomas Ballard presented himself and “demanded the land which was his father’s.” Investigation showed that Richard had had an elder brother named Walter, who had died, leaving sons. These sons “would have been the next heirs if Walter had held the land while he lived, but he did not have possession of the land, therefore [the jurors] say that Richard himself is the next heir.” The custom of the manor, however, was that “no customary tenant can enter such land after the death of his father while his mother is alive, unless the mother shall agree, and…his mother will hold the land all her life if she shall wish.” Richard therefore agreed to pay his mother, Avice, a yearly ration of winter wheat (frumentum), beans, and spring wheat (tramesium). Richard paid 12 pence entry fee and promised to do the services “due and accustomed” for the holding, as well as to “maintain the houses of the same tenement.”7
Cartularium monasterii de Rameseia
Geoffrey Ballar tenat in Elsworth. III. 252.
Geoffrey Ballard. III. 246. bis -
1188, Galfrido Ballard (et caeteris, Cott.)wit. II. 278.
John Ballard suitor in court of Broughton. I. 42.
1337 ? John Ballard of St Ives, agreement between Abbott Hugh and I. 86
1231, John Ballard, tenant in (Broughton) St Ives. I. 283, 286.
witness, II. 332.
Simon, witness, I. 173.
Ballardi, merchants of the society of Lucca, III. 20. 21, 86-91
Ballardo (Bellar', Gellard) Collucheeus (colloncius, Collenius) merchant of the society of Bellardi of Lucca, III. 21. 28.
Ralph de Borohard wit. I. 143.
vol 3. https://archive.org/details/cartulariummonas03rams/page/n21/mode/2up
vol 2. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k50351q/f97.item.zoom
vol 2. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k503522/f281.item.zoom
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