Peter Watson
Kellogg College
Supervisor: Professor Richard Sharpe
Thesis title: The Okeover Cartulary
Research Interests
The Okeover Cartulary was compiled for Sir Roger of Okeover in the early Fourteenth century. It records copies of the family's land transactions dating from the first half of the twelfth century. Whilst in no sense a complete record, it is exceptional amongst secular cartularies in the continuity and coherence of its coverage of the dealings of a single family. The Okeovers, whose descendants still live on the same land, probably lived there before the Norman Conquest. The family held land from St Mary’s Abbey Burton, Tutbury Priory and indirectly from the de Ferrers at Tutbury. Relevant records survive for each of these, together with other local documentary sources. This enables the Okeover records to be read within a significant local context that also fills some gaps in their own record. My research aims to produce an edition of the cartulary with an introduction. In this I intend to concentrate on its relevance as a case study of the development of the documentary recording of land transactions in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, looking at both diplomatic and administrative implications. I believe that this can make a significant contribution to the understanding of the development of law relating to land over this time span.
Projects
When starting out on this research I looked for ways of using modern technology to facilitate the work and assist my memory! This has developed into a journey in itself. I have moved from the tools of Microsoft Office including One Note. MediaWiki provided a personal website sitting on an SQL database. Eventually I arrived at eXist a natural database in which the documentary texts are held as XML, potentially TEI compliant, and can be queried directly using XQuery and a search engine. The latter approach offers considerable advantages for historical researchers once the basic utilities have been written. A single copy of the text provides print output, serves database inquiries, and can also be rendered as XHTML in a website. It allows easy access to research records, ease of linking between documents and individuals or other entities, and the material in the database can be simply augmented or amended. I have made a joint presentation to OUCS on this work with Gabor Toth, who is using similar technology, and an update is to be scheduled for the Spring.