Regnal Years of Kings- advice please?

[Mal]

Hello everyone.

I'd just like to ask for a bit advice to make sure I am not making a big slip up with dates.

As you know, beyond a certain point in the Visitations dates disappear and events are recorded in regnal years. I would like to know whether I be doing this right.
E.g.
"Assise Roll 5 Edw III"- Am I right in interpreting this as "the fifth year of the reign of Edward III"?

Floruit- was alive in
Ob. died

But what about when no information is given? I have one entry- Stephen Le Flamock (Flammock/Flamank) for which it just gives "I Rich I"- the first year of the reign of Richard I. But what? Mentioned? Alive? Deceased? I am not sure how to enter this kind of information. Advice please....?

I am sure others who have managed to go back to the Medieval period find that it can be very frustrating viz. dates and some of the stuff on IGI is so wildly out here and there that it renders it useless to us other than perhaps as a "pointer". I have some people who have "About" birth dates that have 100 years of difference between them! Not that the Visitations are 100% reliable either, but I do tend to rely more on the quoted sources that Vivian gives as the best of a bad lot!

Any tips?

Thanks in advance,
M

[trencrom]

Mal,

"5 Edw. III" is the fifth year of his reign.

Re "Stephen le Flamock, 1 Rich 1": This is a frustrating problem, and one I have seen myself in various other records. There is no certain answer as to what the date relates to. It probably means that he is mentioned in some record of that year, and was probably then living, although without knowing what sort of record it was one can't be certain about this. This is where one wishes that the compilers of the visitation pedigrees (I am assuming that you got both these dates from a visitation pedigree, I think I have Flamanks myself from memory) had given the heralds some rather more detailed information than what they did. Unfortunately this is typical of early dates in such records.
I agree with you about the IGI for this early period. You are much better off researching primary source records in the hopes that your folk may hav been prominent enough to appear therein.
Hope this helps,

Trencrom

[donne]

Regnal years also appear in documents which are relatively late in date, although in that case usually accompanied by a date AD. Bear in mind that the start of the regnal year for a particular monarch is the date they came to the throne. I have found a small computer program called Calisto invaluable in working out dates in regnal years as well as the change from Old Style to New Style dating in 1752 - you can find it at homepages.tesco.net/~jk.calisto/calisto/index.htm

By the way, I see from the website that Calisto is meant to work in WIn 95 and DOS, but it seems to be OK on my XP machine.

[Mal]

Thanks for the tips. One thing to watch out for- persons may have been mentioned in legal documents after their deaths and so on. I have one entry "mentioned in..." the time of Henry VIII yet the person in question was probably long gone at the time. I suppose when relying on the Visitations you have to acknowledge the chance of error on Vivian's part too.
I have added an "Alive in..." when there is no doubt and a "Mentioned in historical documents: date" just to try and keep some "order" in it all.

M

[cowdogsam]

Hi Mal,

I stumbled on something this morning that may be of value to you with the regnal years. Not sure if it's anything you've already got of not, but link below for you to take a look.

Whilst it won't help with specific people you are looking for it's a calander of the years and dates etc.

www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/cal/medcal.shtml