John Collan and Robert Lokesmyth

Who were John Collan and Robert Lokesmyth?

John Collan was a goldsmith, originally from Cologne in Germany, who lived and worked in a house very near Barley Hall at the end of the 15th century, at the same time as William Snawsell was in the hall itself. It is very likely that he and William Snawsell would have known each other. Robert Lokesmyth was a vestment maker, living about thirty or so years later, also on the Coffee Yard site. Much of his work as a vestment maker was probably with the Minster and the rich and powerful abbeys and monasteries scattered around Yorkshire.

How do we know about them?

Inventories, or valuer’s lists, made of John and Robert’s possessions after their deaths both survive.

John Collan made a will before his death; we know this because it is referred to in his inventory. The inventory also mentions his executors, who would have been chosen by him before death to ensure that his wishes were carried out. Robert Lokesmyth may not have made one, because his inventory refers to payment to ‘administrators’ who were usually appointed in place of executors where none had been named by the deceased.

Before anyone could legally dispose of the dead person’s possessions, a grant of probate had to be obtained from the local ecclesiastical court. This established that the will, if any was valid and that the executors or administrators were the correct people to administer the dead person’s estate. As part of the process an inventory of his possessions had to be prepared and the executors or administrators had to swear in court that it was complete.

The valuation was partly to prevent arguments about what the deceased person had left but also because the fees charged for a grant of probate depended on the value of the possessions. Inventories often also dealt with the division of the estate among the family.

John and Robert’s inventories give us a fascinating insight into their lives through their possessions and the debts they left at their deaths. Neither will or inventory for William Snawsell survive so these are the closest we can get to finding out exactly what the furnishings would have been like in Barley Hall at the end of the 15th century. John Collan, in particular, was a close neighbour of the Snawsells, and his house is likely to have been very similar.

How were the inventories made?

Shortly after the deaths of John and Robert, valuers would have gone into their houses to make a full appraisal of their goods. Very often, the men who were chosen to value a craftsman’s possessions were chosen because they were from the same trade. John Collan’s valuers were John Eston, a cutler and Robert Wilkinson, a pewterer. Both had knowledge of metal working so would have been in a good position to judge the value of the goldsmith’s tools in his workshop. The inventory was an important document: Robert Lokesyth’s inventory mentions that a total of eleven shillings and tuppence was spent on producing the inventory on parchment and paying the administrators for their work.

What can we learn from the inventories?

Reading these inventories is like walking round John and Robert’s houses with the appraisers. We can learn about the rooms and furniture in their houses and make deductions about the people who lived there, their work, status and more generally about life in England at that time.

Where are they now?

Both the inventories, made of single sheets of parchment sewn together to form long rolled up strips, are now at York University. They are too fragile to be unrolled but it is possible to look at copies of them and other similar documents on microfilm at the university.

How can these documents be used in the classroom?

One way of starting to use a probate inventory before even talking about wills is to ask the children to make an inventory of the items in their bedrooms (don’t worry about values). This gives them a concept of the process involved in making an inventory. They quickly learn that it is not worth listing very small items but use instead more general categories, such as ‘my clothes’ or ‘my toys’. They will however list specific items which they consider important or valuable, just as Tudor appraisers did.

If you collect their lists and read out one or two anonymously, you will find that they will quickly be able to identify whose bedroom it is from clues on the list, they know that Emma plays the guitar and that Craig is a passionate Manchester United fan! In the process they are learning that it is possible to make deductions about people from the possessions they own.

As the inventories are quite long it may be sensible for groups of children to look at different rooms. Since some rooms are quite long, or in the case of John Collan’s workshop full of tools with complicated names it may be helpful to look at these as a whole class activity.

The groups can be briefed to find out as much as they can about the contents of their room, relevant books and the internet can add to their knowledge. The groups can then report back to the rest of the class on what they have found out. They could draw a picture of the room as they think it would have looked, or label items on an illustration as they find them. Another useful activity is to ask them what they know for sure about John Collan or Robert Lokesmyth, what they can infer and what they would still like to find out about them. For some questions it will be impossible to find an answer but that is something that historians have to accept.

Looking at the lists of debts that each man left when he died is equally revealing as it shows the amount of credit in use and how dependent city craftsmen in the middle of York still were on obtaining supplies from the countryside around York. It is also possible to learn a good deal about Tudor funeral traditions by looking at the considerable amount of money that was spent on each man’s funeral mass, burial and entertainment for mourners.