Medieval Family Life: The Paston, Cely, Plumpton, Stonor and Armburgh PapersThis is primarily a resource containing medieval correspondence, but we have also included any supporting material such as wills, deeds, account books etc. that help to round out the picture of medieval family life. Often they have not been included in the printed editions or if they have, often they are referenced but not fully transcribed, unlike the letters. These items will therefore often not have a corresponding transcript. [Publisher]
This project brings together, for the first time, images of the original medieval manuscripts that make up these family collections and provides access to full text searchable transcripts of many of these manuscripts.
This is primarily a resource containing medieval correspondence, but we have also included any supporting material such as wills, deeds, account books etc. that help to round out the picture of medieval family life. Often they have not been included in the printed editions or if they have, often they are referenced but not fully transcribed, unlike the letters. These items will therefore often not have a corresponding transcript.
There are two ways of accessing the documents. Either by browsing the list of manuscripts or by looking through the images of the printed editions. These are linked to each other in the site so it is possible to look at both the manuscript and the printed edition no matter which route is followed. The manuscript document details page has a link at the bottom to the relevant section of the available printed edition. The printed editions have been divided into sections and it is possible to navigate straight to a particular letter, it is then possible to view the manuscript images from here by clicking on the manuscript link next to the section heading.
Where available the manuscripts can be viewed side by side with the transcriptions. Where there is more than one edition these will be presented as alternative transcription options to view. In the printed volumes these transcriptions often run over more than one page, so for ease of use these have been reformatted here to provide the whole transcription on one html image.
Another strong feature of this digital project is the 'Further Resources' section - with Visual Sources Gallery, some excellent Family Trees, a full chronology of the period, a collection of interactive maps, an extensive glossary (with hypertext links), as well as a useful section on links to external websites.
The resource also has much other important material to help teaching as well as research. There is a detailed 'Tutorial' section as well as a 'Teaching ' section with guidance on how to use individual documents and images in online courses or in teaching packages.
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