St John’s College Library Newsletter L
Easter 2024
VOLUME 7, ISSUE 3
Echoes of life in a ‘deserted’ village A collection of mediaeval deeds relating to the now deserted villages of Wyham and Cadeby in Lincolnshire forms part of the papers of John, 1st Viscount Welles, which have now been arranged and described in the online catalogue of St John’s institutional archives. These descriptions can be read online at https://www.sjcarchives.org.uk/institutional/index.php/john-lord-welles. John Welles was half-brother to Lady Margaret Beaufort and appointed her one of the overseers of his will, along with the King and Queen. A copy of his first will survives in the College archives along with a small number of other family documents, such as a licence of the Bishop of Lincoln for John’s wife, Cecily of York, to hold private masses throughout the diocese of Lincoln. The bulk of the collection, however, concerns estates in Lincolnshire which had first been granted to Viscount Welles’ great-greatgrandfather, Adam, in 1357. The estates never belonged to St John’s College and the presence of these documents in the archives must be attributed to Lady Margaret and her intervention with the King in 1502-3 on Cecily’s behalf when he took the estates into his own possession after Cecily remarried without royal permission. The papers have therefore been catalogued with Lady Margaret’s papers, rather than with Estate papers in the College Records. The deeds surviving in the College archives are those of Manby and its appurtenances, including Cadeby, Wyham, and Little Grimsby. The records of Wyham and Cadeby mostly date from c. 1200 to 1387, with one additional document dated 1473. This last shows a landowner agreeing to take a reduced payment for the 16 years of rent arrears owed him on land and a meadow in a field in North Cadeby. In the earlier deeds, we see a wider range of characters, including Sampson the miller and Matilda his wife, who rented a toft from William, son of John of