On Wednesday, July 30, 2014 at 9:13:54 PM UTC-6, p...@panix.com wrote:

On 2014-07-27 21:51:43 +0000, pj.evans said:

There was certainly a Margaret Twyniho who was abbess at Shaftesbury
from sometime in 1496 until her death in 1505. She seems to have been a Twyniho by birth, which would rule out her being Margaret Langford.

Thank you for this. You're right, and if I'd been more clever with web searching, I should have been able to tease this fact out:

"An inventory of the muniments of Shaftesbury abbey was begun in the
year 1500, under the auspices of Abbess Margery Twynyho (1496-1505),
and was completed a few years later; it survives as BL Egerton 3098
(Davis 887), described by Bell, 'Register of Deeds from Shaftesbury
Abbey'. The account of the background to the compilation of the
inventory, given in the preface (trans. ibid., pp. 19-20), is most instructive. Abbess Margery was fearful that the abbey's ability to
defend its rights and privileges was compromised by the haphazard state
of the muniments: 'for all the liberties, privileges, and muniments of
this aforesaid noble monastery had been preserved in the treasury not arranged by manors, according to their order as it is clearly shown
below, but very confusedly, in diverse chests and boxes, in such manner
that if search had to be made for any liberty, privilege, or muniment,
great or small, which was required for the good of the monastery, none
knew for certain whether any such muniment could be produced or no,
and, if it could, in which chest or box it was to be found...'
Eventually the abbess took advice from her brother, Christopher Twynyho
(the abbey’s steward), and employed Alexander Katour (sacristan) to re-organize the contents of all the chests and boxes, and to compile a register of them. The inventory does not appear to include any of the documents transcribed in Harley 61; it would seem to follow that the originals of many of the abbey's charters had been lost or destroyed by
the end of the fifteenth century, though of course it is possible that Katour had chosen to restrict himself to certain categories of
documents, leaving others aside."

[From "Shaftesbury", on "Kemble - The Anglo-Saxon Charters Website", at www.kemble.asnc.cam.ac.uk/node/115.]
--
Patrick Nielsen Hayden
p...@panix.com
about.me/patricknh

I see some confusion here. The abbess of Shaftsbury was definitely Margery Twynyho the sister of Christopher Twynyho who was the abbey steward. John Twynyho was her uncle and mentioned her in his will. She was the daughter of William Twynyho and
Ankarett Hawkston. Her brother William married Catherine Solers and their son Walter married Elizabeth Carew, daughter of Nicholas Carew and Margaret Langford.

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