S01:E13
In 1279 Edward I sent commissioners into every county of England to ask a question no one enjoys being asked: by what warrant do you hold this? On page 794 of the Oxford returns, a man of our name is written down twice — John Culverd, burgess, holding a messuage and a cellar with a solar, and paying rent to the Prior of St Frideswide’s, the Knights Templar, the parish of St Peter’s, and a University of Oxford that had been a corporation for less than fifty years.
He is an early bearer of the name. He is not an ancestor — and this episode is largely about why that distinction matters. It is also about the three times the sworn jury of Oxford men, under a royal audit, answered nescit: they did not know.
A note on the audio: the two entries are printed in a Latin so heavily abbreviated that reading it aloud would tell you nothing, so this episode gives their sense in English. The facsimile of the page is reproduced with the written version.
Full text, the document plate, and notes at history.collver.biz.