This is the petition, answer and replication of a case taken to the King's Court of Chancery in the late 1490s by John Esterfeld of Bristol, who was acting as one of the executors of John Foster of Bristol, d.1492. The defendants were William and Agnes Weston of Bristol. The dispute concerned the Westons’ alleged failure to maintain their house on Corn Street, or pay the quit-rent due on it, to the detriment of an estate established to support ‘Foster’s Almshouse’ in Bristol.

The transcription follows the spelling, capitalization and punctuation of the original document, which is written on one side of parchment, 27 x 45 cm. Reconstructions of suspensions are in italics, e.g. ‘tenements’ for ‘ten’ts’. The transcription also indicates the line number of the text in each section of the original document. The manuscript itself is in fairly poor condition; some parts can only be read under ultraviolet light and a few words proved indecipherable, these being indicated by a blank ‘_____’ in the transcript.