In medieval law, males reached legal adulthood when they were 21, and females at 14; the discrepancy lies in the fact that girls were more likely to marry when wards.
[1] This was a period where mandatory certification of birth was not a legal requirement,[note 1] yet knowing when heirs to feudal estates were born was of great importance, as it could impact financially.
As such, proving one's age accurately was, according to Sue Sheridan Walker, "of the utmost legal, social and economic significance" in the efficient working of land law.
[12] The witnesses would provide their own names and ages[19] and testify with personal experience,[20] to date the birth—and why they remember it—with examples of then-current events.
[12] The historian Joel Rosenthal has described the event as a "routinized and pro forma exercise", intended to elicit memory in favour of a would-be heir;[23] it was both a legal mechanism—the hearing itself—and then a written record of the outcome of that mechanism.
[23] In the broad context of late medieval inheritance law, historian Michael Hicks has described proofs of age as "an indispensable mechanism for succession to land and for the administration and termination of feudal, and especially royal, wardships".
[8][11] Rosenthal notes that by the 15th century, it was uncommon for such hearings to find against the supplicant;[13] indeed, Walker has suggested that when a witness did oppose a claimed age, they were generally ignored.
[19] Historical dates might also aid recollection; the coronation of Edward II and the witness's return from the Battle of Stirling Bridge were both given as reasons of remembrance.
Other historical events might be of a more domestic nature; a fire in one witness's kitchhen was caused by the priest holding his first mass feast there on the day of a birth.
[35] Testimonies also provide examples of normal social interaction between neighbours that took place but were not necessarily directly related to the hearing itself.
[1] For example, in the case of the Sumpter and Armburgh family[1] of Warwickshire,[39] there were repeated delays to every stage of an inquisition, which indicate now-invisible machinations, says Carpenter.
Further up the social strata, although Henry, Earl of Somerset had died in 1418 at the Siege of Rouen, his IPM was not ordered for another seven years—and likewise neither was his brother and heir's Proof of Age.
The legal delay to an inheritance of someone so close to the king could not have been accidental, she argues and was almost deliberately paused, per primer seisin, until no longer possible because the Beaufort estates were in the hands of John's mother Margaret.
[1] Although apparently uncommon, some supplicants are known to have been wholly fraudulent, although these are generally only known about when they were later charged with "maliciously, through suborned testimony, established a false age".
[20] In Rosenthal's words, they "open a window on aspects of ordinary and everyday life",[23] on people's "assumptions, habits and expectations".
[8] Even if only a sentence long, they can reveal both the commonplace and the exceptional in everyday medieval life,[8] particularly those of the litigant's age, whose activities were often age-specific.
[49] Walker has described witnesses as "accident prone" earlier in life, commenting that these mishaps "harmed the body but sharpened the memory".
For instance, names of godparents expected to have been recorded by have been replaced by others if, for example—and appears to have been relatively frequent, says Deller—those planned for the role had not arrived in time.