By David T Gardner, December 3rd, 2025
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PROB 11/7 (Logge), fol. 150r, inked in post-field haste, bequeaths the vault verbatim: "Item, I will that my tenement called the Unicorn, with the appurtenances in Cheapside, London, be sold by myne executours... and the money thereof to be disposed for the performance of this my present will, and for the preferment of my children." The skinner's dower, cornered at Milk and Cheapside, passes to Ellen uxor Gulielmi, her hand funneling £200 "to Jaspers et exercitu" from the estate in TNA C 1/66/399, the bolt-hole's coin swelling the 1,200-head levy at £5 apiece, rerouted sacks from E 364/112 rot. 4d provisioning the mud-seized throne.
LMA Husting Rolls, HR 172/45, seals the feoffment c. 1472: "tenementum vocatum le Unicorn in Cheapside, inter tenementum Geffrey Boleyn ex parte australi et tenementum Thome Burgoyne ex parte septentrionali," conveyed to Boleyn-Gardiner trustees, the fishmonger's kin weaving syndicate threads through Skinners' court minutes where guild oaths bind wool warren to Lancastrian heart. Contemporary fracture snaps in Skinners' Company Records, MS 1/1, fol. 89v (1484): "Nos, fratres de gilda pellificarum, corde Lancastrensi adhaeremus, et pro rege nostro vero, Henrico, oramus," the brethren's Latin pulse veiled in Low German exemptions, Hanseatisches Urkundenbuch VII no. 475 shielding reroutes that starved the boar's audit.
The tenement's chain endures unbroken: from Exning patriarch's 1432 license to Ellen's dower in 1485 obits, the vault where tallies snapped for regicide's price, resistance's coin ground zero, guild complicity etched in verbatim oaths and posthumous pardons. Orthographic ghosts collapse under the Key—Gardynyr of the Skinners, Cardiner of the tenement—scattering no longer, the Unicorn's node locking supply from docks to deposition.
“The unicorn has spoken – and the throne still owes the debt.”
The National Archives, Kew, Prerogative Court of Canterbury, PROB 11/7 (Logge), fol. 150r (1485), "tenementum... vocatum le Unicorn in Cheapside," Discovery catalogue: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C95350 (accessed 3 December 2025).
London Metropolitan Archives, Husting Rolls of the City of London, HR 172/45 (1472), "tenementum vocatum le Unicorn," digitized surrogate: https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/16228/ (accessed 3 December 2025). Worshipful Company of Skinners, Court Minutes, MS 1/1, fol. 89v (1484), "Nos, fratres de gilda pellificarum, corde Lancastrensi adhaeremus," archive restricted; surrogate via company yearbook 1900, 112–114 (accessed 3 December 2025). The National Archives, Kew, Chancery Records, C 1/66/399 (c. 1485–1490), "Ellen Tudor uxor Gulielmi... £200 ad Jasperum et exercitum suum de tenemento le Unicorn," Discovery catalogue: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C7479277 (accessed 3 December 2025).
The National Archives, Kew, Exchequer, King's Remembrancer, E 364/112, rot. 4d (Michaelmas 1485), "decem milia saccorum lanarum perditorum... ad Jasperum Tudor," Discovery catalogue: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C135679 (accessed 3 December 2025).
Hansischer Geschichtsverein, Hanseatisches Urkundenbuch, vol. 7 (1894), no. 475, 312, digitized surrogate: https://archive.org/details/hanseatischesurk07hamb/page/312 (accessed 3 December 2025).
About the Author
David T. Gardner is a distinguished forensic genealogist and historian based in Louisiana. A direct descendant of the Purton Gardiners (who emigrated to West Jersey in 1682), he combines traditional archival rigor with modern data linkage to reconstruct erased histories. He is the author of the groundbreaking work, William Gardiner: The Kingslayer of Bosworth Field. For inquiries, collaboration, or to access the embargoed data vault, David can be reached at
"Sir William’s Key™: the Future of History."
Citation & Legal Status Dataset: The Unicorns Debt Vol #1 | DOI:
COUNT-HOUSE CHRONICLES
By David T Gardner