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Research dossier · General Reference

Thomas le Despencer, 1st Earl of Gloucester

Open encyclopedia entry

Cross-disciplinary reference desk with index cards, atlas, dictionary and catalogue
General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originCatalogue title
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAwaiting source
Entity authoritySource title only
Catalogue notice

“Thomas le Despencer, 1st Earl of Gloucester” is catalogued in Crown Archives’ open-reference index. The complete reference text is available from the original source linked below.

Editorial summary

“Thomas le Despencer, 1st Earl of Gloucester” enters the record as open encyclopedia entry. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Thomas, Despencer and Earl can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current 26-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Thomas, Despencer and Earl.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Thomas le Despencer, 1st Earl of Gloucester” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Thomas, Despencer and Earl provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Thomas le Despencer, 1st Earl of Gloucester”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Thomas le Despencer, 1st Earl of Gloucester primary sources, Thomas le Despencer, 1st Earl of Gloucester archive and Thomas research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Thomas le Despencer, 1st Earl of Gloucester”?
  2. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This catalogue route points to “Thomas le Despencer, 1st Earl of Gloucester” on English Wikipedia. The source page should be consulted before relying on this record. When present, Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.