ABSTRACT
The exceptions are immigrant wills, petitions and court depositions, which have been the subject of particular scrutiny, but, being formulaic and produced by legal professionals, have their own limitations when it comes to reflecting aliens' personal experiences. Inspired by the genre of microhistory, the aim of this study is to mine this unusually rich body of evidence and to see what the singular story of an alien beer brewer can tell the reader about immigrant experiences in later medieval England that government records, wills and petitions alone cannot. Burgess has argued that churchwarden accounts, in particular their formal copies, could have been intended as documents for commemoration, celebrating the churchwarden's contributions to the parish. It seems safe to say then that if Hermanson's will and churchwarden accounts were meant to serve self-fashioning purposes, they did everything but define him by his immigrant background.
