FAMILY HISTORY FROM PEN & SWORD
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First published in Great Britain in 2012 by
PEN & SWORD FAMILY HISTORY
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire
S70 2AS
Copyright © Jonathan Oates 2012
ISBN 978 1 84884 609 8
eISBN 9781844684137
The right of Jonathan Oates to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. THE STATE AND CHURCH, 1066–1837
Medieval England, 1066–1485
Tudor and Stuart England, 1485–1714
Hanoverian England, 1714-1837
2. THE CHURCH, PART 1: ARCHIEPISCOPAL AND EPISCOPAL RECORDS
Ecclesiastical Courts
Wills
Bishops’Registers
Licences
Visitations
Records of Religious Houses
3. THE CHURCH, PART 2: THE PARISH
Parish Registers
The Civil Parish
Miscellaneous Parish Records
Nonconformists and Catholics
4. THE PROFESSIONALS
University Records
Schools
The Inns of Chancery and of Court
The Apprenticeship System
The Church, Law and Medicine
Business Records
The City Livery Companies
Politicians
Civil Servants
The Army
The Royal Navy
The Royal Household
East India Company
The Police
5. THE COURTS, PART 1: CRIMINAL
Assizes
The Court Leet
Quarter Sessions
Punishments
Prisons
Appeals for Mercy and Pardons
Treason
Other Sources
6. THE COURTS, PART 2: CIVIL
Chancery
Exchequer Equity Court Proceedings
The Court of Star Chamber
The Court of Requests
The Court of Augmentations
The Court of Wards
The Palatinate Courts
The Duchy of Lancaster Court
High Court of the Admiralty
High Court of Delegates
Debtors
Petitions
Plea Rolls
7. PUBLISHED SOURCES AND LISTS
Newspapers
Directories
Poll Books
Pamphlets
Gentry and Nobility
Famous People
8. MANORIAL RECORDS
Manor Courts
Rentals and Extents
9. PROPERTY RECORDS
Deeds
Surveys
Valuations
Enclosure Records
Forfeited Estates Commission
Royalist Composition Papers
Estate Papers
Auctions and Sales Catalogues
Insurance
Maps
Other Records
10. TAXATION
Poll Tax
Subsidies
Rates
Hearth Tax
Tithes
The Ship Tax
The Free and Voluntary Present
Window Tax
Game Duty
The Land Tax
Miscellaneous Taxes and Duties
Death Duties
11. LISTS OF PEOPLE
Early Census Records
Militia and Volunteer Forces
Lists of Loyalty
Other Lists
Friendly Societies and Masonic Lodges
Freemen’s Rolls
12. MISCELLANEOUS SOURCES
Immigration
Naturalization
Emigration and Foreign Travel
Charities
Coroners
Patent Rolls
Hospitals
Seals
Tontines and Annuities
Existing Pedigrees
Heraldry
General Points
13. PLACES TO VISIT
The National Archives
The British Library Newspaper Library
The British Library
The Guildhall Library
The Society of Genealogists’ Library
The Borthwick Institute
County Record Offices
Borough Record Offices
University Libraries
Local History Libraries
Libraries
Cathedral Archives
Specialist Repositories
Museums
Principal Websites
CONCLUSION
Appendix 1. Reading Old Handwriting
Appendix 2. Calendars
Bibliography
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to acknowledge the assistance of Ruth Costello, Caroline Lang, John Coulter and John Gauss in the production of this book, all of whom are knowledgeable in family and/or local history. They took the time and trouble to read the text and to make helpful suggestions. I would also like to acknowledge Paul Lang for once again putting his considerable postcard collection at my disposal.
I dedicate this book to my former tutor, and a renowned medievalist, Professor Brian R Kemp.
INTRODUCTION
Family history is a fast-growing hobby in the twenty-first century. Many sources are available online on sites such as findmypast.com and ancestry.co.uk. Family history magazines abound and family history societies exist throughout the country. Popular programmes on television have ensured that family history is very much in vogue.
However, much of this concentrates on the last two centuries. The reasons are straightforward. First, the key sources for family history are oral tradition, the census and civil registration records. Most people will know about their parents and grandparents or can be told about them by living family members, and this is always the best place to start your ancestral research. The national census began in 1801, it is true, but it was only in 1841 that the recording of names was required. Civil registration, which recorded births, marriages and deaths, only began in 1837. All these sources can provide much basic information about names, dates and places. Secondly, these sources are available without you having to leave the comfort of your own home because the census and indexes to civil registration can be viewed online. Thirdly, other key sources, such as First World War soldiers’ records and medals can also be seen online. Other published sources, such as newspapers, telephone directories, electoral registers and street directories (almost all of which are chiefly products of the increasingly democratic and literate Victorian and post-Victorian era) are easily accessed at borough and county record offices and some are online, too. Finally they are all written in English.
It is very common for many people to trace their ancestors to the Victorian age using these sources. After that many people become stuck. Research becomes more difficult, especially if the surname searched for is a common one. There are less archives surviving because fewer were created, for the state at the national level took less interest in people’s lives than it has since and there was a far smaller bureaucracy. The manuscripts which do exist are more difficult to read and they can often be in Latin. There is more of an emphasis on the social elite than the majority of the population (i.e. the bulk of our ancestors). Finally, most of the earlier material is not online.
However, there is no need to give up hope. There are many sources available for our ancestors prior to 1837 and the aim of this book is to illuminate and illustrate them so they can yield their secrets. The book takes 1066 as its starting date because there is scarcely any documentation about individuals other than monarchs and the nobility before the Norman Conquest. In any case, very few people can trace their family back prior to 1066, because most of the Saxon male elite were killed in that year. Moreover, the Anglo-Saxon state did not have the type of government which created many records.
The Muniment Room, Guildhall, London. Paul Lang’s collection.
The two major record creating bodies after the Conquest were the church and the state, though the two were often one. Both were national bodies which operated throughout the kingdom. They made records about the people in their jurisdictions, as regards the law, finance, military service, land ownership, religious affiliation, political loyalty and other important areas of life, including sexual morality. It is these records that this book will discuss. We will see what exists, where it is located, the information contained therein and how best to get the most from it. This book does not promise that it will enable a reader to find out what their ancestors were doing in 1066, but it will, hopefully, enable him or her to push back the chronological borders of their knowledge of their English ancestors.
This is not a book aimed at the beginner in family history. It is for those who have already explored the familiar twentieth- and nineteenth-century sources. The envisaged readership is those who know all about their family history back to the beginning of the Victorian age, and who want to dig deeper. You will already know the names of your ancestors of the 1830s and 1840s and want to know about their ancestors. Two tips to begin with. Start with the ancestors you know about and then work carefully backward. Do not go straight to the Domesday Book or another medieval survey and start searching there. Second, think about which institutions of church and state your ancestor might have come into contact with and so which ones would have reason to record their activities.
This is the author’s second book about family history. His other specialisms are criminal and military history. He has also worked in record offices in the north of England and in London since 1991, as well as having worked on his and his wife’s family history, so has a strong knowledge of sources and of assisting in researchers’ enquiries. Hopefully this book will help others.
One abbreviation used throughout this book is TNA, The National Archives, the single most important source of information for family historians.
It should also be noted that book covers family history in England, but much of what lies herein will be applicable to the other constituent parts of the British Isles. For detailed studies of Scotland and Ireland see the relevant titles in the Pen and Sword Family History series.
Chapter 1
THE STATE AND CHURCH, 1066–1837
Histories of England are commonplace. This chapter offers a brief synopsis, concentrating on social, religious, economic and administrative matters. In order to understand the sources for researchers in these centuries, we need to know a little about them. This will not be a concise history of England in this period, but rather a history of its administrative institutions and how these evolved over the centuries. It was these institutions that created the records that supply us with the information about our ancestors.
Medieval England, 1066–1485
England, as a political entity with defined borders, came about in the tenth century, with the defeat of the Viking incursions, at least temporarily, the establishment of borders with Wales and Scotland, and the unification of the Saxon kingdoms into one, under the House of Wessex. Counties were beginning to be formed in the seventh and eighth centuries, chiefly in the south of England. After 1066, others were formed and these thirty-nine counties became the administrative building blocks of the English state up until the 1970s. They varied con siderably in size and population, with Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Devon being the largest and Rutland and Middlesex being the smallest. However the latter contained the most populous city in the country, London. In the Middle Ages, the county’s chief secular officer in the king’s interest was the sheriff, responsible for law and order, and for many is best, if unfairly, represented by the Sheriff of Nottingham in the Robin Hood stories.
Religion was a major influence on the life of our ancestors. Arguably it was the most important and it is essential that readers should remember this. Christianity was re-established in England in the seventh and eight centuries and the old pagan gods were eventually vanquished. All men owed religious allegiance to the Pope, of course, until the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. It is difficult to exaggerate the power of the medieval church over all the kingdom’s souls. There were two provinces, York and Canterbury, and these were subdivided into dioceses (which rarely equated to the county system), then archdeaconries, then parishes (which, again, did not equate with manors). As well as the diocesan system, there were also the monastic houses of the Benedictine and Cistercian orders, to name but two of the more numerous. They m
aintained numerous abbeys, priories, monasteries, chantries and chapels throughout the country. In 1216 there were 700 religious houses and 13,000 monks and nuns; their numbers increased throughout the century. This was partly because of the increase in numbers of friaries. Abbots were leading tenants of the king and held many manors. Monasteries also maintained hospitals and libraries as well as being centres for the worship of God. The parish priest, by contrast, was a humble fellow; he farmed the land he held from the lord of the manor and was rarely celibate, until reforms later in the eleventh century.
Site of the Battle of Hastings, 1066 Author.
Although the Norman Conquest resulted in a new monarch and a new aristocracy supplanting the old one (4,000 Saxon thegns were replaced by 200 barons), much remained the same. This was the feudal system in which the monarch was landholder in chief (under God) and his leading followers were his chief tenants, both nobility and churchmen, who held (not owned, at least in theory) land from him. This would usually be scattered throughout the kingdom rather than being one substantial swathe of territory. They had lesser tenants and so the process went downwards. In return for such land, the tenant owed his immediate superior service, often military, but increasingly as time went by, financial.
English society was overwhelmingly rural, with very few towns and cities. Most people lived and worked on the land in manors. The major groupings therein were the villeins, who held 45% of land and made up 41% of the population, then cottars, who held a mere 5% of land but made up about 32% of the population. Then there were the landless, about 9% of the population. At the other end of the scale were freemen, making up 14% of the population, but holding 20% of land, and, of course, the tiny elite of barons and bishops. Most people worked in farming and fishing; the only industry of any importance was cloth. Very few people lived in towns; London had about 40,000 residents in the fifteenth century and most towns and cities counted residents in their thousands.
Government and society in the Middle Ages were far different to what they are today. National government was in the hands of the King and his council, with the former the most important figure in the political world. He could declare war, embark on diplomacy, choose his own servants and levy taxes. His wealth and powers of patronage were extensive and so he could reward his supporters and promise rewards to others whose loyalty he required. He was not absolute, of course, and had to choose his friends and his policies carefully. Disastrous decisions and bad luck resulted in Edward II and Henry VI being deposed and murdered. The monarchy was not always hereditary at this time, though it often was. From 1154 to 1485 the monarchs were members of the House of Plantagenet.