Tracing Your Ancestors' Parish Records : A Guide for Family and Local Historians

202 Pages·2015·7.08 MB·English

by  Stuart A. Raymond

First published in Great Britain in 2014
P E N & S W O R D F A M I L Y H I S T O R Y
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Copyright © Stuart A. Raymond, 2015
ISBN: 978 1 78303 044 6
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements and Preface
Chapter 1 What Can You Do With Parish Records?
Chapter 2 The English Parish and its Government
Chapter 3 Vestry Minutes and Officers’ Accounts
Chapter 4 The Poor Law
Chapter 5 Records Relating to the Church
Chapter 6 Parish Registers of Baptisms, Marriages and Burials
Chapter 7 Tithe Records
Chapter 8 Enclosure Awards and Maps
Chapter 9 Parish Charities
Chapter 10 Other Miscellaneous Records
Notes
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND
PREFACE
T
his book depends heavily on the publications of countless local historians.
Unfortunately there are far too many to mention them all individually but
I hope they will accept this collective acknowledgement. My apologies to any
who may have been cited without due acknowledgement.
I have also depended heavily on the resources of the various libraries I have
used. They are too many to name here but a special thanks goes to librarians in
Trowbridge who obtained innumerable interlibrary loans for me. Thanks, too, to
those who read my manuscript in draft: Simon Fowler and one of my students
who wishes to remain anonymous. Finally, thanks go to my wife Marjorie, who
drags me away from the computer whenever I have been there too long.
The original draft of this book contained far too many endnotes and I have had
to prune them drastically. References to specific local records have therefore not
been noted as it should be easy to identify the locations of the originals (although
I have mostly used published sources).
Stuart Raymond
April 2014
Chapter 1
WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH PARISH
RECORDS?
I
f you want to know how life was lived in past centuries, then you will find
much useful information in parish records. They are far from being the dull
and boring documents that those who have not read them might think. Among
the papers from the parish chest are records of the devotion of medieval
parishioners to their church, the iconoclasm that wrecked most medieval church
art, the church ales [festivals] that offended puritan sensibilities, the violence of
being whipped ‘at the cart’s tail’, the tragedies of sudden death, the property that
was divided up when the land was enclosed, the accusations of disreputable
practices levied against both clergy and laity, the penny-pinching of many
vestries, the arguments over the cost of the poor, the kindness shown to young
men who benefited from apprenticeships funded by charities, the beliefs that
persuaded churchwardens to assist sufferers from the King’s Evil [scrofula]
seeking a cure from the touch of the monarch, and the wickedness of Poor Laws
that forced removal even when young girls were about to be delivered of their
illegitimate children. However, perhaps we should not judge eighteenth-century
parishioners by twenty-first-century standards.
There are many ways in which these documents can be used. The family
historian is particularly well served by registers of baptisms, marriages and
burials, vital for the compilation of pedigrees. He or she can also find burials
recorded in churchwardens’ accounts, which may detail fees paid for ringing the
bells, for hiring the bier and for the burial itself. Relationships may be recorded
in bastardy orders, settlement examinations and apprenticeship records.
Researchers will also find names in a multiplicity of different parish records.
They can be used not merely to construct the bare bones of a pedigree but also to
place one’s family in its historical context. The parochial offices held by family
members, the property they owned, the apprenticeships they served, the work
that they did, the religion that they practised; all may be revealed by parish
records. There are numerous lists of names, helping to place ancestors in time
and place and sometimes recording their houses and farms. The names of
ratepayers are listed in the accounts of churchwardens and other officers or
perhaps in separate rate assessments. Easter books list parishioners and their
offerings; pew lists and plans reveal the relative status of everyone in the parish.
Landowners and occupiers can be identified in enclosure awards and tithe
apportionments, which can be usefully compared with nineteenth-century census
returns.
The local historian is also well served by these records. They provide the
basis for research in many topics, such as demography, landscape history,
religious history and agricultural history. Sometimes they throw useful light on
national affairs: for example, the Upton (Nottinghamshire) constables’ accounts
reveal much interesting information concerning the civil war, as do those of
Stathern (Leicestershire). However, their value is much greater than that. Many
works of great importance for English history depend upon them. Parish
registers, for example, form the basis of Schofield & Wrigley’s The Population
History of England 1541–1871 (1981), which provided a new model for
understanding the way in which population grew over three centuries. Similarly,
churchwardens’ accounts written by the sixteenth-century priest of Morebath
(Devon) form the basis for Eamon Duffy’s The Voices of Morebath (Yale
University Press, 2003); a groundbreaking study showing how the Reformation
was greeted in a remote Devonshire parish. Duffy’s work complemented Robert
Whiting’s The Blind Devotion of the People: Popular Religion and the English
Reformation (Cambridge University Press, 1989), which described popular
reactions to the Reformation in Devon and Cornwall and also drew heavily on
churchwardens’ accounts.
The reaction of most Englishmen to the Reformation has been characterized
as ‘stoical compliance with, rather than enthusiasm for, the new protestantism’.1
The evidence that supports such conclusions is to be found in churchwardens’
accounts, which frequently reveal tardy compliance with demands for the
destruction of altars and images but quick compliance with the demands of
Mary’s government for their reinstatement. As long ago as 1853, John Bruce
was able to demonstrate from their accounts that the churchwardens of
Minchinhampton (Gloucestershire) acted with alacrity when Queen Mary
restored the old religion. He also demonstrated their tardiness in abandoning
Mass when Protestantism returned in 1558. It was not until 1575, when a new
rector was installed, that 6s 8d was spent on ‘pullynge down, destroying, and
throwing out of the church, sundry superstitious things tending to the
maintenance of idolatry’.2
Accounts that show heavy expenditure on church towers, new naves and
sometimes entirely new churches clearly demonstrate that late-medieval English
Catholicism was vibrant until the last breath of Queen Mary. If further evidence
is needed, then a walk in the country is likely to provide it: in most counties it is
not possible to go more than 3 or 4 miles without seeing an example of a church
renovated or rebuilt in the fifteenth or early sixteenth century. Parish records
may well contain evidence for the work undertaken.