Add this eBook to your basket to receive access to all 2,500 records. Our indexes include entries for the spelling ford. In the period you have requested, we have the following 2,500 records (displaying 41 to 50): These sample scans are from the original record. You will get scans of the full pages or articles where the surname you searched for has been found. Your web browser may prevent the sample windows from opening; in this case please change your browser settings to allow pop-up windows from this site. Somerset testators and legatees
(1501-1530)
Somerset was almost coextensive with the diocese of Bath and Wells, which exercised local probate jurisdiction through its consistory and archdeaconry courts: but superior to the diocese was the province of Canterbury. Somerset testators who also had property outside the county had their wills proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC). The Somerset Record Society embarked on a program of publishing genealogical abstracts of the registered copy wills of Somerset testators in the PCC archives, and in 1903 (volume xvi) printed abstracts edited by the Reverend F. W. Weaver from the PCC registers 1501-1503 (register Blamyr), 1504-1506 (Holgrave), 1506-1508 (Adeane), 1508-1511 (Bennett), 1511-1514 (Fetiplace), 1514-1517 (Holder), 1517-1520 (Ayloffe), 1520-1522 (Maynwaryng), 1523-1525 (Bodfelde), 1525-1528 (Porch) and 1529-1530 (Jankyn). In addition, the volume includes abstracts of 48 Somerset copy wills in the registers of the Archbishops of Canterbury at Lambeth Palace Library from 1363 to 1491. The heading of each abstract gives the year of making the will (not the year of probate) and the testator's name in bold. Below that is the quire number and name of the PCC register. Date and details of probate are given at the foot of each abstract. Spellings of surnames are preserved as they appear in the registered copy wills, and may vary within a single document. | Sample scan, click to enlarge
| Inhabitants of Stratford upon Avon in Warwickshire
(1406-1535)
The Hospital of the Holy Cross was founded in 1269; in time this fraternity became a social and religious gild. 'The Register of the Gild of the Holy Cross, the Blessed Mary and St John the Baptist of Stratford-upon-Avon' was edited by J. Harvey Bloom, rector of Whitchurch, and printed in 1907. The register is a record of admissions to the gild, an account of the fines paid by new members, and the names of those in arrear. Each year's record usually starts on the Monday after Ascension Day (the sixth Thursday after Easter), when the new aldermen, master and proctors of the gild were elected, all duly named. Then follow the admissions to the gild, including payments for prayers and candles (lights) for the faithful dead; and the names of the sureties for these payments. Interspersed with this are occasional proclamations and memoranda concerning the fraternity. A peculiarity of this publication is that the years given at the head of each page (e. g. 1502-3) are those of the regnal year (in that case 18 Henry VII) in which the Monday after Ascension Day fell. The regnal years of Henry IV, Henry VI, Richard III and Henry VII all started after that day in the calendars of 1399, 1422, 1483 and 1485; so the gild registers during those years actually cover the following year to that shown in this printed text (in that case, 1503-4).
| Sample scan, click to enlarge
| Inhabitants of Nottingham
(1485-1547)
The muniments of the borough of Nottingham include extensive mediaeval archives. A selection from these from the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII was prepared and edited by W. H. Stevenson for the Corporation, and printed, with translations of the passages in Latin, in 1885. The principal sources used are the borough Court Books, largely dealing with civil cases, for which an almost complete series survives for this period; Sessions Rolls (92 survive for the two reigns), in which crimes and misdemeanours are recorded; a Mickletorn or Leet jury roll; detailed chamberlains' and bridge-wardens' accounts; and the Hall Books, or council minutes. There are lists of burgesses enrolled; bakers admitted to bake; and fines for licences to trade. A subsidy roll of 1523-4 lists householders by street, and there is an appendix of local deeds, including some material dating back to the 14th century. | Sample scan, click to enlarge
| Tenants of Somerset chantries
(1548)
Chantries were established to perform services for the souls of their founders and other faithful dead, including annual obits and anniversaries at which alms were usually distributed. The chantries could be at an existing altar in a parish church, a new altar in a side chapel of an existing church, in a new chapel in the churchyard or some miles from an existing church: few were founded before 1300, and most date from 1450 to 1500. Hospitals were places provided by similar foundations to receive the poor and weak; there were also religious guilds, brotherhoods and fraternities, and colleges (like large chantries at which three or more secular priests lived in common). An Act of Parliament of 1545 gave king Henry VIII the power to dissolve such chantries, chapels, &c., the proceeds to be devoted to the expenses of the wars in France and Scotland. Commissioners were appointed 14 February 1546 to survey the chantries and seize their property, and in 1548 the commissioners in Somerset produced this survey and rental. The individuals named are the tenants whose rents provided the chantry's income: occasionally an incumbent is named. The survey was edited by Emanuel Green for the Somerset Record Society, and published in 1888. | Sample scan, click to enlarge
| Churchwardens and other parishioners in Buckinghamshire
(1552)
In accordance with a royal commission of 16 May 1552, inventories were taken of the valuables held by individual parishes throughout England. These records survived in the Public Record Office, and were transcribed by the Reverend J. E. Brown, vicar of Studham, edited for the Alcuin Club by F. C. Eeles, and published in 1908. Some additional material from Additional MS 34,741 and Lansdowne MS 1045, in the British Museum, was incorporated. The people whose names appear in these records are mostly the churchwardens and those respectable parishioners to whose custody some of the valuables had been entrusted. | Sample scan, click to enlarge
| The Company of Free Masons of London
(1563)
Edward Conder gathered and published these surviving lists of members of the Fellowship or Mystery or Craft or Company of Free Masons of London from various dates from 1356 onwards. | Sample scan, click to enlarge
| Inhabitants of Suffolk
(1568)
By Act of Parliament of December 1566 a subsidy of 8d in the £ on moveable goods and 4s in the £ on the annual value of land was raised from the lay (as opposed to clergy) population. These are the returns for Suffolk, printed in 1909 in the Suffolk Green Book series. | Sample scan, click to enlarge
| London and Middlesex Feet of Fines
(1485-1569)
Pedes Finium - law suits, or pretended suits, putting on record the ownership of land in London and Middlesex. | Sample scan, click to enlarge
| Militia in Frome hundred, Somerset
(1569)
A muster of the ablemen, gunners, light horsemen, pikemen, archers and billmen available from this hundred, compiled by sir Hugh Paulet, sir Maurice Barkeley, sir Ralph Hopton and John Horner in answer to a royal commission of the 11th year of queen Elizabeth. The returns are arranged by tithing. The hundred consisted of the parishes of Beckington, Berkley, Cloford, East Cranmore, Elm, (the borough of) Frome Selwood, Laverton, Lullington, Marston Bigot, Nunney, Orchardleigh, Rodden, Rode, Standerwick, Wanstrow, Whatley, Witham Friary and Woolverton. (The sample shown is from the return for the borough of Axbridge) | Sample scan, click to enlarge
| Militia in Norton Ferris hundred, Somerset
(1569)
A muster of the ablemen, gunners, light horsemen, pikemen, archers and billmen available from this hundred, compiled by sir Hugh Paulet, sir Maurice Barkeley, sir Ralph Hopton and John Horner in answer to a royal commission of the 11th year of queen Elizabeth. The returns are arranged by tithing. The hundred consisted of the parishes of Bratton Seymour, Charlton Musgrave, Cucklington, Kilmington, Penselwood, Shepton Montague, Stoke Trister and (the market town of) Wincanton, as well as parts of the Wiltshire parishes of Maiden Bradley and Stourton. (The sample shown is from the return for the borough of Axbridge) | Sample scan, click to enlarge
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