Archbishops’ Registers Revealed: final thoughts of an indexer

A year has flashed by and the project to index two of the registers of the Archbishops of York, 1576-1650, will very soon come to an end. However, both registers are now fully indexed and the results are available for searching on line at https://archbishopsregisters.york.ac.uk

What will you discover?

Looking back over the work, it was perhaps a little surprising to find that the majority of the contents of those two registers comprised York Consistory Court wills (but no probate inventories), mostly of clergymen, but also some lay people. Earlier registers, such as those of Archbishop Neville (1374-1388) and Archbishop Lee (1531-1544), for example, appear to record a much greater variety of business.

However, wills have long been known to provide a very valuable source of information on many aspects of daily life in the past, revealing the testator’s material possessions, personal tastes, relationships and place in society. Needless to say, the wills in Registers 31 and 32 have done the same for the sixteenth and seventeenth century clergy and their families, offering a rich seam of interest and, on occasion, entertainment! Who would have thought that anyone would wish to receive a legacy of a chamber pot (Reg. 31, fol. 125 v, entry 3) or a ‘stoole of ease’ (commode) (Reg. 31, fol. 123 v, entry 2)? Who would have thought that cows would have been named ‘Daisy’ as long ago as in 1625 (Reg. 31, fol. 249 r, entry 1)? And would a testator leave his daughter his musical instruments if she were not able to play them or at least keen to learn (Reg. 32, fol. 113 r, entry 4)?

Otherwise, the registers have revealed such other aspects of the archbishops’ business as the technicalities of providing a diocese with a new bishop, following a strictly-laid down ecclesiastical legal procedure still adhered to today, requiring royal assent and formal election. The process of the archbishop’s visitation or periodical inspection of clergy and lay people in the province is also found in the registers, but few details of matters for concern discovered and corrected appear. This omission is explained by the fact that by around this date, a separate series of records for visitations, including visitation court books, had been created (YDA/6, 1567-).

Durham clergy list 1577

Another feature of this type of material was that records of the archbishop’s visitation of the diocese of Durham in 1577 are very detailed in including lists of names of all the clergy in the archdeaconries and deaneries of the diocese summoned to appear before the archbishop with their credentials, together with the names of several churchwardens and others, such as schoolmasters, in each parish (see for example, Reg. 31, fols. 30r-34-v, containing 105 names).

Nevertheless, even the routine business of the archbishops can have its lighter moments. That and other visitations of the diocese of Durham also show the immense difficulties encountered by the archbishops of York in carrying out these inspections. This was particularly true of visitations of the cathedral clergy, who strenuously resisted the process, to the point of excluding the archbishop’s deputy, the Bishop of Durham, also in 1577, from their chapter house by locking him out (Reg. 31, fol. 33v, entry 7). The registers then go on to present the farcical picture of the bishop, sitting on a chair near the entrance doors of the chapter house, attempting to continue the visitation proceedings from outside (Reg. 31, fol. 34 r, entry 2)!

Among the other high points of the project has been the discovery in Register 32 of a seating plan showing the allocation in 1636 of seats or pews in the chapel of Holmfirth in the parish of Kirkburton, in the West Riding of Yorkshire (Reg. 32, fols. 94 A & B). This plan is equally rich in names of local inhabitants, so giving a kind of snapshot of the area at the time, and would prove very useful for any local historians interested in the place in producing a study of the chapelry and its local families, perhaps similar to that created in 1700 by the English author and antiquarian, Richard Gough, who also based his work on such a plan of the church of Myddle, in Shropshire.

Pew plan, Chapelry of Holmfirth, 1636

It was excellent to be able to publicise the registers and discoveries such as these showing potential for research at the ARKDIS conference in Uppsala in Sweden this summer and also present a poster session on the project at the ARA conference in London this month. Next year, a presentation on the project, also showcasing material from the registers, particularly items found in wills, will also be given at the University of Huddersfield’s ‘The Material Culture of Religious Continuity and Change 1400-1600’ conference to be held there.

Going back to wacky names for animals, however, it has also been most enjoyable blogging about the project and revealing that cow’s name to the world!

So, now that the work is almost complete, very many thanks to all at the Borthwick, especially Gary Brannan and also Julie Allinson in IT, for all their help and support during my time on such a fascinating and absorbing project.

Poor Law Stories: George Crosby's family and a Christmas Removal

1848 did not provide a good or happy Christmas for the Crosby family. On December 21st, the overseers of the poor for the parish of St Mary Castlegate in York applied to the Justices of the Peace for the city of York for the right to remove them.

PR Y/MC.100/32/1 Notice of Intent to Remove George Crosby and family

George Crosby was married to Mary and they had had at least four children. By December 1848, only two still lived: John who had just turned seven years' old, and Mary who was barely eighteen months' old. They had been living in the parish of St Mary Castlegate, off and on, since 1840 when their eldest son James was baptised there. Now they had fallen upon hard times there, and had turned to the parish for support to help them.

Although the Crosby family lived a long time before the advent of the modern welfare state, there was a safety net (of sorts) to catch people who could not support themselves whether through illness, injury or unemployment. The Poor Law had operated since Queen Elizabeth I's day and was administered through parishes. The better-off residents of a parish contributed to a fund through their rates, which was then paid out to paupers. By the nineteenth century this system was seen as bloated, expensive and counter-productive and notions of the undeserving poor surviving on handouts from their hard-working neighbours fed into the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. This Act established poor law unions and the dreaded Union Workhouses which loom so large in our collective memory. There had been workhouses before, but they had tended to be small and local. The Union Workhouses were built on a massive scale and unpleasantness, an important part of the 'less eligibility' mindset (the idea that the workhouse should be a deterrent to discourage all by the most desperate from seeking assistance), was a fundamental driver of their construction.

York's Poor Law Union was incorporated in 1837 but for many years was ineffectual. The pre-existing workhouse on Marygate (next to the Minster Inn) was very small, overcrowded and subject to outbreaks of disease. It had been set up in 1769 as a joint initiative by a number of the city centre parishes and could only accommodate 90 paupers. In 1845, an official inspection of the workhouse found that the privies were "without exception in an offensive state". There was an open cesspool in the girls' yard. Many of the inmates were diseased and the children were placed "in the infectious wards with adults labouring under syphilis and gonorrhea".        

The spaces in the Marygate workhouse were taken up with the deserving poor: the elderly, the infirm, and children. This meant that other paupers, despite the provisions of the 1834 Act and its aim to stop out-door relief to the able-bodied poor, were still supported by the city parishes with the old-style payments. So at least for the moment, the Crosby family knew they would not end up at the gates of workhouse, to be separated.

They did, however, have to move. The city of York, as a legacy of its rich and ecclesiastical medieval history, had a lot of parishes. Although there had been some rationalisation in the sixteenth century, there were still more than 20 parishes operating in the middle of the nineteenth century. Each of these parishes had poor law overseers who paid out poor relief. Their job also required them to make sure relief was only paid when absolutely necessary. This led to a system whereby pauper families could be removed and sent back and forwards across the city as each parish attempted to avoid paying relief (and thereby, establishing a precedent).

Order of Removal issued for George Crosby

Luckily for the St Mary Castlegate overseers, a precedent had already been set. On 9th September 1844, the Crosbies had applied for poor relief. Then, George and Mary had had three children: James, John and Emma, and they had been living in the parish of All Saints North Street, whence they had been removed to the parish of St Mary Bishophill Senior. So it was a simple matter to apply for the family to once again be removed to St Mary Bishophill Senior.

The family's settlement was in St Mary Bishophill Senior because that was where George Crosby was born. All of his legitimate children, and his wife, shared in his settlement. There were a number of ways that George could have gained a different settlement from that of his birth, and the fact that he retained his birth settlement tells us something about him. He had never completed an apprenticeship, for example, or served as a domestic servant for over a year. He had never rented a property of a rateable value of £10.00 or more, or run a business. Looking at the areas we know George Crosby lived in, it seems likely that he was a labourer. Castlegate and North Street in the mid-nineteenth century were notorious slums, the haunts of prostitutes and thieves. Hagworms Nest, a court off one of the Water Lanes in St Mary Castlegate, had been a source of epidemic cholera from the seventeenth century through to the famous outbreak of 1832 whilst North Street recurs again and again in the police records of the period. Labouring was a precarious way to earn a living, and so it isn't surprising that the family fell upon hard times regularly - nor, sadly, that they lost so many children.

There is currently an ongoing project at the Borthwick Institute to index all of the surviving poor law papers for the city centre parishes. Perhaps George and Mary Crosby will turn up again in another parish and we can continue to follow their struggle.