Using the York Cause Papers for Family History

As a family historian I’m always on the look-out for record collections that add some colour to the past lives I’m researching. Sources such as parish registers, general registration and census records are indispensable sources, but on their own they can only give a small number of clues to the life a person led. Sometimes that may be all you’re looking for, but I generally find that once you have an outline view, you become hungry to find more about the person. How did they live? What was their personality like? What did they do in their life? What were their beliefs? Who were their friends? How did they interact with others? What did they own? The list goes on…

Dioceses of the Church of England between the
Reformation and the mid-19th century

I recently had my eyes opened to the documents from the church courts of the Archbishop of York. Known as the York Cause Papers, these documents hold information on people mainly living in the Diocese of York, and the Northern Province and run from 1300 to 1858. The papers are well known and well used by academics researching church, legal and medieval history, but less so by family historians researching the lives of specific individuals or families. Certainly, I’d always felt a little intimidated at the prospect of delving into them and feared that I could spend a lot of time finding very little!

I was looking for a project subject for my studies at the University of Strathclyde, and Alexandra Medcalf from the Borthwick Institute showed me the papers for the cause of Hannah Willmott from Ellerburn. Hannah died in 1820 without leaving a will and had no immediate next of kin. Administrators carried out the initial distribution of her estate, but the scale of wealth she had inherited meant that lots of people started to come out of the woodwork, disputing the actions of her administrators and staking a claim to a share of the estate. The detail of Hannah’s cause deserves a blog post of its own, but what really challenged my preconceptions about Cause Papers were the records I found in this case: 5 detailed family trees, more than 60 “certified” copies of parish register entries and 30 witness testimonies giving vivid descriptions of individuals and events.

Examples of copies of parish register entries and an excerpt from a genealogical chart, TEST.CP.1820/3

With more than 15,000 causes and appeals in the overall collection, I suspected that there could be great potential locked into the records, so I had to find out more. The courts heard causes relating to probate, marriage, immorality, defamation and tithes, and I felt that the probate records could hold details of particular interest to a family historian. And so my project was launched!

I spent time building a high-level view of the entire Cause Paper catalogue, then looked in detail at a selection of testamentary (probate & administration) causes dated between 1733-1858. Here are some of the things I found in the causes I looked at:

A relatively large number of people can be found in the collection. Across the 100 causes I looked at in the catalogue, I found 720 named individuals. Causes most often involved only 2 participants, but some (admittedly exceptional) causes had more than 30 people involved. The average number of participants was 7 people per cause. Looking more broadly, and with 15,000 causes in the full collection, it means that there is the potential to find details for more than 30,000+ individuals (possibly up to 100,000). Although this is not a large number when compared to collections such as parish registers or census records, when considering the relatively humble background of those listed, and the periods covered, this is a significant collection.

The individuals came from a wide range of backgrounds. The occupations of people involved in causes were not just limited to legal or church officials. They also included producers (e.g. agricultural workers), manufacturers (e.g. clothing, food, construction), sellers and dealers, professionals and transport workers. This is great news for family historians, as biographical information about individuals from such a broad range of backgrounds is extremely scarce prior to the 1841 Census.

Occupations found for 50% of the 720 people named in testamentary catalogue sample

Most of the individuals came from Yorkshire. This was not really surprising, but given the complexity of church court jurisdictions (there were 372 active in England & Wales in 1832), it’s useful to know that I found 84% of participants came from Yorkshire (all Ridings). 13% came from elsewhere in the Northern Province (mostly Lancashire, Durham and Nottinghamshire), and 3% came from the Southern Province.

Heat map showing locations of testamentary cause participants

The depositions (witness testimonies) and case exhibits are generally the most useful documents. I looked at 20 causes in great detail and found more than 400 documents, across 1000 images. These documents contain a wide variety of facts and clues, some of which may not be available elsewhere, and this is where I found I could glean most information about a person’s character. Other records such as parish records, family trees, guardianship, debtor/creditor accounts, etc. may open up new lines of enquiry helping break through a brick wall.

Examples of documents in causes: an account of funeral costs from 1779 (TEST.CP.1779/2 p. 2)
and a sample of questions put to witnesses 1820 (TEST.CP.1820/3 p. 106)

The catalogue has a wide range of search terms. Many family historians will be searching for a person by name. Whilst the search allows for a search by name or variant, I’d love to see an enhancement to allow for a phonetic search. During the period of the records, names would have been spoken much more often than written, and given the rich variety of dialects across Yorkshire, a phonetic search would help to track individuals down. The search is not just limited by name. The cataloguing team have indexed a wide variety of terms, all of which can be searched in the advanced search. Places, occupations, dates, roles, sex, status are all indexed (where they appear on the source record), and while I did find a small number of inconsistencies, errors and omissions, this doesn’t in any way diminish the fantastic job the team did in compiling the catalogue.

The quality of online images is excellent. People familiar with attempting to read parish registers from digital versions of grainy, feint microfilm images, will be delighted with the quality of the images in the cause paper collection. I only found a couple of less than perfect images in the 1000 I looked at.

The records are (relatively) easy to read and understand. Armed with a basic understanding of court procedures, and a good reference book, the records were surprisingly easy to follow. The handwriting was generally clear, most records types were easy to identify, and the standard records were consistent in their structure. After 1733, English was the mandatory language, and I also found it used in many pre-1733 records. Those pre-1733 records written in Latin were harder to decode, but they were generally formulaic so once the record type had been identified, I found it possible to pull out keywords.

Having found all of these benefits, I also need to sound a word of caution which will be of no surprise to family history researcher. Always keep in mind the context of the records, don’t just take them at face value. These records were created in adversarial court cases, so there is a risk of bias and this needs to be taken into account before accepting what is written. This is made difficult on some occasions, where a cause did not have a full set of papers, making it harder to reconstruct the case and determine a record’s context. However, understanding the verdict and cross-referencing facts to other sources (e.g. newspaper accounts of proceedings) will help in this area. 

So is it worth the effort? Absolutely it is! The project team which created the online catalogue have created a fabulous, easy to access, free to use resource. Anyone researching a Yorkshire tyke living between 1300 and 1858 should have this on their list to check and may well tap into a rich seam of information that will bring real colour to their research.

The catalogue of York Cause Papers can be found at here, with images (where they are not linked directly through the catalogue) here. 

To get a deeper understanding of the records, the following are invaluable sources of information:

• The Cause Papers Research Guide.
• Tarver, Anne. (1995) Church Court Records: An introduction for family and local historians. Chichester, England: Phillimore.
• Withers, Colin Blanshard. (2006) Yorkshire probate. 1st edition. Bainton, England: Yorkshire Wolds Publication.

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This blog was written by Paul Wainwright, a volunteer at the Borthwick Institute working on the Retreat Letters Project . Paul is a student on the University of Strathclyde's MSc in Genealogical, Palaeographic and Heraldic Studies and a student member of the Register of Qualified Genealogists. 

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.

Revealing the Registers: thoughts of an indexer

Our Marc Fitch Fund Project Archivist, Helen Watt, gives us some thoughts and reflections following the completion of initial work in indexing one of our Archbishops' Registers and attempts to answer and old indexers' question - can you ever really be sure when using a previous index? 

Having worked on the pilot for ‘York's Archbishops’ Registers Revealed’ in 2012, generously funded by the  Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, it is excellent to be able to put the theory devised during that pilot into practice. Thanks to funding from the Marc Fitch Fund, since October 2015, work has been underway on Registers 31 and 32 using the newly-developed indexing tool. This period covers 1576-1650 and includes the tenures of Archbishops Edwin Sandys (1577-1588), John Piers (1589-1594), Matthew Hutton (1595-1606) in Register 31; and the archiepiscopates of Archbishops Samuel Harsnett (1619-1631), Richard Neile (1632-1640) and John Williams (1641-1650) in Register 32. 

Since the examination of Register 31 was completed last month, it is now possible to reflect on the process of indexing a register of the Archbishops of York of this date and, crucially, the kind of material found within it. To put them into some context, none of the registers for this period have been subject to any previous indexing work - unlike their medieval predecessors where various published and indexed versions have been created since the 19th century. 

First of all, the quality of images of the registers produced during the Mellon project is excellent, especially for remote use, The images may also be greatly enlarged, so that even the smallest, faintest penstrokes may be read with ease.

Thanks to the quality of the images, we were able to discern this date as being the 'xvth day of febuarie' (Reg 31 f 76v)

The schema of subject headings compiled during the pilot has been integral to indexing subjects found in register entries, although some amendments have had to be made to cater for the post-reformation matters found in this register, as well as for matters to do with probate and archbishops’ visitations.

When indexing persons, there are two methods of dealing with personal names in the tool, either by inputting details of an individual straight into an entry, or by populating the Persons List with details before indexing. Using the second method, it was possible to draw on the work of several other projects, such as the Clergy of the Church of England Database, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae (via British History Online), the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, particularly for parish and higher clergy, to build up the required information and so streamline input of persons.

Similarly, to speed up the indexing of places, not only could the project draw on lists of places compiled during the Borthwick Institute’s previous work on the Cause Papers, but also automatically harvest place-names from the Digital Exposure of English Place-names (DEEP) and the online Ordnance Survey.

As regards the contents of the register, these have mainly comprised probate of wills and grants of administrations, confirmations of elections of bishops and archbishops’ visitations, and guides to the procedures involved in all of these topics will be made available shortly. Wills copied into the register are mostly those of clergymen and although there is an existing index in the Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series vol. 93 (1937), comparison between this index and the original wills has allowed small errors to be corrected, mostly concerning dates of wills and probate - understandable when you consider the quality of the images we are working with now!

Notification of the Vacancy after the death of Abp Sandys, 1588 

Even though these wills are well-known through that index, the new indexing tool has made it possible for them to be searched and explored online, making them so much more widely accessible and available and opening up their contents for research, so that many aspects of clerical life could now be studied. 

For instance, the pious preambles of wills, often not simply formulaic in nature, but long and involved, together with the titles of books left as bequests, may reflect the doctrinal inclinations and learning of these clergymen. We might also see the clergyman as farmer, and father of his family as well as shepherd of his flock. We can sometimes see far-reaching connections with the Universities, with court, members of London Livery Companies, and relationships with gentry and noble patrons. 

Long preamble in the will of  Ralph Kay, vicar of Topcliffe, 1613

With the commencement of work on Register 32, all these topics and more are bound to be further illuminated, so, as they say, watch this space!

'Who Do You Think You Are? Live!' 16-18 April 2015

Who Do You Think You Are? Live! (or WDYTYA, as it’s known) is the UKs biggest family history event. It’s estimated that over 10,000 visitors come each year to immerse themselves with everything that is on offer. For some, it’s pleasure, for others it’s a serious business. No visit is complete without a bag filled with handy leaflets, freebies and notes. Previously held at London’s Olympia until 2015, the show has been a staple of the family history calendar for some years now.

The show’s move this year to the NEC in Birmingham gave us a unique opportunity to take part. Sadly, for many archive services the costs of attending an event as large as WDYTYA are prohibitively expensive. With the event moving to Birmingham, we were able to team up with East Riding Archives and Local Studies, North Yorkshire County Record Office, West Yorkshire Archive Service and York Explore as the Consortium of Yorkshire Archives alongside and in partnership with the Yorkshire Group of Family History Societies.

The Consortium (as it became known) was able to offer leaflets, guides and general advice from each of the participating services. Staff from the Borthwick, East Riding and York Explore were able to come to the NEC and work on the stand - this would prove to be a fascinating experience, even if it was punishing on the feet!

If you haven’t been to WDYTYA, it’s hard to get a grasp of the size and scale of the show. Held in a vast hall in the NEC complex, it features stands from the major online family history providers; The National Archives, Imperial War Museum and countless local and family history societies, along with a multitude of other providers - anything from plastic wallets to full body massages seemed to be on offer.

Our home for the next three days...

I was able to be at the NEC to set up the stand and for the first two days of the event. Certainly, the setup session was unlike any other family history fair I’d seen - never have I had to dodge forklift trucks before, nor had a carpet hastily laid quite literally under my feet! After displaying our leaflets tastefully on our stand, it was time to go back to the hotel to rest up and prepare for the challenge ahead.

The walk to the hall the next morning was quite something  - note to future attendees, the NEC complex really is quite large. As the speakers boomed out that the show was open I began to get an idea of how busy the show was likely to be. Firstly, eager attendees with maps searching our particular groups they wanted to speak to; followed by others scoping out what was on offer. By 10:30am we were in full flow, a rush of friendly faces, questions and comments that didn’t seem to end until the show closed at 5:30pm

Day one!

The second day followed the same pattern as the first, though what really struck me was the variety of questions on offer. No two people were researching the same places and topics, though it was also fun to hear strangely similar queries - who knew Whitby had so many people wanting to research it? By the end of the three days, well over 1,000 people had visited the Consortium of Yorkshire Archives stand.

Thinking specifically about the Borthwick’s involvement, it was great to be there just to let people know about the amazing array of records we hold that can help them in their research. It was great to be able to highlight collections like our Parish records, Wills collection, and Cause Papers which could really enrich and flesh out the research that attendees were undertaking.

More to the point, it was just great to be able to meet so many people who were excited about the possibilities they could see in using our records, and who were just happy to see us there.

But, at the end of the third day, it was just great to have a sit down!

Next time....?