The Herald’s Visitations of 1530–1684 have been published on a county by county basis by the Harleian Society in over 100 volumes. They have been indexed and can be located at large libraries and record offices. These were inspections undertaken a regular intervals by the heralds to ascertain and verify those who had the right to bear a coat of arms. In order to do so, they had to check the genealogy of those who claimed to bear such arms. Therefore the heralds would amass a number of pedigrees, which include family trees stretching back centuries.

Existing Pedigrees

It is possible that someone may already have researched part of your family tree. Before the late twentieth-century enthusiasm for genealogy, there were previous phases of history in which the pastime was popular, albeit for small sections of society. Many wanted to prove their descent from aristocracy or royalty. The results of their labours have often been deposited in archives and libraries. There are many at the British Library (see www.bl.uk/catalogues/manuscripts.html), the College of Arms and the Society of Genealogists’ Library. Not all were manuscripts, as many have been published in works such as Burke’s and Debrett’s as previously described, but Victoria County History volumes (see Bibliography) sometimes contain pedigrees. Volumes on the descendants of medieval monarchs include The Plantagenet Roll of the Blood Royal (1928), listing 50,000 names and The Royal Bastards of Medieval England (1986).

The temptation is, of course, to try and link these trees to your own and to save yourself a lot of work. However it is essential to check the information provided, as earlier researchers may have erred by optimism. As with every piece of non-primary evidence, use it as a tool, but do not depend on it unquestioningly.

General Points

It is also worth finding out about what was going on around your ancestors in their locality in the past, or in the places that they visited during their lifetime, perhaps as part of their career. There are many local history books available for sale in shops or for loan from libraries, and there are very few places for which there is no published history. These may be great events of national importance or lesser events of local significance. For example if your ancestors lived in the Lancashire towns of Preston, Lancaster or Manchester in November or December 1745, they would probably have witnessed the Jacobite army marching through their streets. There may have been a battle near or in the town or village – St Albans witnessed two in the 1450s. Or on a lesser level, a notable personality may have lived locally; Henry Fielding resided in the Middlesex village of Ealing in 1753–4, for example. Or if your ancestor was in the army or navy, you could check regimental or naval histories to find out which campaigns and battles they were involved in. It is usually very difficult, if not impossible, to know what your ancestor felt or did about these. Speculation is best avoided. However, an awareness of the context of your ancestors’ lives is well worth acquiring.

Published accounts by travellers such as Celia Fiennes in the late seventeenth century, Daniel Defoe in the early eighteenth or Viscount Torrington in the late eighteenth all give firsthand impressions of villages and towns in England in these periods. The latter described Knutsford in Cheshire, thus: ‘a clean, well-built, well-placed town where the cotton trade brings plenty’. On the other hand, he writes scathingly of the dirty town of Cambridge, only relieved by the magnificence of King’s College chapel, whereas Celia Fiennes condemns the smoking of tobacco pipes by women and children in a West Country inn and Defoe praises the tolerance shown to Catholics in Durham.

Histories of the village or town where your ancestor lived should also be consulted. Maps and pictures of the same can often be located in the county or borough record office where your ancestor lived. These should give an additional insight into your ancestor’s life. On a more mundane level, if your ancestor worked on the land, the history might tell which were the major crops or livestock which were farmed there. Genealogy shouldn’t restrict itself to names and dates, but also to the environment that your ancestor lived in – certainly a world far removed from our own.

To recap, check any relevant records for a district for the period that your ancestor resided in it. Even if a reference to the family is not made therein, you will have learnt about the place where they lived and some of the events and people that they may have been influenced by.