The employment of individuals for the public benefit has grown as a phenomenon since the Victorian era, even more so since the development of the Welfare State at the end of the Second World War. Here we will explore the records available for researching the careers of people employed directly by the State and people who devoted their working lives to helping the rest of society, including civil servants, government officials, the police, people employed in the medical professions, schoolteachers and clergymen.
Complete personnel records for civil servants are generally destroyed once the employee reaches 72 years of age, though the Ministry of Defence retains records of their employees until they would have been 100 years old. Those that have been kept will have been transferred to the national archive for the country concerned, that is to say The National Archives in Kew for civil servants in England and Wales, the National Archives of Scotland for Scottish civil servants and the National Archives of Ireland and Public Record Office of Northern Ireland for Irish civil servants and government employees.
‘Being government employees means that public sector workers leave behind a lot of evidence in the archives.’
The National Archives at Kew holds some records for famous or high-ranking civil servants in series CSC 11, as well as some records of ordinary staff who worked for HM Treasury between 1891 and 1976, kept in T 268. The National Archives’ research guide, Domestic Records Information 117: ‘Civil Servants Personnel Records’, suggests more documents where random files on civil servants might be found and where the names of female employees might be located, though the latter are very limited owing to the ban on married women working prior to the Second World War. It is often necessary to have an idea of the department and sometimes the division your ancestor worked in, as well as a rough timescale. Individuals are named in files that have a very general description in the catalogue, so you will need to order general files relevant to the timescale and department you are looking for to search for any names. You will have more luck if your ancestor was a high-ranking civil servant; these individuals are listed in the British Imperial Kalendar from 1809 to 1972, when it became the Civil Service Year Book. Civil servants who enjoyed high-ranking positions in the overseas service can be found listed in the Foreign Office List. The National Archives’ research guide contains a list of similar publications for a number of specific government departments.
You may have more luck if your ancestor served in an official position between the sixteenth and nineteenth century, when many individuals were required to swear an oath of allegiance to the Crown, as indeed were many lawyers. The resulting rolls are scattered across a number of different places – oaths sworn before Justices of the Peace will be found in Quarter Session returns, whilst records of lawyers sworn before the various Crown Courts will be at The National Archives. Further information can be found on The National Archives website.
The Society of Genealogists is currently indexing records formerly contained in the Civil Service Commission: Evidences of Age file at The National Archives in series CSC 1. This comprises birth and baptism certificates of civil service applicants. Contact the Society of Genealogists at www.sog.org.uk to find out more. Copies of civil service staff directories can be found at major archives and libraries, containing limited information on the majority of civil servants, such as their appointments, how much they were paid and where they worked.
The post of customs officer is of ancient importance in the UK because of the islands’ dependence on international trade. The National Archives in Kew and the National Archives of Scotland hold records for customs staff as detailed in The National Archives’ research guide Domestic Records Information 38: ‘Customs and Excise Officials and Tax Collectors’. The NAS has a research guide to its customs and excise records at www.nas.gov.uk/guides/customs.asp. Family Histories in Scottish Customs Records by Frances Wilkins is an interesting read for anyone with Scottish ancestors in the customs and excise profession. These records are covered fully in Chapter 14.
Although John Hurt was fascinated by the family legend that – somehow – he was related to the Marquess of Sligo, proving it was a much harder matter. Along the way, he had come across his great-grandmother Emma Stafford, believing her to be the elusive connection; but by talking to his cousin, John discovered that the link possibly lay through Emma’s husband Walter Lord Browne and his family. By investigating details surrounding their marriage, John discovered a notice in the local paper announcing the impending wedding that claimed Walter’s father, William Richard Browne, was the head of the Bond Office in London.
This information was fairly specific, and by researching what the Bond Office actually was, John was able to pinpoint William’s career as a civil servant in the Customs Office, a major national institution which incorporated the work of checking and issuing bonds for vessels unloading goods cargo in London. Records of employment for customs officers survive in The National Archives, where John was able to trace William Richard Browne’s career. He was somewhat surprised to learn that, instead of being listed as the head of the Bond Office – an important, prestigious and well-paid job – he was actually only a clerk, still enjoying an annual salary but by no means as lucrative a position.
Indeed, further investigations at The National Archives revealed that he had run into financial difficulties and, as a result, been declared bankrupt. His customs office pension was used to pay off his creditors and he ended up in court and, eventually, debtors’ prison. Having consulted material at the modern Customs House, John gained a greater understanding of the work William Browne would have undertaken before his fall from grace.
One of the first professional, trained police forces was Sir Robert Peel’s Metropolitan Police Force of London, established on 29 September 1829, prior to which time London was policed by the Bow Street Foot and Horse Patrols and by parish constables, responsible for law and order in the provinces. There is a service register covering 1821 to 1829 for the Bow Street Foot and Horse Patrols at The National Archives in MEPO 4/508.
Local police forces were required to be set up in boroughs and counties under a similar system to the Metropolitan Police Force from 1856 in England and Wales, and from 1857 in Scotland, though some areas had been building a police force since the 1830s. There have been hundreds of police forces since the mid-nineteenth century, many of which have since merged, but there is no central police archive for all their records. Some police force records will be found at the local county record office while other forces have kept their own archives, such as that of the Metropolitan Police Force. Police records generally comprise attestation papers and personnel books or registers listing policemen’s names, ages, dates and places of birth and notes about their career.
The National Archives holds personnel records for the Metropolitan Police from 1829 up until around 1933 in series MEPO, described in more detail in the research guide Domestic Records Information 52: ‘Metropolitan Police (London): Records of Service’. Any research enquiries for records of the Metropolitan Police Force not held at The National Archives should be sent to:
The Metropolitan Police Archive Service,
Wellington House,
57/73 Buckingham Gate,
London SW1E 6BE
Metropolitan Police Archive
Disciplinary books can be extremely interesting too, as the actor Jeremy Irons found out. Jeremy’s great-great-grandfather Thomas Irons was a policeman with the Met, and a visit to the Metropolitan Police Archive uncovered records of Thomas joining the force in 1828, making him one of the first Peelers, but he was dismissed in disgrace in 1834 for being drunk and disorderly. Thomas went on to join the controversial Chartist movement and spent time in Newgate prison.
The Metropolitan Police has some interesting pages about its history on the website www.met.police.uk/history.
Additional information may be found about policemen in local newspaper reports on crime investigations, court cases and inquests, and in the Police Gazette, published from 1828, or in The Police Service Advertiser published between 1866 and 1959. The Police Historical Society published A Guide to the Archives of the Police Forces of England and Wales by Ian Bridgeman and Clive Emsley in 1994, and My Ancestor Was a Policeman by Antony Shearman (published by the Society of Genealogists) comprises a short history of the police in Britain, the type of records available and a comprehensive directory of the sources of British police force records.
The London Metropolitan Archives holds detailed records for the City of London Police from 1832, which are described on the Access to Archives database.
The Irish Constabulary was created as a national armed police force in 1822 and groups of part-time policemen were amalgamated to form the newly reorganized Irish Constabulary in 1836, known as the Royal Irish Constabulary from 1867. The Royal Irish Constabulary was disbanded in 1922 and The National Archives at Kew retains the records of around 84,000 men who saw service with the force between 1822 and 1922 in series HO 184, as described in the research guide Domestic Records Information 54: ‘Royal Irish Constabulary Records’. Duplicates of Royal Irish Constabulary records can be found on microfilm at the National Archives of Ireland and in LDS Family History Centres.
Jim Herlihy has written The Royal Irish Constabulary: A short history and genealogical guide with a select list of medal awards and casualties, containing brief biographies of around 3,000 Irish policemen, as well as The Royal Irish Constabulary: A complete alphabetical list of officers and men 1816–1922.
The Ulster Historical Foundation has an online database of men who retired from the Irish Constabulary between 1836 and 1844 and a list of Irish Constabulary Sub-Inspectors in 1860 among its occupational databases at www.ancestryireland.com. Police Casualties in Ireland 1919–1922 by Richard Abbott contains the names and biographical details of men in the police force who died in Ireland during this period.
Records of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, formed in 1786, are held at the National Archives of Ireland and Herlihy has also written The Dublin Metropolitan Police: A short history and genealogical guide, as well as The Dublin Metropolitan Police: A complete alphabetical list of officers and men 1836–1925.
The medical profession covers a wide range of roles, from apothecaries, chemists, druggists, pharmacists and physicians who administered remedies to surgeons, doctors, nurses, midwives and dentists who treated and cared for patients. For a general guide to medical records useful to genealogists read Susan Bourne and Andrew H. Chicken’s 1994 publication, Records of the Medical Professions: A practical guide for the family historian. Most of the secondary sources, indexes and reference books mentioned in this section can be found in the Wellcome Historical Medical Library and any of the national libraries for England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The Wellcome Trust was established in 1936 with money left in the will of the pharmaceutical businessman Sir Henry Wellcome who had dreamed of creating a Museum of Man illustrating the medical past of mankind. The Trust’s mission is to promote medical research and as such it has a fantastic library stocked full of books, manuscripts, archives, films and pictures on the history of medicine since the earliest times. You can search the Wellcome Library’s collections online at http://library.wellcome.ac.uk.
A Medical Archives and Manuscripts Survey (MAMS) was carried out for more than 100 repositories in Greater London to establish the types of records they hold concerning the history of medicine between 1600 and 1945. The results of this survey can be located on the Wellcome Library website, giving descriptions of the archives of the General Medical Council, the Medical Society of London, the National Institute of Medical Research, the Royal College of Surgeons, the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of Midwives, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Royal National Pension Fund for Nurses, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, the Royal Society of Medicine and plenty of smaller institutions across the capital. The reports for each archive are found under the ‘Databases’ section of the ‘Electronic resources’ page on the website. You may want to contact some of these institutions if they cover your ancestor’s occupation to seek their advice about your research.
If you manage to trace several generations of ancestors in the medical profession going further back in time, then The Medical Practitioners in Medieval England: A Biographical Register written by Eugene Ashby Hammond and Charles Hugh Talbot may be of use. The biographical register includes physicians and surgeons from England, Wales and Scotland, but very few from Ireland. The biographical detail has been taken from parliamentary rolls, the infirmarer’s rolls of Westminster Abbey, charter witness lists, lay subsidy rolls, chancery and exchequer records, household accounts and many more sources.
In 1985 Wallis, Wallis, Whittet and Burnby compiled a register containing around 70,000 entries for Eighteenth Century Medics (subscriptions, licences, apprencticeships), on behalf of the Project for Historical Biobibliography, covering a wide range of medical professions. It is a huge volume consisting of an alphabetical index of individuals compiled from The National Archives’ apprenticeship records, subscriptions to the publication of medical treatises, alumni of UK medical schools, some membership lists of the medical Royal Colleges and a variety of other sources. Hard copies of the register can be consulted at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, the Pharmaceutical Society, the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of Surgeons, the Science Museum, the British Library, the National Library of Ireland, the National Library of Scotland, The National Archives at Kew and the Society of Genealogists, as well as at a select number of universities and regional libraries.
Guides to researching nursing ancestors are on The National Archives website under various subject headings, including Domestic Records Information 79: ‘Civilian Nurses and Nursing Services’; Military Records Information 55: ‘British Army: Nurses and Nursing Services’ (see also Chapter 9); Military Records Information 57: ‘Royal Air Force: Nurses and Nursing Services’ (see also Chapter 12); Military Records Information 56: ‘Royal Navy: Nurses and Nursing Services’ (see also Chapter 10). If you know the name of a hospital your ancestor worked at the records of that hospital might be located using The National Archives’ HOSPREC database at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ hospitalrecords. The Royal College of Nursing Archives has a website at www.rcn.org.uk/development/library/archives describing their historical collections, which are open to the public and contain valuable material donated by nurses and their families.
The Central Midwives Board for England and Wales was established after the Midwives Act of 1902. The Board’s main function was to set up The Midwives Roll of certified midwives, which it published from 1904 until the 1980s. The Obstetrical Society of London had printed a Midwife’s Roll dating back to 1872 containing the names of skilled midwives. The Central Midwives Board for Scotland was created by the Midwives (Scotland) Act of 1915 and has published The Midwives Roll for Scotland 1917–1968. Information about early midwives can be found in Joan E. Grundy’s book History’s Midwives: Including a 17th Century and 18th Century Yorkshire Midwives Nominations Index.
Lambeth Palace Library holds a directory of medical licences issued by the Archbishops of Canterbury between 1535 and 1775, which can be searched online at www.lambethpalacelibrary.org/files/medical_licenses.pdf by place name or by surname. Guildhall Library holds some records for apothecaries (most of which are due to be transferred to Apothecaries’ Hall – see below) as well as some records for surgeons, physicians and other medical practitioners. An online guide to sources for tracing these occupations both at the Guildhall and elsewhere can be found at www.history.ac.uk/ gh/apoths.htm. The Guildhall holds membership and apprentice records for Barber-Surgeons who were members of the Barbers’ Company of London from 1522 to the nineteenth century, and ecclesiastical licences for physicians, surgeons and midwives granted by the Bishop of London, and the Dean and Chapter of St Paul’s Cathedral.
Apothecaries used to form part of the Grocers’ Company, until in 1617 they separated to form the Society of Apothecaries, a Livery Company of the City of London (still in existence today). Apothecaries were an early form of chemist, keeping an open shop where they would give medical advice to customers and sell medicine to those who could not afford to visit a physician. In the eighteenth century apothecaries became either general practitioners or trading apothecaries who dispensed medicine. In 1775 the latter type of apothecary ceased becoming liverymen of the Society of Apothecaries.
Access to the archives at Apothecaries’ Hall in Blackfriars Lane, London EC4V 6EJ can be arranged by writing to the archivist specifying what you are looking for. The Society of Genealogists has a microfilm copy of A list of persons who have obtained certificates of fitness and qualification to practise as apothecaries from August 1, 1815 to July 31, 1840. The National Library of Ireland holds material about apothecaries based there, including a list of admissions to the guilds of Dublin, 1792 to 1837, and records of Apothecaries’ Hall, Dublin, for 1747 to 1833.
Apothecaries
Natasha Kaplinsky was astonished to discover that a fifth-generation great-grandfather on her mother’s side, Benjamin Charlewood, was apothecary to the households of both George II and his son George III, the famously ‘Mad King’ who suffered from porphyria towards the end of his reign. The Worshipful Society of Apothecaries was able to reveal to Natasha that Benjamin became a master of the society in 1760, and although he died before George III’s first bout of illness, his apprentices may have helped to treat the King.
Chemists, who made their medicine from chemicals, and druggists who made their drugs from animal and vegetable products, were separate entities to the apothecaries, until the three merged into the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain in 1841. A comprehensive guide for records relating to these professions is The Pharmaceutical Industry: A Guide to Historical Records by Lesley Richmond, Julie Stevenson and Alison Turton. A register of chemists and druggists, including students, was established in 1852, requiring those on the register to have passed an examination. From 1868 a higher qualification of pharmaceutical chemist could also be obtained. The Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain has published annual copies of The Register of Pharmaceutical Chemists, Chemists and Druggists. W. A. Jackson’s book The Victorian Chemist and Druggist gives an illustrated insight into how Victorian chemist and drug stores worked, describing what they looked like, the types of medicines typically dispensed, how they were made and the containers and instruments used. Bryony Hudson wrote an article on ‘Tracing People and Premises in Pharmacy’ in 2005 that can be found in Genealogists’ Magazine, vol. 28, no. 6 (2005), pp. 242–6.
Prior to the Dentists Act of 1878 dentistry was almost completely unregulated. The Act called for a Dentists Register to be published annually, which became the duty of the General Council of Medical Education and Registration of the United Kingdom, after which it was published by the Dental Board of the United Kingdom. Registers of dental students were also made. The Dental Board of Ireland published its own Dental Register from the early twentieth century. Invariably the registers for each year are arranged alphabetically by surname and list details such as the dentist’s address, their date of registration and a description of their qualifications. John Menzies Campbell was a dental historian who wrote many publications on the subject since the mid-twentieth century, and for those researching a Scottish dentist the History of Dentistry Research Group may be able to give guidance on the records available.
Researchers looking for evidence of ancestors working as physicians should consult The Roll of the Royal College of Physicians of London; comprising biographical sketches of all the eminent physicians … 1518 to 1825 compiled in three volumes by William Munk and known as Munk’s Roll. A further four volumes of Munk’s Roll, compiled in the latter half of the twentieth century covering the years from 1826 to 1983, were written by George Hamilton Brown, Richard R. Trail and Gordon Wolstenholme under the title Lives of the Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians of London. Munk’s Roll covers entries since the founding of the Royal College of Physicians in 1518. People researching early physicians may also find helpful John H. Raach’s A Directory of English County Physicians 1603–1643.
Medical Directories have been published annually since 1845, and from 1866 onwards they contain the names of dentists as well as medical practitioners. The directories contain notes about dates of qualification, the types of qualifications obtained and any posts held in hospitals and the armed services. The General Council of Medicine has also published an annual list of qualified practitioners in The Medical Register since 1859. Both publications cover the whole of the British Isles and are available at the national libraries, the Wellcome Library, Guildhall Library and other major reference libraries.
Information about the careers of medical practitioners who were university graduates may be found in published university membership lists. The University of Edinburgh published List of Graduates in Medicine 1705–1866 listing the names of graduates, when they graduated, the qualification they received and their specialism. The Royal College of General Practitioners has an online guide to ‘Tracing Your Medical Ancestors’ under the archives section of their website at www.rcgp.org.uk, and Alex Glendinning’s article ‘Was Your Ancestor a Doctor?’ can be found online at http://user.itl.net/ ~glen/doctors.html.
Early schools were set up and run by religious institutions, philanthropic and charitable organizations, principally for the benefit of the poor who could not afford to pay for their children to be educated by a governess or private schoolmaster. In 1603 schoolteachers were required to be licensed by bishops, and issues of such licences can be found in county record offices among Act books in the diocesan records. Unlicensed teachers could be prosecuted in the church courts. In England and Wales, Parliament began granting annual sums of money to help charities set up schools from 1833, namely the National Society, which was Anglican, and the British and Foreign School Society. Records of these may survive at the local record office, as might records of very small schools run by private individuals from their homes. A search of the Access to Archives database should uncover their whereabouts; if not, contact the record office local to where the school was based.
In England and Wales a pupil-teacher system was established from 1846 to train bright pupils up as teachers for three years at their elementary school where the headmaster would supervise them. At the age of 18 they needed to pass a King’s/Queen’s Scholarship Examination, later known as the Preliminary Examination for the Certificate. Those who passed the exam could then attend a training college for a further couple of years, usually a residential college set up by the Church of England and run by voluntary organizations.
• Records of teacher training colleges can be found at The National Archives dating back to the 1840s in series ED 17, ED 103 and ED 40, though the involvement of central government in teaching has largely been related to matters of supply, qualification and conduct, so many of the ED files relate to general business such as building applications rather than students.
In 1870 an Elementary Education Act was passed that required pupil-teachers to be trained at pupil-teacher centres instead of at the school in which they were taught.
• Some pupil-teacher centre files have survived for the period 1884 to 1911 and those are kept at The National Archives among records of the Department of Education and Science in series ED 57. A detailed memorandum about the pupil-teacher system written in 1902 can be found in ED 24/76.
This system flourished for the last two decades of the Victorian period, until the Education Act of 1902 set up the first national system of secondary school education under which many pupil-teacher centres turned into secondary schools. In 1902 Local Education Authorities (LEAs) were established with powers to train pupil-teachers at secondary schools that were emerging as a new form of higher education. From 1907 the pupil-teacher system was replaced with one that saw pupils who intended to become teachers studying at school until the age of 17 or 18 and then either acting as a student teacher at a public elementary school or attending a teacher training college.
• There are LEA files at The National Archives in ED 67 concerning the supply of teachers with some staff returns of teachers and students training in colleges, mainly for the period 1912 to 1915.
• From 1904 municipal training colleges were set up to replace the ones run by voluntary societies. Records for training colleges run by the LEAs are in ED 87 and ED 86, while ED 78 contains files relating to LEA colleges, those run by voluntary bodies and university colleges providing courses for teachers. Few records about staff will be located in those series, but the reports filed by HM Inspectorate concerning the premises, staff and curricula at training colleges in ED 115 may be of interest.
• Universities first began running teacher training courses in 1890, but in 1911 a four-year course was introduced with the final year devoted to teacher training. Information on university teacher training courses is in ED 81 and ED 119.
‘Teachers had to be licensed, and evidence will be found among
From 1926 teachers who trained in any type of training college needed to sit a final examination, which qualified students for certified recognition as teachers, conducted by the Joint Examination Boards and HM Inspectorate.
In 1943 there was concern about how the nation would meet the demands of post-war teaching, and a need for more teachers was recognized. Secondary school education was reorganized by the Education Act of 1944. Fifty-five emergency teacher-training colleges had been set up by 1947 and representative files have been kept for one college in Alnwick, Northumberland, in ED 143/33–34 and for Borthwick Training College for Women in London in series ED 143/35–36.
The National Archives has a number of research guides on the website under the subject heading ‘Education’ detailing the records they hold concerning teachers and schools, including:
• Domestic Records Information 67: ‘Education: Elementary (Primary) Schools’
• Domestic Records Information 127: ‘Education: Inspectorate and HMI Reports’
• Domestic Records Information 65: ‘Education: Secondary Schools’
• Domestic Records Information 119: ‘Sources for the History of Education’
• Domestic Records Information 23: ‘Education: Records of Special Services’
• Domestic Records Information 63: ‘Education: Records of Teachers’
• Domestic Records Information 24: ‘Education: Technical and Further Education’
The Education Act of 1899 put in place a register of teachers, but the National Union of Teachers protested at the manner in which the register was kept and so it was withdrawn in 1907. The Teachers’ Registration Council, which had been responsible for compiling the register, was re-formed in 1912 and recommenced compiling voluntary registration lists of teachers in alphabetical order. The Council was disbanded in 1948, at which point registration ceased, but the British Origins website has digital copies of registers from 1914 to 1947 with details of teachers who began their career as early as the 1870s, at www.originsnetwork.com. The registers provide details of around 10,000 people who taught in England and Wales, giving names and maiden names in the cases of married women, dates of registration, register numbers, addresses, and details of attainments, training in teaching and their experience, listing the schools they had worked at. There is a note to say whether the teacher was retired or had died. Two of the 162 original volumes are missing, so all names starting A to ALD are absent and a small percentage of names starting ALE to BL are not there either.
In Scotland local parish authorities or burghs ran schools for centuries, and the records of these are likely to be at the local record office. An introduction to early education in Scotland can be found in James Craigie’s A Bibliography of Scottish Education before 1872 (Scottish Council for Research in Education, 1984) and thereafter the chapter on schools in Cecil Sinclair’s Tracing Scottish Local History is worth consulting. The Education (Scotland) Act of 1872 made formal education accessible to all children, supplying local school boards with sufficient funding to open new schools and train more teachers. Older records of local authority schools are usually deposited with the county archive, though some schools have retained their records. The National Archives of Scotland has records for some schools and reports by inspectors. A research guide to education records at the NAS is online at www.nas.gov.uk/guides/education.asp.
The National Library of Ireland holds the Irish Education Enquiry, 1826, 2nd Report, listing all the parochial schools in Ireland in 1824 including the names and details of teachers, and Dingfelder’s Schoolmasters and Mistresses in Ireland contains an index to the report. The Ulster Historical Foundation has compiled a database of those teachers and schools listed in Antrim, Armagh, Cavan, Donegal and Fermanagh in 1826–7, which can be found among the occupations databases at www.ancestryireland.com. The National Archives of Ireland holds records for National Schools set up in Ireland from 1831 onwards, and has produced a research guide describing their holdings at www.nationalarchives.ie/topics/Nat_Schools/natschs.html. Of particular interest are the registers for each school dating from 1832 until 1963 and salary books from 1834 to 1918. The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland has corresponding files for National Schools set up in Ulster Province and has also produced an online leaflet for tracing national school records – leaflet number 5 in the Local History Series.
Like most other professions, clergymen can be found listed in specialist directories published from the nineteenth century onwards, which are widely available in major reference libraries and give details such as the clergyman’s benefice, any positions previously held and his education. Since 1858 Crockford’s Clerical Directory has published biographical information about clergymen of the Church of England, the Church of Wales, the Episcopal Church of Scotland and, until 1985, the Church of Ireland. It was originally an annual publication but later was published every few years. The Clerical Guide published details of clergymen from 1819, and Cox’s Clergy List was published from 1841.
The biographies of around 41,000 senior clergymen between 1066 and 1857 were published in the 1857 edition of Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae written by T. D. Hardy in continuation of John Le Neve’s 1715 work. This work has been released in several volumes many times since, most recently edited by Joyce M. Horn who between the 1960s and recent years has had the volumes republished by dioceses. The Society of Genealogists holds the Fawcett card index of clergymen, providing references to sources where they are mentioned, including university registers, parish records, Gentleman’s Magazine, Musgrave’s Obituary and probate records. The Arts and Humanities Research Council is funding the compilation of The Clergy of the Church of England Database, a biographical register of all clergymen between 1540 and 1835, though the careers of men on the database may extend past 1835. This is an on-going project that can be found online at www.theclergydatabase.org.uk.
Suggestions for further reading:
• My Ancestor Was a Policeman: How Can I Find out More about Him? by Antony Shearman (Society of Genealogists, 2000)
• Records of the Medical Professions: A practical guide for the family historian by Susan Bourne and Andrew H. Chicken (S. Bourne and A. H. Chicken, 1994)
• A Bibliography of Scottish Education before 1872 by Jaimie Craigie (Scottish Council for Research in Education, 1984)
• My Ancestor Was an Anglican Clergyman by Peter Towey (Society of Genealogists Enterprises Ltd, 2006)
From the thirteenth century bishops’ registers record the ordination of deacons and priests and any subsequent appointments. Until the eighteenth century the documents are usually written in Latin. They can be found among diocesan records in county record offices. If your ancestor worked in the diocese of London then records about him should be found at the Guildhall Library, which has produced an online research guide for tracing clergymen at www.history.ac.uk/gh/ clergy.htm. Prior to the mid-nineteenth century most clergymen studied at Oxford or Cambridge University, after which time theological colleges were set up to train them, so records of these may mention your ancestor.
Information about the daily toil of parish clergy can be gleaned from reading the parish records of the church from the time they worked there, such as vestry meeting minutes and parish registers signed by them. Clergymen were one of the many groups of society who were required to take an oath of allegiance to the Crown and Church of England from the late seventeenth century until the nineteenth century. The Common Pleas series at The National Archives contains Rolls of Oaths of Allegiance for clergymen between 1789 and 1836 arranged chronologically in CP 37, which can be searched in addition to the other Oath Roll series already mentioned.
Lambeth Palace Library, where records of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s peculiar courts and jurisdictions are held, has produced an online research guide to tracing clergymen at www.lambethpalacelibrary.org/search/node/clergy, with tips for everyone researching clergy heritage back to the seventeenth century. For an in-depth guide to tracing Anglican clergymen read the Society of Genealogists’ My Ancestor Was an Anglican Clergyman by Peter Towey.