The lives of the ‘plain English folk’ depicted in the records of Quarter Sessions and Assizes, ‘are the fountain from which the crowd of Shakespeare’s characters is derived. Every one of his squires, constables, serving men, labourers, clowns, drunkards, and other picturesque villains have their real prototypes’ in the pages of these records.1 If history is about people, then anyone aspiring to study the history of ordinary English people needs to consult the Quarter Sessions order books, sessions rolls and other archives preserved in county record offices.
Many people who use these offices do not realise that their original purpose was to preserve the records of Quarter Sessions. Nor do they appreciate the extent of those records, the diverse information that can be found in them and the possibilities for research that they present. The aim of this book is primarily to provide a detailed handbook to English and Welsh Quarter Sessions records, to describe the background to the various different record series and to suggest how they might be used. The duties of Lord Lieutenants, Sheriffs, Assize judges and other county officers were intimately linked with Quarter Sessions, and their records will also be discussed (see Chapters 1, 2, 11 and 12).
England was divided into shires, as the Anglo-Saxons called them, at an early date. The Normans called them counties. For administrative purposes, they were divided up into Hundreds (Wapentakes in the North, Rapes in Sussex, Lathes in Kent), which had their own officers. Hundreds consisted of a number of parishes, which also had their own officers. These were the areas over which Quarter Sessions and related authorities exercised their jurisdictions. In Wales, the shires were not created until 1536.
English Quarter Sessions began in the fourteenth century. Their archives do not generally survive before the sixteenth century, although some fourteenth-century records are in The National Archives. Most of the information in this book relates to the period between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries. The administrative functions of Quarter Sessions ended in 1888, when County Councils were created. The records of County Councils and other post-1888 local government institutions will not be dealt with here. Nor will the post-1888 judicial functions of Quarter Sessions, which continued to be exercised for almost another century. The Justice of the Peace, of course, continues to adjudicate today.
Justices of the Peace were also intimately linked with parish officers. The records of parish government have already been described in my Tracing Your Ancestors’ Parish Records: A Guide for Family and Local Historians (Pen & Sword, 2015), which should be read alongside the present volume.
This book also deals with the records of some other pre-1888 institutions of local government, such as turnpike trusts and commissioners for sewers. However, separate books would be needed to review the records of boroughs, and of Poor Law Unions. Many boroughs had their own Quarter Sessions and Justices of the Peace. Their activities were partially governed by borough charters, and will not be dealt with here.2 Nor will the various liberties – such as Havering at Bower (Essex), the Isle of Ely (Cambridgeshire) and the Hundred of Launditch (Norfolk) – which were exempt from the jurisdiction of county Quarter Sessions. The activities of Justices and other county officers in collecting national taxation will not be discussed in detail.
Before 1732, many records are in Latin. It is not, however, always good Latin; the scribes of the Restoration order book in Surrey demonstrated their unfamiliarity with the language by making many corrections and re-corrections. Fortunately for them, they were able to write the majority of the text in English. The Latin used in old documents is frequently repetitive; much useful phraseology is translated in Brooke Westcott’s Making Sense of Latin Documents for Family & Local Historians (Family History Press, 2014). For a useful introduction to Latin, see Denis Stuart’s Latin for Local and Family Historians: A Beginner’s Guide (Phillimore, 1995).
I have drawn heavily on the catalogues of county record offices, and of The National Archives, both printed and online. A great deal of information has been found on the Discovery database http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk. Online catalogues of record offices generally give more up-to-date information than their printed versions, many of which date back decades. Although the latter still give valuable overviews, and much useful general information, recourse has to be made to the internet for detailed information.
A number of sources discussed here have been digitized, transcribed, or abstracted, and are available on the internet, sometimes on pay-to-view sites. Many transcripts and abstracts of particular sources have been published by local record societies and others. These are very useful to researchers; quite apart from the intrinsic interest of the documents themselves, they frequently include detailed introductions which place the documents in their context, and explain how and why they came into being. Record society publications are listed at http://royalhistsoc.org/publications/national-regional-history.
The lists of further reading given in each chapter are not intended as full bibliographies, but merely indications of works that I have found useful. Much more can be found by searching library catalogues and the internet. Note too that many of the older works mentioned here have been digitized, and are available on websites such as www.archive.org and www.hathitrust.org.
My major debt in writing this book is to the many archivists who have catalogued and described their holdings, and to the many editors who have prepared record society volumes. There have been fewer general studies of county government, but I am indebted to those that have been written. They are cited at appropriate points in my text. Drafts of this book were read by Simon Fowler and by one of my Pharos students who wishes to remain anonymous; both made useful comments and saved me from errors. Those that remain are of course my responsibility. Please let me know if you find any.