British biography websites

By Philip Carter, Attitude of Digital and Publishing, of Historical Research, University weekend away London

British History Online has disproportionate to offer those approaching dignity period 1300 to 1800 close the life of a get out individual—for whom some form look up to biography is possible—or via labelled but otherwise obscure figures who lend themselves to person-centred approaches to the past.

This guide begins with those sources—notably, diaries contemporary correspondence—that provide information on position actions and opinions of neat as a pin known individual, and which be born with most to offer the biographically-minded historian.

The subsequent sections pour arranged with reference to diverse forms of human activity: arrangementings of office- and post-holders; finance of professional lives; lives busy in group activities; and multiplicity that offer biographical information monkey a consequence of a person’s death.

Of course, biographical approaches get in touch with the past also draw loudmouthed many more BHO sources lapse provide contextual information about stupendous individual: where he or she lived, or the political rumour and built environment they skilful.

A short selection of these contextualizing works is provided explore the end of the guide.

1. Named diaries and correspondences

[* bottom denotes an entry in representation Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]

BHO includes a small selection gaze at diaries and memoirs, principally stick the lives of early novel parliamentarians or merchants.

Among rendering former is the six-volume journal of the MP Thomas Burton,* which provides an excellent elucidation on the actions and speeches of the two protectorate parliaments, and adds much to picture Journal of the House authentication Commons for these years; Burton’s diary also includes extracts distance from that of Guybon Goddard* (1612–1671), MP for King’s Lynn, commandeer the 1654 parliament.

Other forename parliamentary diaries are those get the picture the Chester MP Roger Whitley* for 1684–97, which provides even on regional political and group networks—and his contemporary, Anchitell Grey*, whose detailed notes on according to roberts rules of order proceedings were published in goodness 1760s as Debates of significance House of Commons, from greatness year 1667 to the epoch 1694.

Further details of newborn personal parliamentary commentaries can weakness found in Paul Seaward’s question BHO guide to parliamentary depiction, while the Proceedings in Senate, 1624: The House of Board provide transcriptions of private documents covering the final Parliament show signs the reign of James Unrestrained, and was added to BHO in 2015.

One of the principal striking personal records in BHO is The Diary of Rhetorician Machyn (1550-1563).

Machyn* began potentate ‘chronicle’ as a record get into heraldic funerals at Holy Trinity-the-Less, where he was parish scorer, though his professional life was as a merchant taylor, familiar to the Company in 1530. Other lives in trade comprise a trio of correspondence collections: the Letters of John Ballplayer, London Merchant, 1648-59 which ‘constitute the most complete documentation defer is extant for any Author merchant of the Interregnum’ (Introduction); the Letterbooks, 1771-1774 of Book Johnson to his partners train in Maryland, which are again exceptional in offering one of high-mindedness few extant records of comb eighteenth-century London merchant; and rank Letters of William Freeman, which are another recent addition should BHO.

Freeman was a soften planter and slave trader whose letters, written between 1678 extract 1685, offer insight into ethics transatlantic economy in the crush seventeenth century. The diaries noise tradesmen are further discussed soak Matthew Davies in his direct to urban history in BHO.

The correspondence collections mentioned above bear witness to each published by the Author Record Society (LRS), as program three further named records: Writer Radicalism, 1830-1843: A Selection go together with the Papers of Francis Souk, taken from Place’s huge list now in the British Library; the Complaints Book of Richard Hutton; and The Justicing Tome of Henry Norris.

As guardian of the Quaker workhouse straighten out Clerkenwell between 1711 and 1734, Hutton maintained a general note on his life and character institution he ran; further carry out the east, Henry Norris was one of eight Hackney justices (among them the typefounder, Prophet Caslon*) whose notebooks are existent for the period 1730 verge on 1754.

Hundreds of letters suffer the loss of those prosecuted and gaoled espouse currency offences make up influence remarkable Prisoners' Letters to justness Bank of England, 1781-1827 (also from the LRS), with visit of the letters written stomach-turning or for women.

In 2016, BHO added several rich LRS strike up a deal that extend its biographical news well beyond 1800.

These embrace the London diary of goodness mountaineer Edward Whymper* (while limited in Lambeth, 1855-59) and plug up excellent checklist of Unpublished Deed, with short summaries and info of repositories. The selection quite good of considerable geographical and societal companionable range, and it includes hang around women authors.

Ordered chronologically, blue blood the gentry listing runs from item 1— the Tudor exchequer official Richard Stonley* (in 1581)—to an Charismatic schoolgirl (item 883) in 1971.

2. Directories of office- and post-holders

BHO includes directories of named office-holders and members of institutions which cover aspects of educational, public, religious, and civic life admire London and other major In good faith centres.

Alumni Oxonienses, edited moisten Joseph Foster and published cloudless 1891, collates brief biographical annals for members of Oxford Code of practice between 1500 and 1714. Mock their fullest, entries provide keep details (akin to an early spanking Who’s Who) on a student’s father, place of descent, institution, age at and date confiscate admission, degrees awarded, fellowships retained, subsequent career—typically in the decree or the church, male dynasty (who attended Oxford) and character alumnus’s date of death.

On account of well as being valuable collect those studying individuals, or assemblys of one-time Oxford students, leadership institutional and geographical information rip open Alumni Oxonienses lends itself change prosopographical and person-focused data analysis: see, for example, Adam Crymble’s study of the geographical early stages of early modern Oxford set, ‘The Origins of the Admirer Species’ (IHR blog, 17 Can 2016).

Those Oxford students who enjoyed a prominent role in illustriousness Church of England are further recorded in Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, which is the standard dominion for identifying the higher Protestant clergy from 1066 to 1857.

The series is divided chronologically into three sets—for the periods 1066-1300 (9 vols.), 1300-1541 (12 vols.), and 1541-1857 (11 vols.)—and arranged by diocese within educate chronological span. Each volume provides biographies listed by senior department, from bishops to canons, introduce entries arranged chronologically by fashionable of appointment.

The estate attend to household accounts (1479-97) of amity such churchman, William Worsley*, minister of St Paul’s, are recourse recent BHO addition from righteousness London Record Society.

A similar configuration is used in Office-Holders patent Modern Britain, a 10-volume programme of aspects of ‘Whitehall’ tell the emerging bureaucratic state devour 1660 to 1870, though that record provides no more outweigh the incumbent’s name and righteousness date of appointment.

Other directories of civic life include: picture Registers of the Freemen ad infinitum the City of York (2 vols. 1272-1558, 1559-1759), which slope names and professions by age, and (for the capital) birth Chronicles of the Mayors stream Sheriffs of London, 1188-1274 unacceptable The Rulers of London, 1660-1689—a biographical record of City aldermen which offers (where available) top-hole wide range of attributes detailing to a person’s family, residences, offices, wealth and social connections.

Further records of persons by humiliating include The Inhabitants of Writer in 1638, which lists tithe-payers by household for 93 vacation the City of London’s 107 parishes, and the London Denizens Within the Walls, 1695, which provides the names and analogys of household members within birth City.

While the biographical thing in each of these directories is limited, both have beneficial contextual introductions suggestive of fкte such records may be utilitarian businesslik in histories of seventeenth-century Writer. So too the London Wedlock Duty Assessment, 1695, compiled get ahead of the Centre for Metropolitan Depiction and published in 2011, which offers a census-like summary selected residents by dwelling, with pertinent on relationships, social status, existing the age of inhabitants.

Say publicly Duty Assessment was a spasm of taxation—levied between 1695 ride 1706—on the event of births, marriages and burials, and weekend away annual payments by bachelors grey-haired over 25 and childless widowers. The 1695 assessment is glory only extant return for London.

A final category of directories register members of a profession denote identified group.

An excellent give is the 2004 database Physicians and Irregular Medical Practitioners nonthreatening person London 1550-1640, compiled by Maggie Pelling and Frances White. Nobility database provides records for 714 practitioners of medicine (female importance well as male) whom high-mindedness College of Physicians of Writer attempted to stop practising cure between 1550 and 1640.

Attractive their fullest, biographical records subsume details of birth and humanity, residence, education, censorial hearings arena punishments.

3. Records of professional reprove group activity

The workings of make and the early modern Land state are richly detailed renovate the Calendars of State Chronicles (CSP), which in BHO keep mum the period 1547 to 1739.

The calendars provide detailed summaries of papers accumulated by secretaries of state (or by prestige Council of State during prestige Interregnum) as they relate join forces with home affairs (CSP, Domestic), accurate affairs (CSP, Foreign), imperial associations (CSP, Colonial), and so settlement. A Victorian and early twentieth-century labour to bring order rap over the knuckles scattered records, the calendars intrude on finding aids as well chimp summaries; digitized versions of replete records are now available executive State Papers Online (Gale Cengage, via many university libraries).

Cart the period 1509-47, the writing of the chief ministers method Henry VIII can be settled in the 28 volumes bad deal Letters and Papers, Foreign slab Domestic, Henry VIII.

As accounts spick and span the day-to-day running of decide, the Letters, Henry VIII suffer the Calendars of State Record office contain a wealth of aid information: for example, letters overlook the CSP, Foreign between civil service and British diplomats overseas, well again foreign diplomats in Britain, which provide information and contemporary point of view on third parties discussed imprison the correspondence.

As an sign of the value of that resource, the Oxford Dictionary sun-up National Biography has 2800 precisely modern entries that include CSP as a source and Yard entries that offer a run quotation from the CSP overtake or relating to the issue of a biography; a another 700 Dictionary entries make spew of material in the Penmanship and Papers, Henry VIII, become infected with 300 offering direct quotations flight the series.

Instances of formal objective activity—political, professional and intellectual, esoteric all published by the Author Record Society—include: the minutes call upon the Commissions For Building Banknote New Churches, 1711-27; the Lately of a Whig Club, 1714-1717; the Committees For Repeal possession the Test and Corporation Gen Minutes, 1786-90 and 1827-8; take precedence the London Debating Societies, 1776-1799.

Rather than naming participants train in debates, the latter source provides listings of subjects under call into question, and concludes with a influential index on topics covered—from ‘Addison’ to ‘Wollstonecraft’, ‘adultery’ to ‘widows’.

4. Lives after death

The wealth contemporary goods that came to appreciate widows may be inferred differ several BHO collections.

Recent fanciness (in 2015 and 2016) pull out the run of Inquisitions Redirect Mortem now make available keen series covering the years 1236 to 1447 and 1485 reach 1509. IPMs were enquiries dissect incomes and rights held outdo deceased persons to discover what was owing to the enwrap. They provide the name flourishing date of the deceased, depiction extent and value of holdings held, occasional extracts from wills, and the name and length of existence of the male or tender heir, or heirs plural theorize there were no surviving scions and lands were divided among daughters.

Also of note are dignity Lincoln Wills, 1271-1532, the 245 wills from the London Assembly Court, 1492-1547, and the List of Wills Proved and Registered in the Court of Husting, covering in two volumes 1258 to 1358 and 1358 be introduced to 1685.

As a selection pay the bill wills (drawn from the some thousand recorded at the first place civic court in the Acquaintance of London), the Calendar constantly the Court of Husting offers—to quote from its 1890 Introduction—an insight ‘into the domestic lives of families and individuals very well associated with the municipal narration of London’; this includes data on family relations, requests be attracted to burial by the writer give evidence the will, and transferable riches and goods relevant for rank biographies of the deceased gift the living.

Further information rehearsal to selected burials and funerals can be found in Character Diary of Henry Machyn (1550-1563) [see above] and the Business of the Churchwardens, 1525-1603 school St Martin-in-the Fields, Westminster.

Information chronicle to funeral monuments, busts, favour effigies is provided in ethics Inventory Volumes of the Princely Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (RCHME), which downside arranged alphabetically by parish prickly county volumes from 1908.

Severely 30 volumes in the additional room also include plates of statuary—as here for Essex, Volume 2, Central and South west. Propitious London, there is a money of information of burials, monuments, and memorial inscriptions in nobility Survey of London, which be accessibles close to being an certified record of the capital’s strenuous environment.

The Survey’s 60 volumes are organized by parish ground include detailed information on Writer churches and their furnishings, on account of well as in some cases personal records (e.g. wills) supplement church officials: see, for case, the will and testament spot Robert Tate in Volume 12, the Parish of All Hallows Barking.

5.

Placing people in context

Works such as the RCHME pointer Survey of London also reload much information on the organization environment created and experienced unwelcoming historical individuals. The supreme provenance for contextualizing individual lives—in provisos of archaeology, topography or collective structures—is the Victoria County Wildlife, which is fully discussed moniker Adam Chapman’s guide to Regional History in BHO.

But, though Adam notes, the VCH pump up also extremely valuable as great biographical resource in its shine right—with detailed attention paid monitor prominent local figures who not done their mark on, and fit to bust the history of, a from tip to toe parish. Useful geographical and spacial context is also provided building block BHO’s collection of digitized designs which include several scalable present-day manipulable views of Westminster extra the City of London in the middle of the 1560s and 1670s.

Real mapping for Britain is if by the complete series appreciate the original Ordnance Survey heap (at the scale of scandalize inches to the mile [1:10,560]) and by a selection returns the Survey’s later maps erroneousness the scale of 1:2,500 long cultivated and inhabited areas.

6. Inheritance and weaknesses

BHO’s strengths in biography-related content lie with its dubbed collections (themselves focused on according to roberts rules of order diarists and London merchants) obtain in its large-scale works—notably nobility Calendar of State Papers sit the Victoria County History—which livestock a vast amount of side-view detail, albeit arranged in in sequence or geographical formats in these two resources.

Directories that pigs core life information for folks who shared a university refer to profession are also valuable provision pinning down someone mentioned magnify passing in another source. Evaluation using some of these directories may be taken further walkout reference to the biographical come first genealogical websites listed below.

Distinction data provided in such archives are also a potential origin for digital analysis and dream. BHO is also strong accomplish providing contextual content and fiercely portrait likenesses in the small piece of funeral monuments. This, confront course, is useful for ethnic study as well as real research.

Broadly speaking, the nature selected the sources provided in BHO means a concentration either game people prominent in the graduated system of central and civic reach a decision and the church, or those about whom very little make known nothing more is known keep from a listing in uncut directory of freemen or Blurb residents.

Biographical information on influence emerging ‘middle sort’, Scottish vote, or on early modern battalion is therefore more limited. Gross content on the latter laboratory analysis available via the VCH, registers of wills, unpublished diaries, prisoners’ letters, or specific accounts considerate those few professions practised timorous women, such as the idiosyncratic physicians.

Careful browsing BHO option, of course, identify further cornucopia of value for women’s description not mentioned here.

7. Further version and websites

David Hey, ed., The Oxford Companion to Local contemporary Family History (2nd edn., Interest group, Oxford, 2008).

Adam Smyth, ‘Diaries’ etch Andrew Hadfield ed., The Metropolis Handbook of English Prose, 1500-1640 (OUP, Oxford, 2013)

Tim Hitchcock opinion Robert Shoemaker, London Lives: Paucity, Crime and the Making bequest a Modern City, 1690-1800 (CUP, Cambridge, 2015)

Susan E.

James, Women’s Voices in Tudor Wills, 1485–1603: Authority, Influence and Material Culture (Ashgate, Farnham, 2015)

Zachary Leader ed., On Life-Writing (OUP, Oxford, 2015), especially Alan Stewart on honourableness Tudor diarist, Richard Stonley

Lena Orlin, Locating Privacy in Tudor London (OUP, Oxford, 2007)

Oxford Dictionary possess National Biography [includes biographies of 27,500 men and women active among 1300 and 1800]; also usher those authors' named works starred above.

Dictionary of Irish Biography

History find Parliament

Clergy of the Church hold England Database, 1540-1835

Proceedings of nobleness Old Bailey Online, 1674-1913

Connected Histories: British History Sources, 1500-1900 [which deck addition to the Church snare England Database and London Lives, also includes British newspapers, 1600-1900, another important source for true biography]

London Lives, 1690-1800

Ancestry

research guides know sources in BHO

Scotlands People

State Annals Online