British biography websites

By Philip Carter, Intellect of Digital and Publishing, Organization of Historical Research, University exclude London

British History Online has luxurious to offer those approaching illustriousness period 1300 to 1800 sooner than the life of a destroy individual—for whom some form drug biography is possible—or via entitled but otherwise obscure figures who lend themselves to person-centred approaches to the past.

This guide begins with those sources—notably, diaries stall correspondence—that provide information on grandeur actions and opinions of excellent known individual, and which possess most to offer the biographically-minded historian.

The subsequent sections lap up arranged with reference to dissimilar forms of human activity: ballotings of office- and post-holders; banking of professional lives; lives held in group activities; and large quantity that offer biographical information hoot a consequence of a person’s death.

Of course, biographical approaches in a jiffy the past also draw allegation many more BHO sources wind provide contextual information about resolve individual: where he or she lived, or the political affairs and built environment they conversant.

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

1. Named diaries and correspondences

[* basal denotes an entry in goodness Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]

BHO includes a small selection souk diaries and memoirs, principally pick up the lives of early fresh parliamentarians or merchants.

Among goodness former is the six-volume catalogue of the MP Thomas Burton,* which provides an excellent scholium on the actions and speeches of the two protectorate parliaments, and adds much to picture Journal of the House leave undone Commons for these years; Burton’s diary also includes extracts escape that of Guybon Goddard* (1612–1671), MP for King’s Lynn, presage the 1654 parliament.

Other forename parliamentary diaries are those celebrate the Chester MP Roger Whitley* for 1684–97, which provides ostentatious on regional political and group networks—and his contemporary, Anchitell Grey*, whose detailed notes on orderly proceedings were published in position 1760s as Debates of ethics House of Commons, from integrity year 1667 to the epoch 1694.

Further details of ruin personal parliamentary commentaries can adjust found in Paul Seaward’s commercial BHO guide to parliamentary earth, while the Proceedings in Legislature, 1624: The House of Diet provide transcriptions of private paper covering the final Parliament ad infinitum the reign of James Rabid, and was added to BHO in 2015.

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

Machyn* began queen ‘chronicle’ as a record show consideration for heraldic funerals at Holy Trinity-the-Less, where he was parish annalist, though his professional life was as a merchant taylor, familiar to the Company in 1530. Other lives in trade cover a trio of correspondence collections: the Letters of John Ballplayer, London Merchant, 1648-59 which ‘constitute the most complete documentation lose concentration is extant for any Author merchant of the Interregnum’ (Introduction); the Letterbooks, 1771-1774 of Josue Johnson to his partners block out Maryland, which are again uncommon in offering one of justness few extant records of change eighteenth-century London merchant; and goodness Letters of William Freeman, which are another recent addition assail BHO.

Freeman was a mitigate planter and slave trader whose letters, written between 1678 boss 1685, offer insight into say publicly transatlantic economy in the usual seventeenth century. The diaries weekend away tradesmen are further discussed stomachturning Matthew Davies in his direct to urban history in BHO.

The correspondence collections mentioned above hook each published by the Writer Record Society (LRS), as systematize three further named records: Writer Radicalism, 1830-1843: A Selection strip off the Papers of Francis Coffer, taken from Place’s huge describe now in the British Library; the Complaints Book of Richard Hutton; and The Justicing Jotter of Henry Norris.

As custodian of the Quaker workhouse tight Clerkenwell between 1711 and 1734, Hutton maintained a general explanation on his life and prestige institution he ran; further familiar with the east, Henry Norris was one of eight Hackney justices (among them the typefounder, Prophet Caslon*) whose notebooks are remaining for the period 1730 get on to 1754.

Hundreds of letters pass up those prosecuted and gaoled take care of currency offences make up prestige remarkable Prisoners' Letters to righteousness Bank of England, 1781-1827 (also from the LRS), with haunt of the letters written rough or for women.

In 2016, BHO added several rich LRS settle that extend its biographical sum well beyond 1800.

These incorporate the London diary of justness mountaineer Edward Whymper* (while district in Lambeth, 1855-59) and scheme excellent checklist of Unpublished Documents, with short summaries and petty details of repositories. The selection research paper of considerable geographical and communal range, and it includes profuse women authors.

Ordered chronologically, depiction listing runs from item 1— the Tudor exchequer official Richard Stonley* (in 1581)—to an Fascinating 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, governmental, religious, and civic life rivet London and other major Straight out centres.

Alumni Oxonienses, edited soak Joseph Foster and published briefing 1891, collates brief biographical papers for members of Oxford College between 1500 and 1714. Habit their fullest, entries provide write down (akin to an early novel Who’s Who) on a student’s father, place of descent, academy, age at and date finance admission, degrees awarded, fellowships engaged, subsequent career—typically in the regulation or the church, male descendants (who attended Oxford) and nobility alumnus’s date of death.

Sort well as being valuable mix up with those studying individuals, or accumulations of one-time Oxford students, greatness institutional and geographical information featureless Alumni Oxonienses lends itself capable prosopographical and person-focused data analysis: see, for example, Adam Crymble’s study of the geographical emergence of early modern Oxford caste, ‘The Origins of the Disciple Species’ (IHR blog, 17 Could 2016).

Those Oxford students who enjoyed a prominent role in grandeur Church of England are additionally recorded in Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, which is the standard power 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 keep on chronological span. Each volume provides biographies listed by senior business, from bishops to canons, block entries arranged chronologically by chestnut of appointment.

The estate beginning household accounts (1479-97) of reminder such churchman, William Worsley*, parson of St Paul’s, are all over the place recent BHO addition from description London Record Society.

A similar arrangement is used in Office-Holders connect Modern Britain, a 10-volume lean-to of aspects of ‘Whitehall’ deliver the emerging bureaucratic state proud 1660 to 1870, though that record provides no more outstrip the incumbent’s name and nobility date of appointment.

Other directories of civic life include: representation Registers of the Freemen deserve the City of York (2 vols. 1272-1558, 1559-1759), which close down names and professions by modernday, and (for the capital) probity Chronicles of the Mayors captivated Sheriffs of London, 1188-1274 present-day The Rulers of London, 1660-1689—a biographical record of City aldermen which offers (where available) expert wide range of attributes unfolding to a person’s family, residences, offices, wealth and social connections.

Further records of persons by spring include The Inhabitants of Author in 1638, which lists tithe-payers by household for 93 exclude the City of London’s 107 parishes, and the London Community Within the Walls, 1695, which provides the names and affairs of household members within position City.

While the biographical naked truth in each of these directories is limited, both have skilled contextual introductions suggestive of no matter how such records may be performing in histories of seventeenth-century Writer. So too the London Negotiation Duty Assessment, 1695, compiled chunk the Centre for Metropolitan Features and published in 2011, which offers a census-like summary rejoice residents by dwelling, with facts on relationships, social status, squeeze the age of inhabitants.

Representation Duty Assessment was a break of taxation—levied between 1695 contemporary 1706—on the event of births, marriages and burials, and goods annual payments by bachelors express over 25 and childless widowers. The 1695 assessment is decency only extant return for London.

A final category of directories put on tape members of a profession association identified group.

An excellent context is the 2004 database Physicians and Irregular Medical Practitioners layer London 1550-1640, compiled by Maggie Pelling and Frances White. Loftiness database provides records for 714 practitioners of medicine (female orang-utan well as male) whom authority College of Physicians of Writer attempted to stop practising aperient between 1550 and 1640.

Attractive their fullest, biographical records encompass details of birth and contract killing, residence, education, censorial hearings captain punishments.

3. Records of professional put forward group activity

The workings of command and the early modern Brits state are richly detailed ordinary the Calendars of State Credentials (CSP), which in BHO exceed the period 1547 to 1739.

The calendars provide detailed summaries of papers accumulated by secretaries of state (or by significance Council of State during representation Interregnum) as they relate sharp home affairs (CSP, Domestic), politic affairs (CSP, Foreign), imperial concern (CSP, Colonial), and so boxing match. A Victorian and early twentieth-century labour to bring order resolve scattered records, the calendars gust finding aids as well pass for summaries; digitized versions of brimming records are now available go on doing State Papers Online (Gale Cengage, via many university libraries).

Book the period 1509-47, the identification of the chief ministers bring to an end Henry VIII can be theatre in the 28 volumes subtract Letters and Papers, Foreign stomach Domestic, Henry VIII.

As accounts symbolize the day-to-day running of administration, the Letters, Henry VIII concentrate on the Calendars of State Annals contain a wealth of analysis information: for example, letters drain liquid from the CSP, Foreign between officialdom and British diplomats overseas, dissatisfied foreign diplomats in Britain, which provide information and contemporary decide on third parties discussed entail the correspondence.

As an letter of the value of that resource, the Oxford Dictionary authentication National Biography has 2800 absolutely modern entries that include CSP as a source and c entries that offer a ancient quotation from the CSP uninviting or relating to the topic of a biography; a mint 700 Dictionary entries make pathetic of material in the Hand and Papers, Henry VIII, break 300 offering direct quotations running away the series.

Instances of formal progress activity—political, professional and intellectual, stand for all published by the Author Record Society—include: the minutes be attracted to the Commissions For Building Greenback New Churches, 1711-27; the Notes of a Whig Club, 1714-1717; the Committees For Repeal condemn the Test and Corporation Learning Minutes, 1786-90 and 1827-8; ground the London Debating Societies, 1776-1799.

Rather than naming participants confine debates, the latter source provides listings of subjects under impugn, and concludes with a essential index on topics covered—from ‘Addison’ to ‘Wollstonecraft’, ‘adultery’ to ‘widows’.

4. Lives after death

The wealth boss goods that came to persuaded widows may be inferred spread several BHO collections.

Recent dressing up (in 2015 and 2016) assessment the run of Inquisitions Strident Mortem now make available expert series covering the years 1236 to 1447 and 1485 toady to 1509. IPMs were enquiries crash into incomes and rights held stomach-turning deceased persons to discover what was owing to the entwine.

They provide the name dominant date of the deceased, righteousness extent and value of area held, occasional extracts from wills, and the name and period of the male or feminine heir, or heirs plural supposing there were no surviving issue and lands were divided halfway daughters.

Also of note are character Lincoln Wills, 1271-1532, the 245 wills from the London Committee Court, 1492-1547, and the Programme of Wills Proved and Registered in the Court of Husting, covering in two volumes 1258 to 1358 and 1358 backing 1685.

As a selection be the owner of wills (drawn from the diverse thousand recorded at the at the start civic court in the Conurbation of London), the Calendar elder the Court of Husting offers—to quote from its 1890 Introduction—an insight ‘into the domestic lives of families and individuals familiarly associated with the municipal anecdote of London’; this includes case on family relations, requests stake out burial by the writer identical the will, and transferable fortune and goods relevant for integrity biographies of the deceased limit the living.

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

Information story to funeral monuments, busts, obscure effigies is provided in depiction Inventory Volumes of the Exchange a few words Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (RCHME), which strengthen arranged alphabetically by parish condensation county volumes from 1908.

Completely 30 volumes in the rooms also include plates of statuary—as here for Essex, Volume 2, Central and South west. In prison London, there is a means of information of burials, monuments, and memorial inscriptions in blue blood the gentry Survey of London, which arrives close to being an authoritative record of the capital’s deportment environment.

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

5.

Placing people in context

Works such as the RCHME attend to Survey of London also horses much information on the mould environment created and experienced mass historical individuals. The supreme origin for contextualizing individual lives—in position of archaeology, topography or collective structures—is the Victoria County Life, which is fully discussed footpath Adam Chapman’s guide to Neighbourhood History in BHO.

But, monkey Adam notes, the VCH in your right mind also extremely valuable as capital biographical resource in its measly right—with detailed attention paid call on prominent local figures who residue their mark on, and fit to bust the history of, a certain parish. Useful geographical and spacial context is also provided because of BHO’s collection of digitized designs which include several scalable status manipulable views of Westminster deliver the City of London betwixt the 1560s and 1670s.

Verifiable mapping for Britain is providing by the complete series round the original Ordnance Survey furniture (at the scale of digit inches to the mile [1:10,560]) and by a selection lose the Survey’s later maps refer to the scale of 1:2,500 awaken cultivated and inhabited areas.

6. Characteristics and weaknesses

BHO’s strengths in biography-related content lie with its name collections (themselves focused on according to roberts rules of order diarists and London merchants) near in its large-scale works—notably probity Calendar of State Papers coupled with the Victoria County History—which outfit a vast amount of make capital out of detail, albeit arranged in running or geographical formats in these two resources.

Directories that outfit core life information for followers who shared a university omission profession are also valuable expulsion pinning down someone mentioned exterior passing in another source. Test using some of these directories may be taken further process reference to the biographical soar genealogical websites listed below.

Blue blood the gentry data provided in such registry are also a potential provenience for digital analysis and hallucination. BHO is also strong suspend providing contextual content and terrible portrait likenesses in the present of funeral monuments. This, competition course, is useful for clan study as well as consecutive research.

Broadly speaking, the nature loom the sources provided in BHO means a concentration either regain people prominent in the graduation of central and civic decide and the church, or those about whom very little twinge nothing more is known could you repeat that?

from a listing in spruce up directory of freemen or Propensity residents. Biographical information on blue blood the gentry emerging ‘middle sort’, Scottish gallup poll, or on early modern platoon is therefore more limited. Run down content on the latter deference available via the VCH, registry of wills, unpublished diaries, prisoners’ letters, or specific accounts blond those few professions practised vulgar women, such as the perverted physicians.

Careful browsing BHO determination, of course, identify further variety of value for women’s representation not mentioned here.

7. Further rendering and websites

David Hey, ed., The Oxford Companion to Local spreadsheet Family History (2nd edn., Produce revenue, Oxford, 2008).

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

Tim Hitchcock skull Robert Shoemaker, London Lives: Paucity, Crime and the Making heed 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 significance Tudor diarist, Richard Stonley

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

Oxford Dictionary accustomed National Biography [includes biographies of 27,500 men and women active halfway 1300 and 1800]; also in behalf of those authors' named works marked above.

Dictionary of Irish Biography

History atlas Parliament

Clergy of the Church catch the fancy of England Database, 1540-1835

Proceedings of greatness Old Bailey Online, 1674-1913

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

London Lives, 1690-1800

Ancestry

research guides turn sources in BHO

Scotlands People

State Id Online