Yorkshire Visitations

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Brad Verity

Yorkshire Visitations

Legg inn av Brad Verity » 16 nov 2006 06:50:48

For an excellent background on heraldic visitations in general, and
those of Yorkshire and the other northern counties in particular, read
the comprehensive introduction by Frederick W. Denby to Volume 122 of
the Surtees Society. It has been invaluable to me in navigating the
convoluted pedigrees of Yorkshire families. In a nutshell, visitations
by heralds to the northern counties began as early as the 1480s and
ended with those of Sir William Dugdale in the mid-1660s. The herald/s
would meet with the head of each family, take notes on the arms borne
by the family head, as well as the pedigree, return to London and enter
the information at the College of Arms. Costs were involved: families
had to pay fees to the heralds, wine and dine them, etc., and many of
the meetings of the heralds with the family heads took place during
diplomatic missions and/or military campaigns on the Northern borders.

Unless the family head enjoyed genealogy, these heraldic visitations
were a chore to him, a bureaucratic necessity to maintain his status,
and probably viewed similarly to today's census-taking. There is no
way of determining the standards of evidence employed (were the
pedigrees from simple word of mouth, or written deeds and muniments),
which no doubt varied from herald to herald. Most pedigrees simply
followed the head of the family down through several generations,
providing only the names of the wife and heir. Daughters and younger
sons are given in most pedigrees only in the generation of the family
head providing the information to the herald, and that immediately
preceding him. Even in those two generations, mistakes were made, an
example being Thomas Tonge, Norroy King of Arms, reversing the order of
the two Mauleverer wives of then-current family head Richard Aldborough
of Aldborough, in 1530.

But as a snapshot of the family at the time of the Visitation, the
pedigrees are very useful, and often can help in setting chronology
parameters.

Most of the Yorkshire (which often included other northern counties)
Visitations are available online, and below is a listing of them, in
the order they were taken.


1480-91 -- by unknown heralds

Published in 'Visitations of the North Part III' (Surtees Soc. 144,
1930), edited by C. Hunter Blair. The pedigrees are transcribed from
Ms. Ashmole 831, which is a manuscript copy made by herald Robert
Glover (1544-1588) of an old manuscript, now lost, which may have been
an official record of an heraldic visitation of the northern counties
made in the latter part of the 15th century. Most of the pedigrees
date to the mid-1480s, just after Bosworth (1485), with a few dating to
the early 1490s. Additions made by Glover are clearly indicated by
editor Blair. Can be downloaded online through a link provided by
Chris Phillips's great website:

http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/sou ... ions.shtml


1530 --- by Thomas Tonge, Norroy King of Arms 1522-1534

Published in 'Heraldic Visitation of the Northern Counties in 1530 by
Thomas Tonge, Norroy King of Arms' (Surtees Soc. 41, 1863), edited by
W. Hylton Dyer Longstaffe. Though not entirely error-free, the
pedigrees in this Visitation can be considered a good snapshot of the
status of the families in 1530, at least for the current - and
immediate preceding- generation. Can be accessed through Google Books:

http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC3 ... e&as_brr=1


1530-1552 --- no known Visitations

It is thought that at least one Visitation was made by William Fellows,
Norroy King of Arms from 1536-1546, and possibly another one by his
successor Gilbert Dethick, Norroy King from 1546-1550, but if so, they
have not survived.


1552 --- by William Harvey, Norroy King of Arms 1550-1557

1558 --- by Laurence Dalton, Norroy King of Arms 1557-1562

1560-61 --- assorted pedigrees taken by Dalton

The above three are published in 'Visitations of the North Part I'
(Surtees Society 122, 1912), edited by Frederick W. Denby. Do take the
time, as mentioned before, to read Denby's excellent 38-page
Introduction (warning: pp. xlviii & xlix are missing from the pdf file
version). This volume can be downloaded through a link provided at
Chris Phillips's website:

http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/sou ... ions.shtml


1563-64 --- by William Flower, Norroy King of Arms 1562-1592

1567 --- by Flower

Purportedly published in 'The Visitation of Yorkshire in the Years
1563 and 1564, made by William Flower, esquire, Norroy king of Arms'
(Harleian Soc. 16, 1881) edited by Charles Best Norcliffe. WARNING:
The title is completely misleading. What this work is a transcription
of a manuscript (called the Northcliffe manuscript) that combines most
(but not all) of the pedigrees from the 1480-91, 1530, 1558, 1560-61,
1563-64, 1567, and 1584-85 Visitations into one volume, arranged by
family names. The manuscript started off, apparently in the hands of
heralds Flower and Glover, perhaps as their working copy, and passed
through several hands, including Ralph Brooke, a "Mr. Archer", and
Peter le Neve (Norroy King of Arms from 1704-1729), until ending up in
the hands of the Northcliffe family. As such, it cannot be considered
a snapshot in the years 1563-64 of any of the families presented in it.
That aside, Northcliffe was a dutiful and detailed editor, and his
footnotes are full of useful information. So, for the authentic
Visitation made by Flower in 1563-64, use the Surtees Society Volume
133, and view this Harleian Volume 16 as an 1881 compilation, similar
to those produced by Joseph Foster and J.W. Clay in the same period
(see below). This work can be accessed through Google Books or
downloaded as a pdf file at a link provided on Chris Phillips's
website:

http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC6 ... ng+of+Arms

http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/sou ... ions.shtml

The actual 1563-64 and 1567 pedigrees taken by Flower in those
Visitations are published in 'Visitations of the North Part II'
(Surtees Soc. 133, 1921), edited by Frederick W. Denby. It is also
available to download from a link provided at Chris Phillips's
website:

http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/sou ... ions.shtml


1575 --- by Flower, assisted by Robert Glover, Somerset Herald

Only a scant 46 Yorkshire pedigrees resulted from this Visitation, but
46 are still much better than none at all. They are published in
'Visitations of the North Part IV' (Surtees Soc. 146, 1932), edited
by C.H. Hunter Blair, and once again available to download as a pdf
from the link provided at Chris Phillips's website:

http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/sou ... ions.shtml


1584-85 --- by Robert Glover, Somerset Herald 1571-1588

By this point, Flower was so aged that his son-in-law Glover was sent
up to the North to conduct the Visitation. Published in 'The
Visitation of Yorkshire made in the years 1584/5 by Robert Glover,
Somerset herald: to which is added the subsequent visitation made in
1612, by Richard St. George [London: private printing, 1875], edited by
Joseph Foster. This is the one Yorkshire Visitations volume that is
not available online, and I have yet to set eyes on it. If you can
find it in a Library somewhere, grab it, and have copies of the pages
you need made immediately - it is a hard to find item! And vital,
too, for providing snapshots of these Yorkshire families in the last
quarter of the 16th century, as so few were visited in 1575, and the
next visitation did not take place until 1612.


1612 --- by Richard St. George, Norroy King of Arms 1603-1623

This is published along with the 1584-85 Glover Visitation above. Not
having seen Foster's book, I don't know if the two Visitations were
printed separately within it, as the Surtees Society series did (a much
better way for using Visitation pedigrees as snapshots), or the
information from both Visitations was combined together into each
family's pedigree.


1665-66 --- by William Dugdale, Norroy King of Arms 1660-1677

The last Visitation of Yorkshire ever done was also the first one ever
published, in 'The Visitation of the county of Yorke begun in A.D.
1665 and finished in A.D. 1666 by William Dugdale, Norroy King of
Arms' (Surtees Soc. 36, 1859), edited by Robert Davies. It is
available to view (page by page) online at the following website:

http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/tex ... 7.0001.001

'Dugdale's Visitation of Yorkshire with additions', edited by
J.W. Clay [Exeter: Pollard, 1899], is not really the Visitation
pedigrees as taken by Dugdale in 1665-66, as it is a compilation by
Clay using those pedigrees as a starting point. However, just as with
Northcliffe's Harleian Volume 16, Clay is an excellent editor,
providing much useful additional information on the various families
presented.


'Pedigrees of the county families of Yorkshire' by Joseph Foster, 3
vols. [London, 1864], I have not yet had the opportunity to peruse, but
is probably another invaluable Victorian-era compilation on Yorkshire
families.

'Yorkshire Pedigrees' by John William Walker, 3 vols. (Harleian
Soc. 94-96, 1942-1944), I have had some limited chance to use. As it
is in the same format as the actual Visitation pedigrees published by
the Hareian Society, it can easily be mistaken as another in the
series. Instead, it is an impressive compilation from the pre-computer
mid-20th century, but does contain some errors within its pedigrees
(Sothill, for example). I liken it to the pedigrees within the
'Burke's Peerage' 20th-century editions - good starting off
points, but not conclusive until verified by primary evidence.


This has turned into quite a long post, but hopefully those new to
Yorkshire medieval/Tudor-era genealogy, or simply confused by it as I
often am, will find it useful.

Cheers, ------Brad

Matt Tompkins

Re: Yorkshire Visitations

Legg inn av Matt Tompkins » 16 nov 2006 10:18:48

Brad Verity wrote:
For an excellent background on heraldic visitations in general, and
those of Yorkshire and the other northern counties in particular, read
the comprehensive introduction by Frederick W. Denby to Volume 122 of
the Surtees Society. It has been invaluable to me in navigating the
convoluted pedigrees of Yorkshire families. In a nutshell, visitations
by heralds to the northern counties began as early as the 1480s and
ended with those of Sir William Dugdale in the mid-1660s. The herald/s
would meet with the head of each family, take notes on the arms borne
by the family head, as well as the pedigree, return to London and enter
the information at the College of Arms. Costs were involved: families
had to pay fees to the heralds, wine and dine them, etc., and many of
the meetings of the heralds with the family heads took place during
diplomatic missions and/or military campaigns on the Northern borders.


The system of the heralds calling on the families at their homes ended
in the mid-sixteenth century. Thereafter, until visitations ceased at
the end of the seventeenth century, the system was that the heralds
would summon the gentry of each hundred (or group of hundreds) to
attend them on a designated day in some central place, usually in the
local market town.

Here is a quote from Anthony Wagner's Heralds and Ancestors (p. 33):

"In 1563 he [William Hervey, Clarenceux] was still visiting the gentry
in their homes, for a warrant of that year from a sheriff to bailiffs
of hundreds orders them to attend Clarenceux 'so long as he shall be
within your circuit and orderly to direct him to every gentleman within
the same hundred'. By 1566, however, the sheriff was sending the
bailiffs a list of 'gentlemen and others' whom they were to warn to
appear on a stated day at the house of one of their number, thus
speeding the process up.

By 1583 there was further elaboration. The sheriffs or undersheriffs
of counties kept lists of freeholders liable for jury service. From
these they extracted for the heralds' purpose the names of those
described in them as knight, esquire or gentleman. Separate lists were
then made for each hundred in the county and these the king of arms or
his deputy would send to the bailiffs of the several hundreds together
with warrants requiring the bailiff to summon the gentry on the list to
appear before the king of arms or herald, at a time and place named 'in
the chiefest town in the hundred', bringing with them their arms,
pedigrees and evidences. At the later visitations the place was
sometimes till a private house but more often an inn."

In the late seventeenth century the Hearth Tax lists were often used to
identify the local gentry.

Someone has recently written a detailed description of the
seventeenth-century procedure, but I can't remember who or where. Was
it in the introduction to one of the recently published visitations
(Harleian vol. 13, 14 or 15 - respectively the Visitations of Hunts
1684, Herefs 1634 and Wales)? Or was it one of the articles in Tribute
to an Armorist (John Campbell-Kease, (ed.), Tribute to an Armorist:
Essays for John Brooke-Little to Mark the Golden Jubilee of 'The Coat
of Arms' (London, 2000))?

Matt Tompkins

John Higgins

Re: Yorkshire Visitations

Legg inn av John Higgins » 16 nov 2006 23:17:37

This is a very useful summary of the visitations, pseudo-visitations, and
various pedigree collections for Yorkshire. I imagine that the opening
paragraphs on the process of visitations, along with the commments of Matt
Tompkins, also apply to ther counties as well.

A couple of specific notes on the various Yorkshire sources:

1) Foster's edition of the 1584/5 and 1612 visitations appears to merge the
two visitations without necessarily identifying the specific sources.
Sometimes this can be determined, but not always. The Foster edition is
availble on film at the FHL (although catalogued under Glover and St. George
but not Foster) and thus should be available for loan to the FHCs. A
hard-back copy is also available at the Los Angeles Central Library.

2) The four Surtees volumes collectively known as "Visitations of the
North" (122, 133, 144, 146) are available on a single CD-ROM from Quintin
Publications [www.quintinpublications.com]. This may be superfluous at the
moment since the volumes are availble on-line, but it could be useful if the
on-line copies disappear sometime. [The CD is also missing the two pages of
the introduction to vol. 122 that Brad mentions as being missing from the
on-line version - one has to wonder if the CD was the source of the on-line
version....]

3) Foster's "Pedigrees of the County Families of Yorkshire" is also
available at the FHL - both on film and in a very cumbersome 12-volume [!!]
bound set - cumbersome due to teh attempt to deal with the folded pedigrees.
The catalog of the LA Library indicates that it also has this set, but it's
apparently a cataloguing error as the volume in question is actually
Foster's companion volume on Lancashire families.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brad Verity" <royaldescent@hotmail.com>
Newsgroups: soc.genealogy.medieval
To: <gen-medieval@rootsweb.com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 15, 2006 9:50 PM
Subject: Yorkshire Visitations


For an excellent background on heraldic visitations in general, and
those of Yorkshire and the other northern counties in particular, read
the comprehensive introduction by Frederick W. Denby to Volume 122 of
the Surtees Society. It has been invaluable to me in navigating the
convoluted pedigrees of Yorkshire families. In a nutshell, visitations
by heralds to the northern counties began as early as the 1480s and
ended with those of Sir William Dugdale in the mid-1660s. The herald/s
would meet with the head of each family, take notes on the arms borne
by the family head, as well as the pedigree, return to London and enter
the information at the College of Arms. Costs were involved: families
had to pay fees to the heralds, wine and dine them, etc., and many of
the meetings of the heralds with the family heads took place during
diplomatic missions and/or military campaigns on the Northern borders.

Unless the family head enjoyed genealogy, these heraldic visitations
were a chore to him, a bureaucratic necessity to maintain his status,
and probably viewed similarly to today's census-taking. There is no
way of determining the standards of evidence employed (were the
pedigrees from simple word of mouth, or written deeds and muniments),
which no doubt varied from herald to herald. Most pedigrees simply
followed the head of the family down through several generations,
providing only the names of the wife and heir. Daughters and younger
sons are given in most pedigrees only in the generation of the family
head providing the information to the herald, and that immediately
preceding him. Even in those two generations, mistakes were made, an
example being Thomas Tonge, Norroy King of Arms, reversing the order of
the two Mauleverer wives of then-current family head Richard Aldborough
of Aldborough, in 1530.

But as a snapshot of the family at the time of the Visitation, the
pedigrees are very useful, and often can help in setting chronology
parameters.

Most of the Yorkshire (which often included other northern counties)
Visitations are available online, and below is a listing of them, in
the order they were taken.


1480-91 -- by unknown heralds

Published in 'Visitations of the North Part III' (Surtees Soc. 144,
1930), edited by C. Hunter Blair. The pedigrees are transcribed from
Ms. Ashmole 831, which is a manuscript copy made by herald Robert
Glover (1544-1588) of an old manuscript, now lost, which may have been
an official record of an heraldic visitation of the northern counties
made in the latter part of the 15th century. Most of the pedigrees
date to the mid-1480s, just after Bosworth (1485), with a few dating to
the early 1490s. Additions made by Glover are clearly indicated by
editor Blair. Can be downloaded online through a link provided by
Chris Phillips's great website:

http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/sou ... ions.shtml


1530 --- by Thomas Tonge, Norroy King of Arms 1522-1534

Published in 'Heraldic Visitation of the Northern Counties in 1530 by
Thomas Tonge, Norroy King of Arms' (Surtees Soc. 41, 1863), edited by
W. Hylton Dyer Longstaffe. Though not entirely error-free, the
pedigrees in this Visitation can be considered a good snapshot of the
status of the families in 1530, at least for the current - and
immediate preceding- generation. Can be accessed through Google Books:


http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC3 ... PR13&lpg=P

R13&dq=Thomas+Tonge&as_brr=1

1530-1552 --- no known Visitations

It is thought that at least one Visitation was made by William Fellows,
Norroy King of Arms from 1536-1546, and possibly another one by his
successor Gilbert Dethick, Norroy King from 1546-1550, but if so, they
have not survived.


1552 --- by William Harvey, Norroy King of Arms 1550-1557

1558 --- by Laurence Dalton, Norroy King of Arms 1557-1562

1560-61 --- assorted pedigrees taken by Dalton

The above three are published in 'Visitations of the North Part I'
(Surtees Society 122, 1912), edited by Frederick W. Denby. Do take the
time, as mentioned before, to read Denby's excellent 38-page
Introduction (warning: pp. xlviii & xlix are missing from the pdf file
version). This volume can be downloaded through a link provided at
Chris Phillips's website:

http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/sou ... ions.shtml


1563-64 --- by William Flower, Norroy King of Arms 1562-1592

1567 --- by Flower

Purportedly published in 'The Visitation of Yorkshire in the Years
1563 and 1564, made by William Flower, esquire, Norroy king of Arms'
(Harleian Soc. 16, 1881) edited by Charles Best Norcliffe. WARNING:
The title is completely misleading. What this work is a transcription
of a manuscript (called the Northcliffe manuscript) that combines most
(but not all) of the pedigrees from the 1480-91, 1530, 1558, 1560-61,
1563-64, 1567, and 1584-85 Visitations into one volume, arranged by
family names. The manuscript started off, apparently in the hands of
heralds Flower and Glover, perhaps as their working copy, and passed
through several hands, including Ralph Brooke, a "Mr. Archer", and
Peter le Neve (Norroy King of Arms from 1704-1729), until ending up in
the hands of the Northcliffe family. As such, it cannot be considered
a snapshot in the years 1563-64 of any of the families presented in it.
That aside, Northcliffe was a dutiful and detailed editor, and his
footnotes are full of useful information. So, for the authentic
Visitation made by Flower in 1563-64, use the Surtees Society Volume
133, and view this Harleian Volume 16 as an 1881 compilation, similar
to those produced by Joseph Foster and J.W. Clay in the same period
(see below). This work can be accessed through Google Books or
downloaded as a pdf file at a link provided on Chris Phillips's
website:


http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC6 ... PA1&lpg=PA

1&dq=Norroy+King+of+Arms
http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/sou ... ions.shtml

The actual 1563-64 and 1567 pedigrees taken by Flower in those
Visitations are published in 'Visitations of the North Part II'
(Surtees Soc. 133, 1921), edited by Frederick W. Denby. It is also
available to download from a link provided at Chris Phillips's
website:

http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/sou ... ions.shtml


1575 --- by Flower, assisted by Robert Glover, Somerset Herald

Only a scant 46 Yorkshire pedigrees resulted from this Visitation, but
46 are still much better than none at all. They are published in
'Visitations of the North Part IV' (Surtees Soc. 146, 1932), edited
by C.H. Hunter Blair, and once again available to download as a pdf
from the link provided at Chris Phillips's website:

http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/sou ... ions.shtml


1584-85 --- by Robert Glover, Somerset Herald 1571-1588

By this point, Flower was so aged that his son-in-law Glover was sent
up to the North to conduct the Visitation. Published in 'The
Visitation of Yorkshire made in the years 1584/5 by Robert Glover,
Somerset herald: to which is added the subsequent visitation made in
1612, by Richard St. George [London: private printing, 1875], edited by
Joseph Foster. This is the one Yorkshire Visitations volume that is
not available online, and I have yet to set eyes on it. If you can
find it in a Library somewhere, grab it, and have copies of the pages
you need made immediately - it is a hard to find item! And vital,
too, for providing snapshots of these Yorkshire families in the last
quarter of the 16th century, as so few were visited in 1575, and the
next visitation did not take place until 1612.


1612 --- by Richard St. George, Norroy King of Arms 1603-1623

This is published along with the 1584-85 Glover Visitation above. Not
having seen Foster's book, I don't know if the two Visitations were
printed separately within it, as the Surtees Society series did (a much
better way for using Visitation pedigrees as snapshots), or the
information from both Visitations was combined together into each
family's pedigree.


1665-66 --- by William Dugdale, Norroy King of Arms 1660-1677

The last Visitation of Yorkshire ever done was also the first one ever
published, in 'The Visitation of the county of Yorke begun in A.D.
1665 and finished in A.D. 1666 by William Dugdale, Norroy King of
Arms' (Surtees Soc. 36, 1859), edited by Robert Davies. It is
available to view (page by page) online at the following website:

http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/tex ... 7.0001.001

'Dugdale's Visitation of Yorkshire with additions', edited by
J.W. Clay [Exeter: Pollard, 1899], is not really the Visitation
pedigrees as taken by Dugdale in 1665-66, as it is a compilation by
Clay using those pedigrees as a starting point. However, just as with
Northcliffe's Harleian Volume 16, Clay is an excellent editor,
providing much useful additional information on the various families
presented.


'Pedigrees of the county families of Yorkshire' by Joseph Foster, 3
vols. [London, 1864], I have not yet had the opportunity to peruse, but
is probably another invaluable Victorian-era compilation on Yorkshire
families.

'Yorkshire Pedigrees' by John William Walker, 3 vols. (Harleian
Soc. 94-96, 1942-1944), I have had some limited chance to use. As it
is in the same format as the actual Visitation pedigrees published by
the Hareian Society, it can easily be mistaken as another in the
series. Instead, it is an impressive compilation from the pre-computer
mid-20th century, but does contain some errors within its pedigrees
(Sothill, for example). I liken it to the pedigrees within the
'Burke's Peerage' 20th-century editions - good starting off
points, but not conclusive until verified by primary evidence.


This has turned into quite a long post, but hopefully those new to
Yorkshire medieval/Tudor-era genealogy, or simply confused by it as I
often am, will find it useful.

Cheers, ------Brad


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John P. Ravilious

Re: Yorkshire Visitations

Legg inn av John P. Ravilious » 17 nov 2006 01:14:41

Dear Brad,

Thanks for that very useful post.

You wrote, in part,

'Yorkshire Pedigrees' by John William Walker, 3 vols. (Harleian
Soc. 94-96, 1942-1944), I have had some limited chance to use. As it
is in the same format as the actual Visitation pedigrees published by
the Hareian Society, it can easily be mistaken as another in the
series. Instead, it is an impressive compilation from the pre-computer
mid-20th century, but does contain some errors within its pedigrees
(Sothill, for example). I liken it to the pedigrees within the
'Burke's Peerage' 20th-century editions - good starting off
points, but not conclusive until verified by primary evidence.


These volumes are indeed an interesting compilation. They do
contain errors (few of the 'true' Visitation pedigrees do not, I
think), but have some interesting uses. A distant cousin in South
Africa, previously unknown to me, was hunting for information on her
Holdsworth ancestry, and one 19th century set of information she
provided I was able to find reflected in the Holdsworth of Ashday
pedigree. She is currently working to validate the generations back
through the pedigree: if she is successful, this will link her to the
Saviles of Bradley Hall, Gledhill of Barkisland, Lacy of Brearley and
all their interesting ancestry. Without the leads provided in this
pedigree (as extended by Walker), I doubt this connection would have
been achieved - at least in the present decade.

Cheers,

John







Brad Verity wrote:
For an excellent background on heraldic visitations in general, and
those of Yorkshire and the other northern counties in particular, read
the comprehensive introduction by Frederick W. Denby to Volume 122 of
the Surtees Society. It has been invaluable to me in navigating the
convoluted pedigrees of Yorkshire families. In a nutshell, visitations
by heralds to the northern counties began as early as the 1480s and
ended with those of Sir William Dugdale in the mid-1660s. The herald/s
would meet with the head of each family, take notes on the arms borne
by the family head, as well as the pedigree, return to London and enter
the information at the College of Arms. Costs were involved: families
had to pay fees to the heralds, wine and dine them, etc., and many of
the meetings of the heralds with the family heads took place during
diplomatic missions and/or military campaigns on the Northern borders.

Unless the family head enjoyed genealogy, these heraldic visitations
were a chore to him, a bureaucratic necessity to maintain his status,
and probably viewed similarly to today's census-taking. There is no
way of determining the standards of evidence employed (were the
pedigrees from simple word of mouth, or written deeds and muniments),
which no doubt varied from herald to herald. Most pedigrees simply
followed the head of the family down through several generations,
providing only the names of the wife and heir. Daughters and younger
sons are given in most pedigrees only in the generation of the family
head providing the information to the herald, and that immediately
preceding him. Even in those two generations, mistakes were made, an
example being Thomas Tonge, Norroy King of Arms, reversing the order of
the two Mauleverer wives of then-current family head Richard Aldborough
of Aldborough, in 1530.

But as a snapshot of the family at the time of the Visitation, the
pedigrees are very useful, and often can help in setting chronology
parameters.

Most of the Yorkshire (which often included other northern counties)
Visitations are available online, and below is a listing of them, in
the order they were taken.


1480-91 -- by unknown heralds

Published in 'Visitations of the North Part III' (Surtees Soc. 144,
1930), edited by C. Hunter Blair. The pedigrees are transcribed from
Ms. Ashmole 831, which is a manuscript copy made by herald Robert
Glover (1544-1588) of an old manuscript, now lost, which may have been
an official record of an heraldic visitation of the northern counties
made in the latter part of the 15th century. Most of the pedigrees
date to the mid-1480s, just after Bosworth (1485), with a few dating to
the early 1490s. Additions made by Glover are clearly indicated by
editor Blair. Can be downloaded online through a link provided by
Chris Phillips's great website:

http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/sou ... ions.shtml


1530 --- by Thomas Tonge, Norroy King of Arms 1522-1534

Published in 'Heraldic Visitation of the Northern Counties in 1530 by
Thomas Tonge, Norroy King of Arms' (Surtees Soc. 41, 1863), edited by
W. Hylton Dyer Longstaffe. Though not entirely error-free, the
pedigrees in this Visitation can be considered a good snapshot of the
status of the families in 1530, at least for the current - and
immediate preceding- generation. Can be accessed through Google Books:

http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC3 ... e&as_brr=1


1530-1552 --- no known Visitations

It is thought that at least one Visitation was made by William Fellows,
Norroy King of Arms from 1536-1546, and possibly another one by his
successor Gilbert Dethick, Norroy King from 1546-1550, but if so, they
have not survived.


1552 --- by William Harvey, Norroy King of Arms 1550-1557

1558 --- by Laurence Dalton, Norroy King of Arms 1557-1562

1560-61 --- assorted pedigrees taken by Dalton

The above three are published in 'Visitations of the North Part I'
(Surtees Society 122, 1912), edited by Frederick W. Denby. Do take the
time, as mentioned before, to read Denby's excellent 38-page
Introduction (warning: pp. xlviii & xlix are missing from the pdf file
version). This volume can be downloaded through a link provided at
Chris Phillips's website:

http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/sou ... ions.shtml


1563-64 --- by William Flower, Norroy King of Arms 1562-1592

1567 --- by Flower

Purportedly published in 'The Visitation of Yorkshire in the Years
1563 and 1564, made by William Flower, esquire, Norroy king of Arms'
(Harleian Soc. 16, 1881) edited by Charles Best Norcliffe. WARNING:
The title is completely misleading. What this work is a transcription
of a manuscript (called the Northcliffe manuscript) that combines most
(but not all) of the pedigrees from the 1480-91, 1530, 1558, 1560-61,
1563-64, 1567, and 1584-85 Visitations into one volume, arranged by
family names. The manuscript started off, apparently in the hands of
heralds Flower and Glover, perhaps as their working copy, and passed
through several hands, including Ralph Brooke, a "Mr. Archer", and
Peter le Neve (Norroy King of Arms from 1704-1729), until ending up in
the hands of the Northcliffe family. As such, it cannot be considered
a snapshot in the years 1563-64 of any of the families presented in it.
That aside, Northcliffe was a dutiful and detailed editor, and his
footnotes are full of useful information. So, for the authentic
Visitation made by Flower in 1563-64, use the Surtees Society Volume
133, and view this Harleian Volume 16 as an 1881 compilation, similar
to those produced by Joseph Foster and J.W. Clay in the same period
(see below). This work can be accessed through Google Books or
downloaded as a pdf file at a link provided on Chris Phillips's
website:

http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC6 ... ng+of+Arms

http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/sou ... ions.shtml

The actual 1563-64 and 1567 pedigrees taken by Flower in those
Visitations are published in 'Visitations of the North Part II'
(Surtees Soc. 133, 1921), edited by Frederick W. Denby. It is also
available to download from a link provided at Chris Phillips's
website:

http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/sou ... ions.shtml


1575 --- by Flower, assisted by Robert Glover, Somerset Herald

Only a scant 46 Yorkshire pedigrees resulted from this Visitation, but
46 are still much better than none at all. They are published in
'Visitations of the North Part IV' (Surtees Soc. 146, 1932), edited
by C.H. Hunter Blair, and once again available to download as a pdf
from the link provided at Chris Phillips's website:

http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/sou ... ions.shtml


1584-85 --- by Robert Glover, Somerset Herald 1571-1588

By this point, Flower was so aged that his son-in-law Glover was sent
up to the North to conduct the Visitation. Published in 'The
Visitation of Yorkshire made in the years 1584/5 by Robert Glover,
Somerset herald: to which is added the subsequent visitation made in
1612, by Richard St. George [London: private printing, 1875], edited by
Joseph Foster. This is the one Yorkshire Visitations volume that is
not available online, and I have yet to set eyes on it. If you can
find it in a Library somewhere, grab it, and have copies of the pages
you need made immediately - it is a hard to find item! And vital,
too, for providing snapshots of these Yorkshire families in the last
quarter of the 16th century, as so few were visited in 1575, and the
next visitation did not take place until 1612.


1612 --- by Richard St. George, Norroy King of Arms 1603-1623

This is published along with the 1584-85 Glover Visitation above. Not
having seen Foster's book, I don't know if the two Visitations were
printed separately within it, as the Surtees Society series did (a much
better way for using Visitation pedigrees as snapshots), or the
information from both Visitations was combined together into each
family's pedigree.


1665-66 --- by William Dugdale, Norroy King of Arms 1660-1677

The last Visitation of Yorkshire ever done was also the first one ever
published, in 'The Visitation of the county of Yorke begun in A.D.
1665 and finished in A.D. 1666 by William Dugdale, Norroy King of
Arms' (Surtees Soc. 36, 1859), edited by Robert Davies. It is
available to view (page by page) online at the following website:

http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/tex ... 7.0001.001

'Dugdale's Visitation of Yorkshire with additions', edited by
J.W. Clay [Exeter: Pollard, 1899], is not really the Visitation
pedigrees as taken by Dugdale in 1665-66, as it is a compilation by
Clay using those pedigrees as a starting point. However, just as with
Northcliffe's Harleian Volume 16, Clay is an excellent editor,
providing much useful additional information on the various families
presented.


'Pedigrees of the county families of Yorkshire' by Joseph Foster, 3
vols. [London, 1864], I have not yet had the opportunity to peruse, but
is probably another invaluable Victorian-era compilation on Yorkshire
families.

'Yorkshire Pedigrees' by John William Walker, 3 vols. (Harleian
Soc. 94-96, 1942-1944), I have had some limited chance to use. As it
is in the same format as the actual Visitation pedigrees published by
the Hareian Society, it can easily be mistaken as another in the
series. Instead, it is an impressive compilation from the pre-computer
mid-20th century, but does contain some errors within its pedigrees
(Sothill, for example). I liken it to the pedigrees within the
'Burke's Peerage' 20th-century editions - good starting off
points, but not conclusive until verified by primary evidence.


This has turned into quite a long post, but hopefully those new to
Yorkshire medieval/Tudor-era genealogy, or simply confused by it as I
often am, will find it useful.

Cheers, ------Brad

Tim Powys-Lybbe

Re: Yorkshire Visitations

Legg inn av Tim Powys-Lybbe » 17 nov 2006 10:56:40

In message of 16 Nov, "Brad Verity" <royaldescent@hotmail.com> wrote:

<snip of a superb account of Yorkshire pedigrees>

1584-85 --- by Robert Glover, Somerset Herald 1571-1588

By this point, Flower was so aged that his son-in-law Glover was sent
up to the North to conduct the Visitation. Published in 'The
Visitation of Yorkshire made in the years 1584/5 by Robert Glover,
Somerset herald: to which is added the subsequent visitation made in
1612, by Richard St. George [London: private printing, 1875], edited
by Joseph Foster. This is the one Yorkshire Visitations volume that
is not available online, and I have yet to set eyes on it. If you can
find it in a Library somewhere, grab it, and have copies of the pages
you need made immediately - it is a hard to find item! And vital,
too, for providing snapshots of these Yorkshire families in the last
quarter of the 16th century, as so few were visited in 1575, and the
next visitation did not take place until 1612.

Foster was more of a genealogist than a scholar and combined the two
visitations together, though he says at one point that the 1612
material is indicated by italics. He utters the usual words of caution
in his introduction, p. vi: "... implicit reliance cannot be placed on
them, except, perhaps, for the latest three or four generations, and
that the ignorance of the gentry as to the maiden names of their
grandmothers, and, much more, of their sisters-in-law, was often most
astonishing."

Foster comments that the text of the 1584 visitation he worked from was
a copy and that the copyist made repeated blunders, though otherwise it
is a copy from the original in the College of Arms. Finally he added 42
pages of Additional Pedigrees at the end; these came from a variety of
sources.

'Pedigrees of the county families of Yorkshire' by Joseph Foster, 3
vols. [London, 1864], I have not yet had the opportunity to peruse,
but is probably another invaluable Victorian-era compilation on
Yorkshire families.

I have seen this and they are magnificently prepared volumes, now
changing hands at fearsomely large prices. But they have little
critical matter and are very much books of county pedigrees with no clue
as to the sources or even any problems with the data.

--
Tim Powys-Lybbe                                          tim@powys.org
             For a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org/

Matt Tompkins

Re: Yorkshire Visitations

Legg inn av Matt Tompkins » 17 nov 2006 13:58:53

Tim Powys-Lybbe wrote:
Foster was more of a genealogist than a scholar and combined the two
visitations together, though he says at one point that the 1612
material is indicated by italics. He utters the usual words of caution
in his introduction, p. vi: "... implicit reliance cannot be placed on
them, except, perhaps, for the latest three or four generations, and
that the ignorance of the gentry as to the maiden names of their
grandmothers, and, much more, of their sisters-in-law, was often most
astonishing."


More recently Christine Carpenter, who certainly is a scholar, has made
similar comments:

'The Warwickshire and Worcestershire Visitations of the sixteenth and
early seventeenth centuries reveal downright errors in the recording of
fifteenth-century ancestors, often abysmal ignorance of the names of
wives, even of those that brought important inheritances with them, and
in the case of the Worcestershire Visitation, made as early as the
1560s, a memory that rarely goes back as far as the fifteenth
century'

'Interestingly, remembrance of lineage was not always entirely
accurate. Despite the formidable memory evinced in the Plea Rolls,
when it came to recording genealogies for the Heralds in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, mistakes, some of them of considerable
import, were made. While it was understandable that there should be
faults in the family memory when it had to go back 200 years, those
made in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries about ancestors
of the fifteenth are more surprising.'

Christine Carpenter, Lordship and Polity: a Study of Warwickshire
Landed Gentry 1401-1499 (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 254, 247.

One suspects that sometimes the errors and vagueness were deliberate
strategies by newly arrived gentry to conceal their peasant origins.

Matt Tompkins

Brad Verity

Re: Yorkshire Visitations

Legg inn av Brad Verity » 18 nov 2006 20:22:21

Dear Matt, John H., John R., and Tim,

Thanks for all of the interesting additional information. My next trip
to LA will definitely include the Central Library downtown to track
down Foster's book of the 1575/1612 visitations!

Cheers, ---------Brad

John Watson

Re: Yorkshire Visitations

Legg inn av John Watson » 20 nov 2006 09:51:48

Hi Brad,

There is a cd version available from Yorkshire Indexers:

http://www.yorkshireindexers.co.uk/foru ... page_books

£6.00 plus p&p

Good value

Regards,

John

Brad Verity wrote:
Dear Matt, John H., John R., and Tim,

Thanks for all of the interesting additional information. My next trip
to LA will definitely include the Central Library downtown to track
down Foster's book of the 1575/1612 visitations!

Cheers, ---------Brad

Tim Powys-Lybbe

Re: Yorkshire Visitations

Legg inn av Tim Powys-Lybbe » 20 nov 2006 10:07:02

In message of 20 Nov, "John Watson" <WatsonJohnM@gmail.com> wrote:

There is a cd version available from Yorkshire Indexers:

http://www.yorkshireindexers.co.uk/foru ... page_books

£6.00 plus p&p

Good value

Incredible for 720 pages plus supplements.

Brad Verity wrote:
Thanks for all of the interesting additional information. My next trip
to LA will definitely include the Central Library downtown to track
down Foster's book of the 1575/1612 visitations!

--
Tim Powys-Lybbe                                          tim@powys.org
             For a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org/

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