From individuals and parishes addressed to the justices in Sessions and relating...

The petition usually consists of three parts. The heading, addressed to the Magistrates in session; then follows the case set out; the third part being the actual petition. This may be followed by a number of names, consisting of the parish officers, parishioners etc. Most of the documents are undated, however, it has been possible to date some of the petitions by reference to the Somerset Record Society's publication (volume 28) of Commonwealth Quarter Sessions records; these dates have been put within squared brackets in the text.

The first five documents have been referenced, AA, A, B, C, D, as no parish has been noted; the rest of the petitions are arranged in alphabetical order of parish. Every effort has been taken to identify the places associated with the people mentioned in these five documents. Document AA has one unheaded section which is undoubtedly Shepton Mallet as the Somerset Protestation returns list 95 out of the 141 names recorded in the year 1642. At the Sessions held at Wells in 1646/7 an order records the fact that prices 'of Corn are much enhaunced to the greate detriment of the poore in the tyme of dearth and scarcity' but there is no record of a petition. Although it should be noted that maltsters had been ordered to be suppressed in 1623/4 and 1636 so this was not a unique problem in the 1640s.

A simple abstract has been made of each document where proper names are given in their original spelling and people who signed their name are shown in italics, with those who made their mark with a cross before their surname. Place names are given in the modern spelling, where this is extremely different the original is given and the modern spelling is followed in square brackets. The dates found in this transcript have been kept in the old style; only in the introduction has the style been modernised. All entries have been abstracted and any material appearing within quotes appears exactly as it does in the original. Editorial comments such as modernisations of spellings are shown within square brackets. The index to surnames and placenames has been edited so that the many variants can be found under one entry; the index refers to the document numbers not the page numbers.

ABBREVIATIONS

DNB - Dictionary of National Biography.

LHE - Local Historians Encyclopaedia by John Richardson, 1974.

ND - not dated.

SANHS - Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society (followed by the volume number and the page).

SOED - The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

SRS - Somerset Record Society (followed by the volume number and the page).

Collinson - The History and Antiquities of the County of Somerset by the Revd. John Collinson, 1791 (followed by the volume number and the page).

WDD - Wrights Dialect Dictionary.

WSI - Somerset Incumbents by F.W. Weaver, 1889.