GRANTHAM BOROUGH QUARTER SESSIONS

GBQS

GRANTHAM BOROUGH QUARTER SESSIONS

These are records of the Quarter Sessions of the Liberty of the Town and Soke of Grantham, which comprised the town of Grantham itself and the villages of Barkston, Belton, Braceby, Colsterworth with Woolsthorpe, Denton, Easton, Gonerby, Harlaxton, Londonthorpe, Manthorpe, Great Ponton, Sapperton and South Stoke.

The documents are nearly all concerned with the judicial functions of the Quarter Sessions. The earliest of the judicial documents dates from 1608 and the latest from 1638, but they are very far from comprising an unbroken series. Rather, they seem to be accidental survivals of individual items from some Quarter Sessions rolls.

The documents have been arranged chronologically and grouped together to represent the surviving records of individual sittings of the Quarter Sessions. The closest to complete Sessions Rolls, with all their ancillary papers, are GBQS/10/1-24 (13 May 1619) and GBQS/11/1-26 (28 June 1627).

Many of the documents are in Latin, and those which are in English are subject to the un-standardised spelling of the early seventeenth century. The following conventions have been applied in dealing with personal and place names:

Christian names have been transcribed into their modern, English form.

Surnames have been left as they appear in the document, unless they contain obvious, standardised marks of abbreviation, which have been expanded.

Place names have been transcribed into their modern, English form.

Blank spaces or damaged/illegible text is indicated with square brackets, e.g. [ ].

Text supplied by the cataloguer is indicated with square brackets, e.g. [Braceby].

However, fragile documents, which are unfit for production in the Search Room have been transcribed as far as possible, with original spellings retained.

The records were formerly listed in an unsorted, summary fashion in 1957 while they were still at Grantham Borough Library. A note has been made, in each entry, of these former references.

English

Deposited by Grantham Borough Council in 1977. (Acc 1977/113 [part])