ACT BOOKS

AH3

ACT BOOKS

1578 - 1780

English

17 files

None of these books is in good condition, and a few are badly damaged by damp, but all are usable with care.

These books were never in the Archdeaconry Library and therefore do not appear in the 1921 list of W.M. Noble and S. Inskip Ladds. They were passed to Huntingdonshire County Record Office by the executors of S. Inskip Ladds in the 1950s. When the Archdeaconry and Probate records were reboxed in the 1960s, the records were placed at the end of the combined series. They have now been reunited with the other acts of court papers.

Previously these books had been passed to the civil authorities when ecclesiastical jurisdiction over probate matters came to an end in 1858. All except AH3/17 were then apparently transferred to the Peterborough District Probate Registry, whence they were deposited in the Record Office with the probate records on 19 June and 26 September 1957. Their contents were plainly misunderstood in the nineteenth century, as they contain little probate material. Whilst in the Probate Registry several of the earliest books in good condition were rebound by J.W. Sargeant of Peterborough into two volumes only, uniform with the earlier volumes of copy wills, but others were left alone, perhaps because they were difficult to read or in poor condition or because the absence of probate information was recognised.