Quarter Sessions Rolls

John William Willis-Bund was a dominating presence in the early years of the Worcestershire County Council, and remained a dominating influence in the early years of the Worcestershire Record Office. Until recent years his portrait still hung in the office and his pen used to have a place of honour in the County Archivist's Office.

Just one small aspect of his many activities was his editing of the Calendar of the records of the court of Quarter Sessions for 1591-1643, which forms the first part of this list; the remainder. however, rather than being continued as a full calendar it has been cast in the form of a list with certain papers itemised in greater detail. Even when Willis-Bund was starting his work in the early years of the century the papers were clearly in a very confused state. One of the prime motives for this current volume was to, as a very basic archival matter, to ensure that every individual document in the Quarter Sessions packet bore an individual number. Previously, it was impossible to know exactly how much material was held and of what sort. Initially a limited operation was considered whereby each document would merely be numbered. However it soon became evident that even the most rudimentary sorting involved examining each document in some detail and that it would therefore be better to attempt something more ambitious, even if not as ambitious as a full calendar. The procedure for this listing has been to give each surviving session packet (originally only dated) a running number continuing from where Willis Bund left off. No attempt has been made to rearrange the contents of packets into coherent year or session groupings. This means that any given numbered packet may contain papers relating to one or more sessions or years. At the end of a volume there is a list indicating where papers for any given year and session are to be found.

A 'typical' packet will contain recognisances, indictments (usually endorsed as to whether the grand jury considered further proceedings should be taken) writs, lists of jurys and officers, nominations for offices, calendars of the prisoners in the jail, sacrament certificates, presentments (both of a general nature and relating to particular cases, made both by the grand jury or by parish constables), committals, indemnities under the poor laws, removal orders, examinations, accounts, informations.

Willis-Bund's method of division has been followed in so far as each packet has been divided initially into indictments, recognisances and miscellaneous. It is, in the main, certain classes from the miscellaneous papers that have been selected for more detailed selection. In assigning papers to a particular session the date of the paper has always been used as the prime guide regardless of any labelling on the packet. Sometimes when a date is missing but the document appears to be part of a group all of the same date then it has been kept with that group and arranged by that date. Otherwise it is listed as undated.

Each summary sheet has been indexed for place names, personal names and main subjects. In this last case, not all subjects, especially common ones, are indexed for example Jury List is not an index heading because most packets have one of them.

A study of these papers throws interesting light on both national events of the time such as the turmoil of the Civil War and the restoration of the monarchy as well as the troubled times of James II reign. They reflect attempts to organise and control local activities, trade, finance, transport and servants, as well as the dominating concern of what to do about the poor. Naturally, religious questions figure largely; there is evidence for the rise of non-conformity, efforts to deal with recusancy as well as residual elements of superstition concerning witchcraft.

The work was initiated by Robin whittaker when he was Senior Assistant Archivist at the Shirehall. Latterly the operation has been given fresh impetus by the hard work of a volunteer, Mr Wilf English.