Chancery: Petty Bag Office: Enrolments of Oaths

These enrolments were made up in the Petty Bag Office as a matter of legal record and for public display. They bear the names of people who, at various times between 1673 and 1713, took the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, the test oath, and the oaths of association and abjuration in Chancery.

There is too a single roll containing the names of all officers and men of the king's fleet who took the oaths of allegiance and supremacy following the Restoration in 1660.

Topics

Religious discrimination and persecution

Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, people were required on various occasions to swear oaths in support of the Crown and the Church of England.

Some of these oaths were sworn by those taking up or holding official positions and by lawyers on being admitted to the courts. Others were sworn by aliens in the process of becoming naturalized British subjects. Oaths were also sworn at times of political upheaval.