Wisdom Wednesday: UK Jurisdictions

If you use www.maps.familysearch.org , you can see an English village’s 1851 jurisdictions or in other words, the areas where a level of government or the church has authority. The first lesson in a series called ‘England Beginning Research’ at www.familysearch.org explains the meanings. Access this video by clicking the ‘Learn’ button on the home page, click ‘England’ in the left column and find the fifteen minute lesson.

The presenter, Margo McKinstry helpfully divides the possible jurisdictions into two groups, civil and church. In the example above the town of Swaffham is in the county of Norfolk. A county is a civil jurisdiction. England was divided into 40 counties until a major realignment in 1974. After 1837, births, marriages and deaths were recorded by the government and not the Church of England so each parish in the country was assigned to a ‘civil registration district.’ Swaffham is a medium sized market town and was grouped together with several of its smaller neighbors into the Swaffham Registration District.

The Civil Parish is the smallest form of local government and the center of English community life. In some cases, it has little relation to an ecclesiastical parish. A civil parish can consist of part of, one entire, or more than one ecclesiastical parish. There can also be villages or hamlets within a parish.

The Church of England provided leadership in religious and civic matters for centuries. Some of the divisions of the COE directly impact genealogy so here are the church jurisdictions. The country is divided into two provinces – Canterbury and Kent, each overseen by an Archbishop. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the head of the Anglican Church. 

A diocese was the next smallest division of a province and was headed by a bishop. It was made up of several smaller areas called archdeaconries. An archdeacon headed this union of several rural deaneries which each contained a number of ecclesiastical parishes. The parish clerks sent copies of their registers to both the head of the diocese and the archdeaconry, thus creating Bishop’s Transcripts (BTs) and Archdeacon’s Transcripts (ATs).

The ecclesiastical parish of Swaffham, Norfolk is in the province of Canterbury, in the diocese of Norwich, in the archdeaconry of Norfolk in the rural deanery of Cranwich.

Wisdom Wednesday: Bishops’ Transcripts

Since 1598, parishes were required to send copies of their parish registers to the bishop once a year. Not all parish clerks complied, but those who did gave us another source of BMD data. After the beginning of civil registration in 1837, the practice was phased out and was completely gone by mid-century.

I was saved at the Norfolk Records Office a number of years ago, when I couldn’t read the last name of my GGGG grandmother on her parish marriage record from the mid-1700s in Necton, Norfolk. A worker at the office looked at my microfilm reader’s screen and said it looked like “Beetle.” Since I had thought “Castle,” she suggested we see if it was clearer in the Bishops’ Transcripts (BTs). Yes, it was clearly “Beetle.”

(Note: Here is an attempt to tie this post with last about clergy in the COE (Church of England). England and Wales have two provinces within the church overseen by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York. Under them are bishops who have religious jurisdiction over a diocese or group of archdeaconries, rural deaneries and parishes. Archdeacons sometimes in some places received annual copies of BMD records from parishes which were conveniently called Archdeacon’s Transcripts or ATs.)

Besides clearing up hard to read microfilm, BTs or ATs may cover periods when the original registers were lost or destroyed. It is hard to say which source is better. The BTs are transcriptions and have all the associated problems – entries skipped, numbers transposed. Generally, the parish registers are in better condition today.  On the other hand, making the copy for the bishop gave a parish clerk the chance to correct mistakes so they may be the most accurate. It would pay to check both, if possible or if there is a question. 

Most bishop’s transcripts are in the county records office. If the bishop’s seat is in a different county than the parish, you will need to find out which county office to approach. A simple email should do the trick. As familysearch.org puts evermore data online, look there as well.

Source:  Herber, Mark. Ancestral Trails. Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogical Publishing Company 2006.

 ©2012, Susan Lewis Well