Newsgroups: soc.roots
Date:         Thu, 13 Aug 1992 09:34:24 SST
Reply-To:     Richard Pennell <HISCRP@NUSVM.BITNET>
From:         Richard Pennell <HISCRP@NUSVM.BITNET>
Subject:      PRO MATERIAL

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE MATERIAL

N.B. PLEASE READ THIS
After a long silence . . .
Alf C. was worried about the copyright situation regarding these
postings. I reassured him, but by the time I'd got throught to him
(mail was bounced) he'd gone away on his summer holiday.
It was perfectly reasonable for him to be concerned, since he is
the list owner and ultimately responsible, but as you will see from
the disclaimer at the beginning, the information can be circulated
PROVIDED no-one makes any money out of it. This is a pretty decent
attitude, really.

     I'm sure none of the people on this list will break the trust
on which this depends, but just in case any of the fly-by-night
commercial genealogy firms we hear so much about gets any bright
ideas, rest assured that H.M. Government are sticky about their
rights, have a lot of money to drag fly-by-nights through the
courts, and (only occasionally?) manifest a distinctly vindictive
streak as social security claimants, ex-spies, and unemployed
Olympic athletes have found out! The Attorney-General's Office is
watching and waiting . . .

     Right, back to business. By special request from Tom Lincoln
we restart the PRO series with MUSTER ROLLS  . . .

                                      Richard Pennell
                               History Dept. NUS, Singapore
**************************************************************
THIS MATERIAL IS (C) CROWN COPYRIGHT. NOT TO BE USED FOR
ADVERTISING OR COMMERCIAL PURPOSES.
***************************************************************

MILITIA MUSTER ROLLS 1522-1640

A combination of ancient usage dating back to the Anglo-Saxon
period and more recent statute law made all able-bodied men aged
from 16 to 60 liable to perform military service within their
counties and occasionally outside them. The statute of Winchester
(1285) and subsequent legislation obliged them to equip themselves
with specific arms and armour according to their income. From the
reign of Henry VIII recurring fears of invasion from the continent
led the government to take steps to raise and maintain the level of
efficiency of the county forces by holding musters. Musters were
general or special assemblies of the militia of a shire to enable
the inspection of both men and equipment by the officer designated
by the crown for that purpose, be he lord lieutenant or a local
gentleman acting as a commissioner for musters. They were held on
the orders of the king's council, and muster rolls or certificates
were drawn up and, from the 1540s, returned to the secretaries of
state. The majority of surviving muster rolls are therefore to be
found among the public records, and particularly among the State
Papers Domestic. However, many deputy lieutenants of counties kept
muster books into which were copied the certificates and other
relevant documents. A number of these survive among collections of
private muniments, some of them deposited in local record offices,
for example those of the Oglander family in the Isle of Wight
Record Office. A few private papers relating to musters have found
their way into the public records. Those of John Daniel of
Daresbury, containing details of a band of foot of which he was
captain raised from several Cheshire hundreds, are found in the
State Papers Domestic, Supplementary (SP46/52).

THEIR VALUE AS HISTORICAL EVIDENCE

The most obvious use of muster rolls is for the information they
provide about military organisation and arms, the notable example
in this field being L. Boynton, THE ELIZABETHAN MILITIA, 1558-1638,
(London, 1967). They show, for example, the replacement of the
longbow by firearms of various kinds. They have also been employed
in work on population. There are valuable comments on the
possibilities and pitfalls of this approach in E E Rich, 'The
Population of Elizabethan England' in ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, 2nd
series, vol. ii (1949-50). A J and R H Tawney used a
Gloucestershire muster roll to give a detailed picture of the
occupations of the people of that county in the same journal, vol.
v (1934-35), and J Cornwall took the returns of 1522 in conjunction
with the subsidy rolls of 1524 in several articles on population in
the early sixteenth century. They can also be helpful in searches
for individuals. For example, there is a reference to a William
Shakespeare (probably not THE William Shakespeare) in a
Warwickshire roll of 1605.
The name muster rolls is rather misleading since many of the
returns were written in paper books. They appear in several shapes
and sizes, and the information they provide also varies a great
deal. The council was itself often dissatisfied with what they
contained and resorted to sending out printed forms, as it did in
1581. These forms indicate that by that date the government did not
require the names of individuals except the hundred captains but
simply the numbers of men in each hundred subdivided according to
the kind of equipment they possessed. In 1569, however, the names
and parishes of residence of those mustered were asked for. From
that date onwards relatively few certificates among the public
records contain lists of names, though substantial lists may be
found locally in the muster books of the deputy lieutenants. From
1573 there was an increased emphasis on training some of the men
liable for service, and special musters were held to inspect these
trained bands. Rolls compiled at these special musters do not of
course even purport to contain the names or number of all the able-
bodied men of a district.

MUSTER ROLLS IN THE PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

There is no separate list of muster rolls. They must be sought
among a number of classes of records.

Henry VIII

The earliest rolls date from 1522, when Wolsey ordered a muster
which was in fact a surreptitious attempt to obtain a property
valuation as a preliminary to levying a forced loan. All the
surviving returns for this year, both in the Public Record Office
and elsewhere, are listed and briefly described by J Cornwall in
JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF ARCHIVISTS, iii (1965-69), pp. 21-23.

Most of the muster rolls for the reign are to be found among
several classes of exchequer records:

Exchequer, Accounts various (E101) bundles 58, 59, 61, 62, 65, and
549). These are mostly parchment rolls and date predominantly from
the later part of the reign after 1534, but a few are as late as
the reign of Charles II. Most of them contain lists of names of the
able-bodied men of particular parishes, and most counties are
covered. They are listed in LISTS AND INDEXES, xxxv, pp. 63-70, and
some of them are described in LETTERS AND PAPERS OF THE REIGN OF
HENRY VIII. The current call numbers of the entries found there may
be ascertained from a key which is kept on the Round Room shelves.

Exchequer, Treasury of Receipt, Miscellaneous Books (E 36), nos.
16-55a. Paper muster certificates from 1522 onwards, but mostly for
the years 1539-42.  They contain lists of names and are listed in
volume i of Giuseppi's GUIDE TO THE PUBLIC RECORDS, p. 202. Some of
them are fully described in LETTERS AND PAPERS.

Exchequer, Augmentations Office Miscellaneous Books (E 315), nos.
464, 466. Volume 464 is one of the 1522 returns and covers the
hundreds of Shrivenham, Farringdon, Lambourne, Wantage, Ganfield
and Kintbury Eagle in Berkshire. Volume 466 is of uncertain date
but may also belong to 1522. It covers the hundreds of North
Greenhoe and Holt in Norfolk. Both returns have been printed, by
the Norfolk Record Society, vol. i (1931) (North Greenhoe), and in
NORFOLK ARCHAEOLOGY, XXII (1926) (Holt).

State Papers Domestic, Henry VIII (SP 1 and SP 2 case S). SP 1
contains a small number of paper muster rolls for the later years
of the reign. They are fully described in Letters and Papers. SP 2
case S contains large-size certificates from the year 1539, which
are also described in LETTERS AND PAPERS vol. xiv part i, pp. 264-
439. The rolls from both classes contain full lists of names.
From 1547 to 1640 muster rolls are to be found in the classes of
State Papers Domestic for the particular reigns. Their numbers
decrease considerably from the 1580s.

Edward VI (SP10/3-4)
A small number of rolls from the early months of 1548. They are
listed in the CALENDAR OF STATE PAPERS DOMESTIC 1547-81, pp. 6-7.

Elizabeth I (SP12)
There are a great many paper certificates scattered among the
volumes of this class, including several volumes which contain
nothing else. They can be identified by using the calendars of
State Papers which cover the reign, but these calendars give only
the briefest description of their contents. Guidance as to their
relative value (up to 1588) can be obtained from the article by E
E Rich cited above. The musters which produced the most reliable
certificates were those of 1569, 1573, 1577 and 1580, and that for
1569 is the most useful for lists of inhabitants of particular
parishes.

James I and Charles I (SP 14, 16 and 17)
The muster rolls of these reigns largely concern trained bands of
militia and often consist of nothing more than a list of names. In
some cases, however, the parishes of origin or the occupations of
individuals are given, and there are a few large general muster
rolls giving the names of all the able-bodied men of a county,
especially for the period of the Scottish wars of 1638-40. They may
be found via the calendars, where they are briefly described.


MUSTER ROLLS IN PRINT
A number of muster rolls have been published by local record
societies, not all of them from public records. The following list
is not exhaustive, mentioning only publications which cover the
whole or a substantial part of a county at a particular date.

BUCKINGHAMSHIRE
THE CERTIFICATE OF MUSTERS FOR BUCKINGHAMSHIRE IN 1522, ed. A C
Chibnall, Buckinghamshire Record Society, 17 (1973).

GLOUCESTERSHIRE
MEN AND ARMOUR FOR GLOUCESTERSHIRE IN 1608, compiled by John Smith
(London 1902).

NORFOLK
THE MUSTERS RETURNS FOR DIVERS HUNDREDS IN THE COUNTY OF NORFOLK,
1569, 1572, 1574 and 1577, ed H L Bradfer-Lawrence, Norfolk Record
Society, vi (1935)

NORTHAMPTONSHIRE
MUSTERS, BEACONS, SUBSIDIES, ETC. IN THE COUNTY OF NORTHAMPTON,
1586-1623, and THE MONTAGU MUSTERS BOOK,  1602-23, both edited by
Joan Wake, Northamptonshire Record Society, vols. iii (1926) and
vii (1935)

SHROPSHIRE
'Muster Rolls of the Hundreds of Bradford, Munslow, etc., 1532-40',
ed. H C Drinkwater in SHROPSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY
SOCIETY TRANSACTIONS series iii, viii (1908).

SOMERSET
CERTIFICATES OF MUSTERS IN THE COUNTY OF SOMERSET, 1569, ed. E
Green, Somerset Record Society, xx (1904).

STAFFORDSHIRE
'A Staffordshire Muster of 1640', and 'The Muster of Staffordshire
of 1539', WILLIAM SALT ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY, xv and new series
iv, v and vi.

SUFFOLK:
THE ABLE MEN OF SUFFOLK, 1638, ed. C E Banks (Boston Mass., 1932).

SURREY:
MUSTERS FROM THE LOSELEY MSS, Surrey Record Society, iii (1919).

YORKSHIRE EAST RIDING:
'East Riding Muster Rolls, 1584'. ed. F W Brooks, YORKSHIRE
ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY, MISCELLANEA, v (1951 )
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