There were particularly marked changes under the Tudors, when much of the Chancellor's administrative responsibilites passed to the Secretaries of State, and the Chancery became predominantly a court of equity. Space on this web site is, in theory, unlimited, but unfortunately time, skill and knowledge are severely constrained. The following pages cover a selection of the public records which can be most useful to the genealogist. I have tried to group them into reasonably sensible and convenient sections, but inevitably there are some overlaps and some anomalies. But it's worth bearing in mind that almost any type of record could contain an informative reference to an ancestor, and that searching certainly shouldn't be limited to the classes mentioned here.
More detailed information is available in the published works listed below.
Some links to useful pages within the P.R.O. site are given below, and in the following sections. This will include discussion, examples, bibliography and guidance, with the admirable aim of teaching 'the public how to competently pursue original research during this period'. A note on published records Many of the public records have been printed in some form, and I have tried to list the main published editions in the following pages. These cover a period of more than 200 years, and things have changed a great deal over that time. The earliest editions attempted to reproduce as closely as possible the abbreviated medieval Latin texts, using a specially designed record type, and translations were not usually provided.