Volume 1

Hertford County records.

  • Hertfordshire (England). County Council.
Date:
1905-
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Hertford County records. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    calendar that none of the Sessions Bolls for the Liberty of St. Alban, which comprises a considerable part of the county, have been dealt with. These are preserved at the Court House, St. Albans, and have not yet been cleaned or flattened. They commence about the year 1780. I have considerable hope that the late Lord Salisbury’s action in bringing to the notice of the county authorities the existence of certain of the county Sessions Bolls in his muniment room may induce the descendants of some of those whose ancestors have filled the post of Custos Rotulorum of the Liberty to investigate their muniment rooms, in order to see if any of the Sessions Bolls or other records belonging to the Liberty are there preserved. It will of course be noticed that in all save a few cases we do not obtain in the Sessions Bolls a record of the decision of the Justices in the various matters that came before them. These decisions are, I have little doubt, recorded in the Sessions Books, or Begisters, which commence (in the case of the county) about the year 1638, and in the case of the Liberty about the close of the eighteenth century. It is much to be hoped that a calendar to these documents will some day be undertaken, The two volumes of calendar to which the following remarks form a preface cover the period from 1581 to 1850. In them will be found many illustrations of well-known incidents in English history. Soon after the death of Queen Elizabeth’s favourite, the Earl of Leicester, we find a presentment by the grand jury that a certain Thomas Davies had described him as a traitor, whilst Bichard Eames, or Ernes, had said that the fact was well known to the Queen herself, and to her council ; for, he added, “ I cuminge “ over with the Earl of Darbie, when he came out of Flanders, he “ brought over a scrowle of writinge of his (Leicester’s) treason to “ this length, making a mark on his staflfe to the length of halfe a “ yarde ” (Vol. I., pp. 7-8). A little later, in 1596, Edward Bull deposed to hearing it said on Cottered Green that the Lord Admiral of England (Lord