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How Surname Ancestry Results

Our indexes 1000-1999 include entries for the spelling 'how'. In the period you have requested, we have the following 810 records (displaying 1 to 10): 

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Pipe Roll (1241-1242)
The Great Rolls of the Pipe are the central record of the crown compiling returns of income and expenditure from the sheriffs and farmers of the various English counties or shires. This is the oldest series of public records, and the earliest surviving instances of many surnames are found in the Pipe Rolls. This is the roll for the 26th year of the reign of king Henry III, that is, accounting for the year from Michaelmas 1241 to Michaelmas 1242. Most (but not all) of the entries in which names appear relate to payments for grants of land and fines or pardons arising from the proceedings of the justices. The text was edited by Henry Lewin Cannon for Yale Historical Publications and printed in 1918. The name of the county is given at the head of each page, and variant spellings, omissions and additions found in the duplicate Chancellor's Roll [C. R.] are given in the footnotes.

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Pipe Roll
 (1241-1242)
Yorkshire Charters (1270-1279)
A large accumulation of documents preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, formerly constituted the antiquarian collections of Anthony a Wood, Roger Dodsworth, Ralph Thoresby, Thomas Martin of Palgrave, Thomas Tanner bishop of St Asaph, Dr Richard Rawlinson, Richard Furney archdeacon of Surrey, and Richard Gough. A calendar of these was prepared by William H. Turner and published in 1878 under the title 'Calendar of Charters and Rolls preserved in the Bodleian Library'. The word 'charters' is here used in a rather loose sense, including virtually any manuscript or copy of a manuscript, but the bulk of the contents consists of mediaeval deeds of conveyance. Turner's calendar deals with each briefly, naming the principal parties and the nature of the deed, but hardly ever lists the witnesses. Many of these charters were undated (dating of deeds did not become general until around 1350) or so damaged or defective ('mutilated' is Turner's usual description) as no longer to display a legible date. However, he contrived, from the style of the script and/or the nature of the contents, to estimate dates in such cases. The sample scan is from the start of the Bedfordshire list.

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Yorkshire Charters
 (1270-1279)
Patent Rolls: entries for Nottinghamshire (1278-1279)
Calendars of the patent rolls of the reign of king Edward I are printed in the Calendars of State Papers: but these cover only a fraction of the material on the rolls. From 1881 to 1889 the reports of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Record Office also include calendars of other material from the rolls - about five times as many entries as in the State Papers - predominantly mandates to the royal justices to hold sessions of oyer and terminer to resolve cases arising locally; but also other general business. The calendar for the 7th year of king Edward I [20 November 1278 to 19 November 1279], hitherto unindexed, is covered here.

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Patent Rolls: entries for Nottinghamshire
 (1278-1279)
Yorkshire Inquisitions (1241-1283)
Inquisitions post mortem are inquiries as to the real estate and heir of each person holding in capite or in chief, i. e. directly, from the Crown, or whose estates had been escheated or were in ward. The age and relationship of the heir are usually recorded. Inquisitions ad quod damnum enquired as to any activities (including maladministration by local officials) that had resulted in any material loss to the Crown. Both sets of inquisitions for this period were edited by William Brown for the Yorkshire Archaeological and Topographical Association, and printed in 1891. This index covers all names mentioned, including jurors, tenants, &c.

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Yorkshire Inquisitions 
 (1241-1283)
Cheshire Court Rolls (1259-1290)
Civil and criminal cases for most of Cheshire were handled by the county courts. Here we have the county court rolls for November 1259 to August 1260, December 1281 to September 1282, and December 1286 to September 1289. The city of Chester exercised its own jurisdiction, and here we have crown pleas and presentments from 1287 to 1297. The royal manor of Macclesfield in the east of the county had three independent jurisdictions - the hundred, forest and borough. Royal justices in eyre dealt with civil and criminal cases from the hundred and forest during their yearly visits, and here we have records from 1284 to 1290. Also covered by this index is an Inquest of Service in Time of War in Wales of 1288, listing knight's fees in the county.

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Cheshire Court Rolls
 (1259-1290)
Yorkshire Inquisitions (1294-1303)
Inquisitions post mortem are inquiries as to the real estate and heir of each person holding in capite or in chief, i. e. directly, from the Crown, or whose estates had been escheated or were in ward. The age and relationship of the heir are usually recorded. Inquisitions ad quod damnum enquired as to any activities (including maladministration by local officials) that had resulted in any material loss to the Crown. Proofs of age are inquiries into the precise date of birth of an heir, usually involving local inhabitants recalling those circumstances which fixed that date in their mind. Yorkshire inquisitions for this period were edited by William Brown for the Yorkshire Archaeological Society, and printed in 1902. This index covers all names mentioned, including jurors, tenants, &c. The volume also includes two stray inquests, from 1245 and 1282.

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Yorkshire Inquisitions 
 (1294-1303)
Clerks and Clergy in Herefordshire, Shropshire and Gloucestershire (1327-1344)
The register of bishop Thomas de Charleton of Hereford, containing general diocesan business, but also including ordination lists for monks and clergy. Only a small proportion of the clerks went on to acquire benefices and remained celibate. Hereford diocese covered almost all Herefordshire, southern rural Shropshire, a westward arm of Worcestershire, and a northwestern slice of Gloucestershire.

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Clerks and Clergy in Herefordshire, Shropshire and Gloucestershire
 (1327-1344)
Clerks, clergy, benefactors and tenants of Ripon, Yorkshire (1178-1474)
The Ingilby Manuscript, containing part of a chapter act book, and a considerable fragment of a 14th-century cartulary, bound together some valuable early records surviving from the mediaeval collegiate church of St Peter and St Wilfrid at Ripon in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The manuscript was edited by Canon J. T. Fowler and published by the Surtees Society in 1908. The church had the patronage of many local advowsons, and the act book includes presentations and institutions to these, as well as other matters of internal administration. The cartulary is a compilation of copies of deeds by which local benefactors granted land to the college: most of the earlier ones are undated. The names that appear are those of the donors, of occasional tenants or occupiers of adjoining land, and also the witnesses to the charters. Most of the land granted was in the immediate vicinity of Ripon.

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Clerks, clergy, benefactors and tenants of Ripon, Yorkshire
 (1178-1474)
Lichfield Diocese Ordinations: Acolytes Secular (1508)
The diocese of Coventry and Lichfield at this period included the whole of Cheshire, Staffordshire and Derbyshire; all Lancashire south of the Ribble; northern Shropshire (including Shrewsbury); and northern Warwickshire (including Birmingham and Coventry). Ordinations took place on the four Ember Saturdays in the year, and on certain other occasions; lists of ordinands to the degrees of acolyte, subdeacon, deacon and priest were preserved in the ordination registers, a distinction being made between those clerks who were 'regular', i. e., monks, friars, &c., and those who were 'secular', the main body of the clergy. All ordinands were celibate, and those regular, and the secular who obtained benefices, remained so, but only a minority of the secular ordinands ever obtained benefices, and most will doubtless have married later in life. No man might be ordained to subdeacon or higher without proving either that he was of independent means or that he was sponsored by an institution or a gentleman. Most entries in the register of such ordinations therefore have the words 'ad titulum' followed by the name of the religious house that was the sponsor. This is an important indication of the man's origins - boys whose families were monastic tenants, and who were educated by the monks, would naturally be sponsored by the abbey. Only men who were born and bred in the diocese could be ordained by the bishop, unless producing letters dimissory from the bishop of the diocese of their birth. These are the ordinations celebrated on Ember Saturday, 23 September 1508, by Thomas, bishop of Panados (Pavados), suffragan of bishop Geoffrey Blythe, in Lichfield cathedral.

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Lichfield Diocese Ordinations: Acolytes Secular
 (1508)
Inhabitants of Leicester (1327-1509)
The Corporation of Leicester commissioned the publication (in 1901) of extracts from the borough archives of 1327 to 1509, edited by Mary Bateson. This volume brings together several important sources: a coroner's roll of 1327; the merchant gild rolls; tax returns; court rolls; rentals; mayoral accounts, &c. All the Latin and French texts are accompanied by English translations. Not all the tax rolls surviving for this period are printed: but full lists of names are given for tallages of 1336 (pp. 34-40); 1347-8 (69-71); and 1354 (93-99); subsidy rolls of 1492 (331-334) and 1497 (351-353); and a benevolence roll of 1505 (370-374). There is a calendar of conveyances (388-446), and a list of mayors, bailiffs, and other officials (447-462); and, finally, entrants into the merchant gild from 1465 to 1510. Membership of the merchant gild was by right of inheritance (s. p. = sede patris, in his father's seat), or by payment of a fee called a 'bull' (taurus). Those marked * paid their bull, and were thus, by implication, not natives, or at least not belonging to gild merchant families. By 1400 membership of the gild merchant had become the equivalent of gaining freedom of the borough (being a free burgess): but thitherto the two were not necessarily the same, and some of the merchant gild members were not resident in the borough, merely traded there.

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Inhabitants of Leicester
 (1327-1509)
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