Richard Palmer reports on the latest finds from a cataloguing project of the Court of Arches Act Books. The Arches is the Archbishop of Canterbury’s court of appeal, and is still in existence. In this period it dealt with a wide range of non-criminal cases making it a rich source of social history.
Please note that this post contains extracts from original documents which contain archaic language which is not appropriate for current use and does not reflect the views of Lambeth Palace Library.
Act Books of the Court of Arches covering the period 1699-1714 have now been catalogued and are available online (see Arches A 23, Arches A 24, Arches A 25 and Arches A 26).
A total of 41,087 acts of court have now been recorded and dated for the first time and the entire catalogue of the Arches archive for the years 1660-1705 has been corrected and enhanced with identifications of persons and places. The online catalogue also now includes over 12,000 references to related material held elsewhere, especially in the National Archives.
Cases before the court again covered a wide range of subjects: wills and probate, tithes, rates, church buildings, rights to pews, churchwardens’ accounts, delinquent clergy, brawling in church, licences to teach, defamation, espousals, clandestine marriages, incest, bigamy and divorce. Testators included William Careless (he who hid with Charles II in the royal oak) and the historian and diplomat Paul Rycaut, while legatees strove to secure legacies from relatives who died on ships in China or on plantations in the Caribbean. Several suits concerned the care of the insane, as in the case of Anne Ashe, daughter of a baronet, who was the subject of a commission in lunacy. Sent by Sir Hans Sloane to Tunbridge Wells to take the waters, she fell into the hands of an adventurer and was married for her fortune.
Divorce cases were again lively, including that of Holcroft Blood, chief of artillery under Marlborough, who, while busy at Blenheim, was being sued for divorce on grounds of adultery and cruelty. Ralph Box, having secured a separation from his wife in the Arches for adultery, went on to obtain a full divorce by an act of Parliament, which (unlike divorce in the church courts) entitled him to remarry. One suit brought two lawyers head to head, since the lover of Godfrey Lee’s wife Mary, was his colleague Charles Garrett. Each fought his own case, bringing to light reports of a frolic, cross-dressing and the singing of “smutty songs” in the garden of Lee’s house at Streatham.
The case also posed a question: the court was used to affirmations by Quakers and allowed a Portuguese Jew to swear his oath on the Pentateuch, but what was it to make of a witness of no accepted religion? It was argued that the testimony of one witness was invalid, she being “a blackamore and a heathen or infidel and was borne of heathen parents in parts beyond the seas and as a slave was brought over into England and it doth not appear by the proceedings of this cause that the said Joyce alias Hester Jefferies hath been att any time christened but still remaines a heathen or infidel”. In the event it was revealed that Hester Jefferies, or Esther Jefferyes, as her name is also spelt, had been baptised at St. Benet’s, Paul’s Wharf, see Arches E 13/32.
The cataloguing of the Arches Act Books was supported by the Friends of Lambeth Palace Library.
A Monument of Fame 