During 2021 the project focused on the act books from 1666 to 1671, containing almost 9,000 acts of court. Each of these has been recorded and dated for the first time, with identifications of people and places, cross-references between cases, and pointers to related material elsewhere.  The online catalogue now includes some 10,000 references to related documents, mainly in the National Archives. These have assisted the identification of the protagonists in cases before the Court as well as providing further information concerning them. The project to catalogue these act books has been generously supported by the Friends of Lambeth Palace Library.

 The diverse business of the Court included suits concerning the dilapidation of parsonage houses, bishops’ palaces and deaneries. The Bishops of Ely, Oxford, Salisbury, Winchester and Worcester all brought cases between 1666 and 1671. There were also suits from the northern  province.  Richard Sterne, Archbishop of York, netted £100 for dilapidations at Bishopsthorpe and other palaces from the executor of his predecessor Accepted Frewen, as well as costs of £70 for the suit, which was fought in the Court of Arches from 1665 to 1668. William Sancroft, a future Archbishop of Canterbury, was also pursued for dilapidations arising from his brief tenure of the deanery of York in 1664. The act book preserves remarkable documentation of his expenditure at this time.

The Court was also concerned with marriage, divorce and morality. In these years Sir Thomas Ivie, a former Governor of Madras, continued to be harassed by his unscrupulous wife Theodosia, who had emptied his pockets long before.  Benjamin Overton, who was to make his name as a politician and pamphleteer, was brought to court for carrying off Anne Darcey, a vulnerable heiress aged 17 who was deaf and dumb from birth. The anatomist Thomas Wharton led a commission of eight physicians and surgeons appointed to test the virility of Samuel Sadler, of St. Sepulchre, London, in a case of nullity of marriage.  Martha Atkyns, widow of Sir Patrick Acheson, who had inherited a patent for printing law books, brought a case for divorce, on grounds of cruelty, against her husband, Richard Atkyns, a writer on printing who had started a hare running by claiming (on the basis of an alleged manuscript at Lambeth Palace) that printing had begun in England prior to Caxton.  The court also pursued errant clergymen such as Theophilus Hart, Rector of Wappenham,  a celebrated adulterer who was subsequently murdered.  Lay men and women were also prosecuted for immorality, and, surprisingly, a number of men came to court to confess their own adulteries, sometimes asking to pay a fine rather than endure public penance in church. Penances were also imposed on women convicted of defamation. The act books often preserve their colourful words of abuse as well as the formula of penance to be spoken by them in church.

Testamentary cases were also to the fore. Amongst the plaintiffs identified by the project was the religious thinker Lodowicke Muggleton. He appears in the case as the beneficiary of the will of Thomas Hudson, an innholder of St. Botolph Aldersgate, London. The will records Muggleton as a ‘dear and most beloved friend’ and provides valuable evidence on Muggletonianism by naming others who were ‘members with me in the true faith of our Lord Jesus’. 

The project has also added to the catalogue sixty appointments of guardians to act in court on behalf of minors.  These records were once held to be of little importance, but, like so many records of the Court of Arches, they are a goldmine for genealogists.

During 2021 the project focused on the act books from 1666 to 1671, containing almost 9,000 acts of court. Each of these has been recorded and dated for the first time, with identifications of people and places, cross-references between cases, and pointers to related material elsewhere.  The online catalogue now includes some 10,000 references to related documents, mainly in the National Archives. These have assisted the identification of the protagonists in cases before the Court as well as providing further information concerning them. The project to catalogue these act books has been generously supported by the Friends of Lambeth Palace Library.

 The diverse business of the Court included suits concerning the dilapidation of parsonage houses, bishops’ palaces and deaneries. The Bishops of Ely, Oxford, Salisbury, Winchester and Worcester all brought cases between 1666 and 1671. There were also suits from the northern  province.  Richard Sterne, Archbishop of York, netted £100 for dilapidations at Bishopsthorpe and other palaces from the executor of his predecessor Accepted Frewen, as well as costs of £70 for the suit, which was fought in the Court of Arches from 1665 to 1668. William Sancroft, a future Archbishop of Canterbury, was also pursued for dilapidations arising from his brief tenure of the deanery of York in 1664. The act book preserves remarkable documentation of his expenditure at this time.

The Court was also concerned with marriage, divorce and morality. In these years Sir Thomas Ivie, a former Governor of Madras, continued to be harassed by his unscrupulous wife Theodosia, who had emptied his pockets long before.  Benjamin Overton, who was to make his name as a politician and pamphleteer, was brought to court for carrying off Anne Darcey, a vulnerable heiress aged 17 who was deaf and dumb from birth. The anatomist Thomas Wharton led a commission of eight physicians and surgeons appointed to test the virility of Samuel Sadler, of St. Sepulchre, London, in a case of nullity of marriage.  Martha Atkyns, widow of Sir Patrick Acheson, who had inherited a patent for printing law books, brought a case for divorce, on grounds of cruelty, against her husband, Richard Atkyns, a writer on printing who had started a hare running by claiming (on the basis of an alleged manuscript at Lambeth Palace) that printing had begun in England prior to Caxton.  The court also pursued errant clergymen such as Theophilus Hart, Rector of Wappenham,  a celebrated adulterer who was subsequently murdered.  Lay men and women were also prosecuted for immorality, and, surprisingly, a number of men came to court to confess their own adulteries, sometimes asking to pay a fine rather than endure public penance in church. Penances were also imposed on women convicted of defamation. The act books often preserve their colourful words of abuse as well as the formula of penance to be spoken by them in church.

Testamentary cases were also to the fore. Amongst the plaintiffs identified by the project was the religious thinker Lodowicke Muggleton. He appears in the case as the beneficiary of the will of Thomas Hudson, an innholder of St. Botolph Aldersgate, London. The will records Muggleton as a ‘dear and most beloved friend’ and provides valuable evidence on Muggletonianism by naming others who were ‘members with me in the true faith of our Lord Jesus’. 

The project has also added to the catalogue sixty appointments of guardians to act in court on behalf of minors.  These records were once held to be of little importance, but, like so many records of the Court of Arches, they are a goldmine for genealogists.

Dr Richard Palmer