England Religious, Loyalty and Other Lists - International Institute

Foreign Protestants and Aliens 1618-1688
The persecution of Protestants on the continent had led to many finding asylum in England by the early 17th century. They were industrious people and had brought their crafts and trades with them, much to the discomfort of the native craftsmen who complained about the effect on their own trades. In 1618 and again in 1621-1622 lists of strangers were made with details of their residences and crafts. The principal places of refuge were in the south-east—London (where there were approximately 10,000 carrying on 121 different trades), Canterbury, Maidstone, the Cinque Ports, Norwich and Colchester. The lists appear in State Papers at TNA and have been transcribed by Cooper. Some examples are shown in the following chart.

Between 1678 and 1688 further refugees came during the troubles preceding and immediately following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. They were granted free letters of denization by Charles II and James II. Again the English craftsmen and tradesmen felt threatened and measures were taken to improve fair trading rules. This involved further lists being made.

Chart: Strangers Living in Aldgate Ward, City of London 1618 [spelling as in original]

Chart: Warrants for Denization 1681 [spelling as in original]

Chart: Returns of Foreigners 1678 [spelling as in original]

Registration of Aliens 1793-1869
The Aliens Act of 1793 required that all aliens entering the country be registered with a Justice of the Peace with their name, rank, address and occupation. By 1836 aliens were required to sign certificates on arrival which also included nationality, date of arrival, last country visited and sometimes more. Some of these survive, and there are indexes at TNA (Bevan 1999).

Refugees 1788-1919
TNA has an interesting series of records of annuities and pensions paid to some refugees for services to the crown. They include:


 * American loyalists 1788-1837
 * Belgians 1914-1919
 * French émigrés 1789-1828
 * Polish refugees 1828-1856
 * Spaniards 1855-1909 

Bevan has details of these and many other records at TNA of alien internees, deportees, and immigrants.

Collection in Aid of Distressed Protestants in Ireland 1641/2
This was not a tax but a collection authorized jointly by King and Parliament but was often made at the same time as the Protestation Oath, in February and March 1641/2. It was an emergency measure to assist the thousands of English Protestant planter refugees after the rebellion and massacre in Ireland in 1641, and (in the fine print, of-course) to pay for a punitive force to suppress the rebellion.

A comparison of the Collection and Protestation Returns for Buckinghamshire showed that up to twice as many people signed the latter as gave to the Collection, but that the contemporary Lay Subsidy had only one sixth of the number of names as the Collection. However there is much variation between parishes and counties and names will often be found on only one of the lists so it pays to examine everything available.

In cases where there are no surviving Protestation Returns then the Collection is especially useful, for example in Bedfordshire, where there are no extant Protestation Returns, 43% of parishes have Collection lists. These statistics for each county are given in Webb’s 1985 review in Genealogists’ Magazine.

For researchers the lists of names and amounts received from contributors are available for many parishes. Sometimes a few contributors are identified only as:


 * By divers others
 * By three younge women
 * By one who desires to be concealed

as at Stoke D’Abernon, Surrey (Webb 1982a). The original documents may be at TNA (in E 179 and SP 28) or other archives. Some transcriptions, for example for Buckinghamshire, East Sussex (Burchall 1984) and Surrey (Webb 1981) have been published. All are listed by county and parish in Gibson and Dell (The Protestation Returns 1641-1642 and Other Contemporary Listings, 2004). Others may surface from time to time, such as those for Stoke D’Abernon and St. Saviour Southwark both in Surrey which were found with the Rutland Collections! (Webb 1982). Jurkowski et al.(Lay Taxes in England and Wales 1188-1688, 1998) comment on the large number of lists extant in class E 179, and also on the other collections made for this cause later on.

Compton Census 1676
This was a country-wide ecclesiastical census carried out in the time of Charles II in order to measure the strength of nonconformity in Restoration England. The name comes from its supervisor, Bishop Henry Compton and only numbers of Anglicans, Protestant nonconformists and Roman Catholics were required to be given for each parish. The statistics have been published by White (Property Relating to Weymouth and Melcombe Regis for the Purpose of Voting circa 1760s, undated), who discusses the very real problems in interpretation of the data. Some incumbents kept nominal lists which may survive in local archives.

Exile’ Lists
Protestant (Huguenot) exiles from France in the reign of Louis XIV and their descendants have been listed by Agnew. The Archives of the Corporation of the City of London has much miscellaneous material of interest to the genealogists. A sampling:


 * Bonds with mariners for transportation of felons, all named and sometimes with interesting certificates of their landing at American ports (further details in Jones’ Genealogy and the City of London Records. Genealogists’ Magazine Vol. 11 #4, page 133-136.).


 * Some 3,000 memoranda of agreements to serve in America and the West Indies, of the period 1718-60. These give the name, age, trade and native town of the servant, the term of service and the destination (further details in Jones’ Genealogy and the City of London Records. Genealogists’ Magazine Vol. 11 #4, page 133-136. 1951).

Flax Bounty 1784-1795
Flax was grown as a specialist crop in certain areas, notably Yorkshire’s West Riding and East Anglia, especially when flax-dressing and linen-weaving were common rural by-employments (extra methods of making some cash) Production was reduced as the population drifted towards the towns and to encourage its growth a parliamentary bounty was introduced during the period 1784-1795. Lists of payments can be found in quarter session records.

Inhabitants Lists
Sometimes the researcher will come across parish lists recording information of use to local government; an example is shown below, and is a marvellous piece of parish and family history.

Chart: Inhabitants List Parish of St. Benet Fink, City of London

This has eight columns giving:

King’s or Queen’s Bounty
There have been a number of grants called the King’s or Queen’s Bounty over time, but the one noted most in genealogy is that initiated by Queen Victoria in 1849. It was a cash grant from the privy purse to the parents of triplets (£3) or quadruplets (£4) who:


 * Had the children born alive and in wedlock within the previous 12 months.
 * Were both British subjects.
 * Were in necessitous circumstances (until 1838).

Grants were made until 1957 during which time 19 sets of quads and 1,452 sets of triplets benefitted. Individual records only survive for 15 mid-Victorian years and five of George VI, and are at the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle (Royall).

Loyalty Lists
It is probable that the 1640s loyalty lists were only taken in strongly Parliamentarian/Protestant areas and certainly no national collection of them was made. They are occasionally found in parish registers or with other parish chest materials, thus one for Somerset (1641) with 14,350 names is known and there is another of the same year called the Remonstrance known only from an example from Cheshire. Some examples are noted by Gibson and Dell (The Protestation Returns 1641-1642 and Other Contemporary Listings, 2004), but they did not aim to do a thorough survey of loyalty lists. The two most commonly found are:


 * Vow and Covenant 1643 The Vow and Covenant organized in June 1643 was an opportunity to show loyalty to Parliament and the Protestant church during this unsettled time.


 * Solemn League and Covenant 1643-1644 This further declaration was taken in late 1643 to 1644, and affected all men over 18 who were to subscribe their names in the book or roll along with their neighbours.

Jacobite Rebellion 1745
Other loyalty lists are occasionally found, for example at the National Library of Scotland is a manuscript (Blk 684 N.p. (1745)) entitled List of the Subscribers to the Association of the County of Southampton, a group of Hampshire people declaring their loyalty to George II in 1745 against the unnatural and dangerous rebellion formed and carried on in Scotland by Papists and other Traiterous (sic) persons (John Bond).

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