England Religious and Political Oaths - International Institute

Oaths
Researchers will come upon various documents containing oaths of loyalty to the crown and to the Church of England from the 16th to the 19th centuries, but particularly during the civil war and inter-regnum and after the restoration of the Stuart monarchy. Persons required to swear oaths of loyalty were those holding civilian public office or in the armed services, thus such documents help to identify members of certain professions, occupations and religious groups. The most commonly found records with their general dates are as follows, and Cannon (The Oxford Companion to British History, 1997) and TNA research guide D4 should be consulted for further information:

Thirty Nine Articles of Faith from 1511
These doctrinal statements were originally proposed in 1511 to define the position of the reformed Church of England on a number of matters of faith and order. Persons required to subscribe [literally writing one’s name at the bottom of a document] were the clergy, schoolmasters (to 1850), parish clerks (to the end of the 19th century), sextons, and until about 1750 some physicians, surgeons and midwives. Documents showing the lengthy articles can be found in archives; I found one on a Leicestershire.

Subscription is still required of the clergy but since 1865 only a general affirmation rather than assent to each article separately. The diocesan Subscription Books contain the records of those subscribing, an example being those for Norfolk 1637-1800 in a book edited by Carter (1937), but with a separate personal name index on enabling access through the Request for Photocopies form.

Oath of Supremacy 1559
These oaths acknowledged Elizabeth (or whomever was the reigning monarch) as supreme governor of the church and was demanded of all ministers, judges, graduates and mayors.

Protestation Returns 1641-1642
The unrest and tension leading up to and during the Civil War caused a number of lists concerning the religious persuasion and loyalty of subjects to be made. The first and largest of these was the Protestation Return, which was an oath of loyalty to the new Protestant Parliament although ostensibly to king Charles I. Pearl (1992) calls it the greatest vote of no confidence in an English King since John and the Magna Carta (1215).

Parliament initiated it in May 1641 when members themselves took it, and the next year ministers, churchwardens, constables and overseers of the poor took the oath before justices of the peace. These officials were then to ensure that every male over 18 (and some women) took the oath and had their names recorded, usually in February to March 1641/1642. One of the principal objects was to discover resistance to the Protestant religion, primarily by identifying and listing recusants (Roman Catholics) who refused to swear the oath and who were thereby barred from holding any public office. These lists are the nearest thing the researcher can get to a complete census of adult males for the next two centuries.

Chart: The Protestation Oath

It is estimated that returns survive for approximately a third of English parishes (Camp 2001). It is rare that all adult males were included, and actual signatures or marks occur in only a minority of parishes and townships; typically the officials just produced a list all written in the same hand (see statistics in Gibson and Dell’s The Protestation Returns 1641-1642 and Other Contemporary Listings, 2004).

Chart: Dashwoods in Somerset Protestation Returns  Feb-Mar 1641/1642 From Stoate and Howard.

* In Sampford Brett, a note states that Nicholas Marten refused to take the protestation’. In the subsidy roll of 1641 Nicholas Martin and his wife are noted as recusants.

Plenty of protestation returns are available in print and in microform, for example:


 * Webster’s (Protestation Returns 1841/2 - Notts./ Derbys, 1980) indexed transcription of Nottingham (and three Derbyshire) parishes.


 * Howard’s (The Devon Protestation Returns, 1641. Published by the authors, 1973) indexed transcription of Devon.


 * Stoate and Glencross’ (The Cornwall Protestation Returns, 1641, 1974) indexed transcription of Cornwall.


 * Facsimiles of Protestation Returns for Sheldon and Cookbury, Devon (normal list of names) and Covenham, Linconshire (unusual as it has all original signatures or marks) are given by Markwell and Saul (Facsimiles of Documents of Use to Family Historians, 1987) pages 74-75.

Most extant original Protestation Returns are in the House of Lords Record Office, but others occur in parish chest materials, including parish register books and vestry minutes. Lawson-Edwards (The Protestation Returns 1641-2. Genealogists’ Magazine Vol. 19 #3, page 84-85.) listed transcriptions and non-transcribed originals in 1977, and Gibson and Dell have a more detailed survey done in 1995, see chart below. Entering Protestation Returns on a title search on the FamilySearch Catalog brings up the county lists of originals and transcriptions where available.

Chart: Finding Protestation Returns—Data from Gibson and Dell, further discoveries and transcriptions may have been done since 1995.

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