Selections from Jury Lists

Summary

[NOTE.—A fairly complete set of the Lists of Persons qualified to serve on Juries in the County of Bedford, from 1780 onwards, is preserved among the County Muniments. Some of these Lists have been made available for publication by the zealous labour of the Rev. J. E. Brown, and are printed here by permission of the Records Committee of the County Council.

The earlier lists consist of the original papers made out by the Parish Constable, among whose qualifications accurate spelling was not, as a rule, included, though his writing was generally quite good. The papers were generally made out the year before that by which the List is dated; thus in the first transcript below the date of the papers (1780) is given, but the List is filed as that for 1781.

These papers have not been transcribed word for word; the result would have been burdensome alike to write, to print, and to read. Every name, however, is given in the following transcripts; the original spelling of place-names, sur-names, and occupations has been retained ; font-names, which in the originals are usually contracted into Geo., Jas., Jno., etc., have been expanded into modern form. Each List is generally signed by two Magistrates, but their names have been omitted below on the ground that they can easily be traced from other sources. The villages are printed in the order in which they occur on the files, and are often “ alphabetically ” arranged only as regards the initial letter. For any particular village the Index should be consulted.

The qualifications for serving on a jury seem to be sufficiently well set out in the following extracts from lists of 1781, which serve also to illustrate the literary capacity of some of the constables.

“ September ye 9th : 1780 A trew List to the Best of My Knowlidge of all Persons in the parrish of Chalgrave in the County of Beddford that are Above the Age of One and twenty Years and Under the Age of Seventy years that are Qualifyed to Serve one Juries upon tryalls as Followeth.”