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The Devon and Cornwall Record Society promotes the study of the history of south-west England from the Middle Ages to the present. It transcribes and publishes original records in order to make them accessible to anyone who is interested in learning about or researching local history.

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18 results in Devon and Cornwall Record Society

Devon Parish Taxpayers, 1500-1650
  • Edited by Todd Gray
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    17 February 2024
    Print publication:
    24 January 2023
  • Tax lists are a key means of understanding parish life in the 1500s and early 1600s. This collection of 112 records for towns and villages such as Crediton and Dartmouth is published here for the first time. It reveals those individuals who were the bedrock of their societies and helps us in understanding how local society worked in this period. It is through the study of these documents that we can unravel how differently each parish was organised in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and see how people took part in parish life. The name lists also provide rich material for family and local historians.

Plymouth Building Accounts of the 16th and 17th Centuries
  • Edited by Edwin Welch
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    15 February 2024
    Print publication:
    01 January 1967
  • The Plymouth Building Accounts record the expenditure on three public building projects undertaken in Plymouth between 1564 and 1620, including the building of the Guildhall in 1606-7. This edition, with introduction, tells us much about the city's builders, their wages, and the techniques they used, and will interest historians of architecture and of urban economies.

Robert Furse
  • A Devon Family Memoir of 1593
  • Edited by Anita Travers
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    15 February 2024
  • In 1593 Robert Furse, a gentleman and lord of a manor in Devon, learned that he was dying, leaving a son of only nine years old. Unable to oversee his son's upbringing, he wrote a book for the child, his mentors and his successors, giving moral and practical advice. Furse's memoir sets out the family's history and properties, giving descriptions, values, and proofs of legal titles. He also includes character sketches and discusses lawsuits, gossip, scandal, murder and executions, all rendered in his own vernacular style. The book will interest not only historians of Devon but also readers interested in the life of the gentry in Tudor England.

The Diocese of Exeter in 1821
  • Bishop Carey's Replies to Queries before Visitation
  • Michael Cook
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    15 February 2024
  • In 1821 Bishop Carey conducted a visitation of the clergy of Devon and Cornwall, asking about the state of their parishes. This volume, along with DCRS New Series volume 4, presents the answers for Devon, and they tell us much about religious life in the county, including the state of parishes, the activities of the clergy, and the relationship between dissenters and the ordinary life of the parish.

The Memoir of John Butter
  • Surgeon, Militiaman, Sportsman and Founder of the Plymouth Royal Eye Infirmary
  • Edited by Dee Tracey, Mike Tracey
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    17 December 2023
    Print publication:
    07 November 2023
  • John Butter's Memoir is a first-hand account of nineteenth-century medicine, by a pioneering physician and surgeon who founded one of Britain's earliest eye hospitals. It is published here for the first time.

Nicholas Roscarrock's 'Lives of the Saints'
  • Cornwall and Devon
  • Edited by Nicholas Orme
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 August 2023
  • Nicholas Roscarrock (c. 1548-1634) was a Cornish Catholic who suffered torture and imprisonment in the Tower of London, and afterwards wrote a great dictionary of British and Irish saints. Using medieval Latin saints' lives together with precious folklore not recorded elsewhere, he wrote accounts of Petroc and Piran, Neot and Samson, Sidwell and Urith, and many lesser-known figures. Here are many familiar and some unique stories: St Columb's well whose water would not boil; St Endelient, King Arthur and the cow; and St Menfre who threw her comb at the Devil. This edition provides, for the first time, a printed text of all Roscarrock's articles which relate to the saints of Cornwall and Devon. An introduction tells the story of Roscarrock's life and describes his book, and detailed notes explain what is known today about the saints.

The Devonshire Lay Subsidy of 1332
  • Edited by Audrey M. Erskine
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 August 2023
  • The documents known as Lay Subsidy Rolls are the accounts compiled by local assessors setting out the sums owed by taxpayers to the Exchequer for the taxation of their personal wealth. This volume publishes the text for Devon, translated into English. It provides a wealth of information for local history in the fourteenth century, and allows us to see how government administration worked at a local level.

A Calendar of Cornish Glebe Terriers 1673-1735
  • Edited by Richard Potts
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 August 2023
  • Glebe terriers were records of parish income and endowments compiled to help the Church monitor its possessions. They tell us much about local history, including information about the parsonage and church lands, church furnishings, tithes and local topography and field names. The parsonage buildings are described in great detail that tells us much about local buildings and furniture. This edition publishes for the first time the 126 records surviving from 1679-80 and the 118 records for 1726-7, covering over half the parishes in Cornwall.

The Cartulary of Canonsleigh Abbey
  • Edited by Vera C. M. London
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    21 June 2023
  • This volume summarizes in English the Cartulary of Canonsleigh Abbey, which preserves the land records and endowments of this medieval religious house.

Sir Francis Henry Drake (1723-1794)

The Cartulary of St Michael's Mount
  • Edited by P. L. Hull
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    10 June 2023
    Print publication:
    01 January 1962
  • This volume presents the medieval cartulary of St Michael's Mount in Cornwall, a priory of the French abbey of Mont St-Michel. Presenting the document in full, this scholarly edition will interest historians of medieval Cornwall as well as those working on monastic history more broadly.

The Diocese of Exeter in 1821
  • Bishop Carey's Replies to Queries before Visitation
  • Edited by Michael Cook
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    09 June 2023
    Print publication:
    01 January 1958
  • In 1821 Bishop Carey conducted a visitation of the clergy of Devon and Cornwall, asking about the state of their parishes. This volume, along with DCRS New Series Volume 4, presents the answers for Devon, and they tell us much about religious life in the county, including the state of parishes, the activities of the clergy, and the relationship between dissenters and the ordinary life of the parish.

Stratton Churchwardens' Accounts, 1512-1578
  • Edited by Joanna Mattingly
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    02 June 2023
    Print publication:
    16 February 2018
  • Spanning the period 1512-78, the High Cross churchwardens' accounts of Stratton, in Cornwall, are unusually complete and informative. Written mostly in English, they are among only eighteen surviving sets of Pre-Reformation churchwardens' accounts which cover the whole period 1535-70, when most Reformation change took place.

Collecting the New, Rare and Curious
  • Letters Selected from the Correspondence of the Cornish Mineralogists Philip Rashleigh, John Hawkins and William Gregor, 1755-1822
  • Edited by R. J. Cleevely
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    02 June 2023
    Print publication:
    01 September 2011
  • Mineral collectors made a significant contribution to the development of mineralogy as a science and the rich variety of specimens found in the South West of England enabled Cornish collectors to play a significant part in this process. This volume contains 168 letters selected from the correspondence of three eighteenth-century Cornishmen - Philip Rashleigh, the Reverend William Gregor, and John Hawkins - with other British and European researchers. It illustrates the motives of collectors and the ways in which improvements in identifying and studying minerals were made. The letters between Rashleigh and his nephew Pole Carew show the initial stage of acquiring and exchanging specimens. Other letters by all three men reveal their contribution to cataloguing and classifying minerals. The Introduction to the volume discusses the archives and letters, and sets out the broader historical and intellectual context in which the three collectors were active. A chronological list of all relevant letters in the three men's archives also provides a unique reference source.

The Cornish Lands of the Arundells of Lanherne, Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries
  • Volume 41
  • Edited by H. S. A. Fox, O. J. Padel
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    21 March 2020
    Print publication:
    01 January 1998
  • The Arundell family of Lanherne, near Newquay, was one of the richest and most important in Cornwall in the late Middle Ages, having extensive property in most parts of the county as well as elsewhere (notably Devon and Dorset). Cornwall Record Office has recently acquired the family archive, and this provides the opportunity for publishing some of its rich contents. As a first offering, this volume contains rentals and surveys of the Arundell lands in Cornwall from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries. These documents list the lands and tenants of each property belonging to the family, often in considerable detail. The earliest survey is dated 1343, just before the Black Death, and covers some of the Arundell lands in the area of St Columb Major, Newquay and Padstow. The earliest full survey is for 1451-63 and includes those properties and others in the areas of the Lizard, Penwith, St Austell, Bodmin and the Clay Country. Even then the family lands were still growing, and in the sixteenth century are added further properties in South Cornwall (including one near Looe) and elsewhere; these appear in the later documents published here. These rentals and surveys provide much information about Cornish history in general and in particular for local and family historians in Cornwall, for those interested in social and agricultural history, manorial history, place-names and personal names. There is an introduction covering some of the topics illustrated by the surveys, and helping to make the material accessible to non-specialists.

The Caption of Seisin of the Duchy of Cornwall 1377
  • Volume 17
  • Edited by P. L. Hull
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    21 March 2020
    Print publication:
    01 January 1971
  • This volume publishes a survey of the manors of Duchy of Cornwall conducted in 1377. It tells us much about the Duchy's tenants and the services and rents they owed, as well as details about the Duchy's other sources of income. It will interest historians of medieval agriculture and the rural economy.

Devon Monastic Lands
  • Calendar of Particulars for Grants 1536–1558
  • Volume 1
  • Edited by Joyce Youings
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    21 March 2020
    Print publication:
    01 January 1955
  • This volume presents the surveys and valuations of all the monastic lands in Devon which were disposed of by the Crown after the dissolution of the monasteries, a redistribution of land which had major social and economic implications. It is a valuable source for historians of society and economy in the sixteenth century and includes a detailed introduction by the editor, a leading expert in the history of Devon.

Benjamin Donn's Map of Devon 1765
  • Volume 9
  • Introduction by W. L. D. Ravenhill
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    21 March 2020
    Print publication:
    01 January 1965
  • Benjamin Donn, a surveyor from Bideford in north Devon, drew a one-inch map of Devon in 1765 which sought to survey the county as accurately as possible. This attractive facsimile comes with an introduction which discusses Donn, his surveying techniques, and the features he noted on the map.