Images

Archive of Spiritual Court Records (including wills)

 

This section contains an archive of images of predominately 16th Spiritual Court Records which include many wills. These records were never microfilmed (and predate those that were). They have previously only been accessible by consulting the original manuscripts.

 

These records can take considerable practice to learn to read (due to the 16th century script and occasional use of latin and abbrevations). A few transcriptions and a rough index are provided however.

 

Early Lib Assed

 

This short section contains some circa 1500 accounts of the income collected by the parish Moars. These include the earliest surviving rent rolls for the Lord's land and predate those transcribed by Talbot. Until recently, these records formed of a larger unorganised and undated archive. Although most pages were microfilmed as part of that larger archive, they would not be easy to readily identify within it.

 

As with the Spiritual records, these documents can take considerable practice to learn to read (due to the script and use of latin and abbrevations).

 

Examples of Early Manx Documents

 

This section contains images of typical examples of the different record types. A standard resolution image is given on each page together with an explanation or partial transcription of it. There is also a link to a very high resolution version of the same image so as to permit a closer examination of the document. This high resolution picture is typically several mega-bytes in size and may therefore take a little while to download on slower connections.

 

Acknowledgments

 

Almost all of the images given here are photographs taken by myself of original manuscripts. These are included here by courtesy of Manx National Heritage. A few images within the Examples section come from scans of microfilmed copies of the records and the inclusion of these is additionally by courtesy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints which produced these microfilms. I would like to thank both organisations for consenting to their use here.