Visitations

[sigma]

Whilst in Cornwall I came across an extract from Visitations to Cornwall. What were/are the visitations.

[DJHawkes]

I think I mention these in one of my articles. 4 times a tear a representative from the diocese visited each parish within the diocese and made a transcript (copy) of the entries in the registers of baptism, marriage and burial. the parish registers were started by henryviii to piss off the pope but they where not very uniform nor very well maintained, Elizabeth I decided in 1598 that her church would have the best system in the known world and so she changed the type of media from parchment to velum and the way the books were indexed and lined and also how they were stored. then she decided that the local incumbents might not be uniform or reliable and so she ordered the quarterly visitations to copy the previous 3 months and these copies were kept at the bishops palace and subsequently tend to be the ones that survived the damp, rodents and theft. the BTs are the primary source the LDS used in the 50s and 60s to compile their igi.

[DJHawkes]

mind you as you refer to a county it may be the herald visitations, where the king sent representatives from the college of heralds to record the lineage and arms of landed gentry. that was to make sure of legitimacy of the line and make sure the family was using the right arms, also when crests were used that they were valid. it.s not a massive source for research in family history but is interesting, except for the Americans who nick the admiral bearings and usually plink the wrong crest on the top and add their own motto that suits. unless the person granted the arms is still around then the arms are dormant.

[DJHawkes]

armorial not admiral and plonk not plink, sorry, on the kobo.

[sigma]

Thanks Dot, it was an extract from the herald visitations.

[DJHawkes]

found my notes on heraldry and it includes a lot about the visitations and one note I have is that peers were neither compelled to attend a visitation nor are there many cases of the armoral bearings or pedigrees of the peerage recorded in the visitation books.