RECORD ROUND-UP
What’s available online and in the archives
Catholic nonjurors
English Catholic Nonjurors of 1715 can be found at archive.org. It is a summary transcription by Edgar Estcourt in 1885, which gives the names and details of Catholics in England and Wales and registers of their lands, no matter how small a plot. They had refused to take loyalty oaths and so their land was forfeited. The original series is available at The National Archives (series FEC 1), with a section for each county. For example, Kent is under FEC1/1168-1173. Oath records for West Yorkshire are on ancestry.co.uk.
Orders, embassies and parishes
A database of monks and nuns of the Benedictine Order, complete with names and brief details, is searchable at www. plantata.org.uk.
In London, foreign Catholic embassies were allowed their own chapels, which English and Irish Catholics attended too. See catholicfhs.
online and findmypast.co.uk. Phillimore’s Warwickshire Parish Registers can be found at archive.org. This includes transcriptions of baptisms 1657-1824 for the Franciscan Mission at the Church of St Peter, Broad Street, Birmingham. This actually covers a much wider area of Birmingham, and records names of children, parents and godparents. Many registers and other items can be found on this website by searching with ‘papist’, ‘recusant’, ‘Catholic’ or place names.
Catholic parish registers
A new upload of images and transcriptions covering the Birmingham and Westminster Catholic Dioceses registers of the English Midland and London Districts is available on findmypast.co.uk. Liverpool Catholic records are online at ancestry.co.uk with some also on www.liverpoolhistoryprojects.co.uk. The Lancashire Online Parish Clerk Project ( www.lan- opc.org.uk) includes a number of Catholic churches.
Estate records and family archives
For surviving archives and estate records, The National Archives’ Discovery Catalogue is a good place to start your search ( discovery. nationalarchives.gov.uk).
Schools and children’s homes
Many Catholic school records are included in the National Schools collection on findmypast.
co.uk. Others may be found in Catholic diocese archives. Details of children’s homes can be found on the Former Children’s Homes website ( www.formerchildrenshomes.org.uk) or Children’s Homes ( childrenshomes.org.uk/ list/ RC. shtml).
Library resources
The Catholic Record Society ( catholicrecordsociety.co.uk) holds Returns of Papists 1767, by ES Worrall which features a transcription of the names of Catholic families in England and Wales. English and Welsh Priests 1558-1800 by DA Bellanger and English and Welsh Priests 1801-1914 by Charles FitzgeraldLombard can both be found at Downside Abbey in Somerset ( www.downside.co.uk/ downside- library). Catholic National Library, now at Ushaw College, Durham, is home to mission register transcriptions and other resources. Contact ushaw.library@ durham .ac.uk for more information.