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Court Records information for Linkinhorne and places above it in the hierarchy

Linkinhorne

Some Quarter Session Records for the parishes of Linkinhorne, South Hill and St Ive, are possibly available on the Callington Area Heritage site (broken link) .

Cornwall

  • A Dictionary with thousands of definitions & explanations of legal terms, phrases & concepts is available on-line.
  • Freeholders' Lists (also called Jurors' Lists). From 1696, rural vestries and urban corporations had to send to the Clerk of the Peace for their county, lists of the people within their jurisdictions who were eligible for jury service. These were men between the ages of 21 and 70 who owned freeholds worth at least 40 shillings per year. They were listed under the parishes in which they lived, but if their qualifying property was in another parish this was sometimes also stated. The annual value of their freeholds might be noted too, together with the owner's rank or occupation.
    In 1825 the upper age of eligibility was reduced to 60, and the qualification revised to freeholds worth £10 per year; leaseholds for 21 years or more worth £20, rateability as householder at £20 (£30 in Middlesex), or occupation of a house with fifteen or more windows. At the same time the list of exempt occupations was extended. From 1832, freeholders' addresses were given on the lists, and the qualifying property specified. The freeholders' lists provide a very useful location record for tracing the whereabouts of a family, and to some extent for establishing its economic status. The records are housed among the Quarter Sessions papers at the Cornwall Record Office.
    In 1873 a Return of Owners of Land was published, covering the whole country.(Fitzhugh's Dictionary of Genealogy).
  • Quarter Session Records for Cornwall are available on National Archives
  • The Harvard School of Law contains a searchable collection of Chancery writs relating to Cornwall. This collection of writs praecipe issued in Chancery, with other related documents, including some writs capias issued during the reigns of the later Stuart monarchs. These are not the charters issued to, and returned by the county sheriffs, but rather the unsealed copies kept in Chancery.
  • An Index to Cornwall Archdeaconry Court Records is available on-line. These include Defamations Records 1742 to 1827, Defamations Records 1729 to 1842, Defamations Records 1730 to 1837, Defamations Records 1722 to 1837, Divorce & Alimony Records 1737 to 1789, Marriage Contracts Records 1739 to 1750, Church Rates Records 1672 to 1835.
  • Some Cornish Court Depositions are found in miscellaneous Cornish Records, giving names, residence, occupation and ages of various persons.
  • The findmypast.com website is a pay-per-view site which provides, inter alia, a number of useful databases:
    • Index to Divorce and Matrimonial Causes 1858 - 1903.
    • Index to Death Duty Registers 1796 - 1903.
    You can register and search by surname for free.
  • The proceedings of the Old Bailey 1674 to 1834 is a fully searchable online edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing accounts of over 100,000 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court.
  • Coroners' Inquests. The Courtney Library in Truro have an index of Coroners Inquests in Cornwall compiled by one of their volunteers from the newspaper archives. The Email address of the librarian, Angela Broome, is: RIC@royalcornwallmuseum.org.uk.
  • Some other resources available include:
    • Tamblin, Stuart (transcr.). Criminal Register Indexes (PRO HO 27), Vol. 2: Devon & Cornwall (1805-16).

      Available from: Family History Indexes, 14 Copper Leaf Close, Moulton, Northampton (2000). [Diskette and microfiche].
    • Tamblin, Stuart (transcr.). Criminal Register Indexes (PRO HO 27), Vol. CDP1: Devon, Cornwall, Somerset & Dorset (1805-16).

      Available from: Family History Indexes, 14 Copper Leaf Close, Moulton, Northampton (2001). [CD]

England

  • There are numerous Research Guides from The National Archives dealing with the records of various "courts of law". Also look under keywords "assize courts", "chancery (court of)", "conveyance of land", "divorce", "equity courts", "exchequer", "funds in court" and more.
  • It may help in understanding the various records to read this history of the justice system (in England and Wales).

UK and Ireland

  • The TNA has numerous Research Guides pertaining to Courts of Law.
  • Many coroners' inquests were subsequently reported in local newspapers  
  • The Court of Chivalry 1634-1640 - "The aim of the site is to make available to scholars, researchers, local historians and genealogists the records of the Court of Chivalry during its heyday between 1634 and 1640. Over this period the court dealt with well over a thousand cases of which it has been possible to recover details of 738. These cover a wide variety of topics relating to the social, political and cultural history of the period, from ship money and the Bishops' Wars to pew disputes and duelling, from heralds visitations and grants of arms to brawls in the street and quarrels at race meetings."
  • An Introduction to Quarter Sessions Records (archived copy), by Richard Ratcliffe.