G H de M Plantagenet Harrison: Notes on the Public Records

PRO 66/3

This series contains thirty large volumes of notes on various public records compiled by General G H de M Plantagenet-Harrison (the pseudonym of James Phillippe, a genealogist), and contains abstracts of entries mainly in the de banco rolls and the coram rege rolls.

It appears, from a study of the title pages of successive volumes, that around 1830 Plantagenet-Harrison began to research the families of Richmondshire with a view to producing a history of that area. The first volume is a retrospective collection of notes, including some Harrison family history, produced between the years 1830 and 1865, and the following twenty-nine volumes were written between 1865 and 1888.

By 1867 the remit of his research began to expand beyond Richmondshire, and he became involved in a wide-ranging study of the pedigrees and histories of families throughout England.

1830-1888

This series can be viewed as a series of informal, selective, manuscript calendars to:
CP 40
The plea rolls described here can be found in KB 27

The National Archives, Kew

Public Record

English

G H de M Plantagenet-Harrison, General, 1830-1888

30 volume(s)

On Plantagenet-Harrison's death, sometime between 1888 and 1890, his daughter Blanche offered the volumes to the Public Record Office, for £600. The office decided that it required only twelve of the volumes, namely 3-9 and 13-17, and paid £240 for the books. By 1944 the volumes were in the possession of an Arthur Campling of Bexley, and around 1949 the PRO bought a further five volumes, numbers 24-28. The remaining volumes subsequently passed to Philip Blake Esq, who died in June 1994. In August 1994 the remaining volumes, 1-2, 10-12, 18-23, and 29-30 were offered to the PRO by Mr Blake's executors.

Only one volume of Plantagenet-Harrison's history was published, The History of Yorkshire: Volume I, Wapentake of Gilling West (1879).

Each volume is prefaced by a full index.