Catalogue description Office of the Governors of Queen Anne's Bounty: Records Mainly Inherited from the Office of First Fruits and Tenths

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Details of QAB 1
Reference: QAB 1
Title: Office of the Governors of Queen Anne's Bounty: Records Mainly Inherited from the Office of First Fruits and Tenths
Description:

This series is extremely diverse, consisting of a few substantial blocks of related material, and many isolated items not forming part of surviving series within this department or within any of the series of records of the Office of First Fruits and Tenths.

The records of the Office of First Fruits and Tenths include:

Returns by diocesan bishops and other ordinaries to writs of certiorari issued from the Exchequer in cases concerning exemption from first fruits and tenths; Bonds for payments of first fruits, in four instalments, given by incumbents other than bishops between 1658 and 1803 and by bishops between 1711 and 1809; Bonds for payment of excess, the so-called 'fifth bonds', abolished in 1704 at the establishment of the Bounty; Exchequer writs with returns relating to the collection of arrears of first fruits in various counties, 19-36 Chas II and 8 Anne; A number of duplicate declared accounts of the remembrancer and receiver of first fruits and tenths; Remembrancer's constat book and three composition books; A short run of receipts for payment of tenths into the Exchequer of receipt, 1706-1710; Lists of those who had not paid tenths ('non-solvents') in the diocese of Peterborough, 1699-1710; and numerous documents, more or less ephemeral, concerning the complex procedures for the recording and collection of the two dues from the sixteenth century until 1838.

The records of the Governors of Queen Anne's Bounty include:

Documents concerned with the composition made by the governors in 1709 with Henrietta, Lady Waldegrave, then holder of an annuity payable from the revenues from first fruits and tenths, granted to Louise, duchess of Portsmouth, in 1680. Other records of similar date refer to the efforts to collect long-standing arrears due from ecclesiastical dignitaries.

Among the so-called 'miscellanea' at the end of this series, are a number of records which relate to particular estates, mostly not now identifiable. They include accounts, court rolls, title deeds and two extracts from pipe rolls.

Date: 1343-1839
Arrangement:

It is clear from the correspondence between the Bounty Office and the Public Record Office in both 1883 and 1922 that the transfers were intended to be of 'records and muniments of the Office of First Fruits and Tenths in the..Governers' (PRO 1/87, 6 Feb 1922). It is therefore not clear why the records, with the exception of the certificates of institution were not incorporated into existing series of records of the Office of First Fruits and Tenths (E 331 - E 344 and E 347), but were instead placed in distinct group with the misleading lettercode QAB.

Separated material:

The majority of the surviving records of the Office of the Governors of Queen Anne's Bounty are held in the Church of England Record Centre, 15 Galleywall Road, Bermondsey, London, SE 16 3PB. Some records of ecclesiastical estates, formerly in the custody of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and in that of the Church Commissioners, are also held there, although most records of the estates of major ecclesiastical bodies have been returned to them or deposited in appropriate local record offices.

Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Physical description: 13 box(es)
Custodial history: Most of the contents of this series were, in fact, created or amassed within the Office of First Fruits and Tenths and were merely inherited by the Governors and Treasurers of Queen Anne's Bounty when the Office was abolished in 1838. The bulk of the records forming the series came to the Public Record Office in two transfers from the Office of the Governers of Queen Anne's Bounty in 1883 and 1922. The 'miscellanea' at the end of the series did not form part of the holdings of either the Office of First Fruits and Tenths or the Bounty Office, and it appears that this handful of documents represents strays from the records relating to various church estates, deposited in the Public Record Office by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in the late nineteenth century, and returned to their successors, the Church Commissioners for England in 1964.

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