Catalogue description Exchequer: Office of First Fruits and Tenths: Comptroller's State Books

These volumes were compiled in the office of the comptroller of first fruits and tenths to record the current state of compositions for first fruits made by incumbents on institution to benefices, as an aid to the receiver of first fruits, who was responsible for the collection of the dues.

Entries, which are in chronological order, record the names of incumbents and the location of their benefices, the names of sureties and the dates of the various payments. The series is not complete.

The earliest surviving volume contains an index of incumbents' names; a similar index was made for the first three folios of the next. Thereafter, indexes of incumbents' names, with references by term and serial number, are found in a series of indexes apparently common to the state books and the composition books in E 334. These indexes are available on open shelves, exept that for 1691-1705, which is E 336/10