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

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.

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.