Catalogue description Office of the Governors of Queen Anne's Bounty and predecessors: Certificates of Institutions to Livings

This series contains the surviving certificates of collations (appointments of clergymen), admissions and institutions to dignities and benefices (ecclesiastical offices to which an income was attached) entered in the registers of the bishops of English and Welsh dioceses, and of the deans and chapters of the cathedral churches of London, Salisbury and York.

These were sent, successively, to the Court of First Fruits and Tenths (1540-1554), the Barons of the Exchequer (1554-1873), the Exchequer Division of the High Court of Justice (1873-1880), and the King's Bench Division of the High Court of Justice (1880-1926). From 1559 until 1838, the certificates were forwarded by the court to the Office of First Fruits and Tenths, an office within the Exchequer, and thereafter to the Office of the Governors of Queen Anne's Bounty.

The purpose of the certificates was to inform the appropriate authorities from whom payment of first fruits was due. These were a charge upon the incumbent, not upon the living, and represented the profits of a benefice for the first year of an incumbency. Only one certificate, for the diocese of St Asaph, survives from the reign of Henry VIII. A few are extant from the reign of Philip and Mary for the dioceses of London and Rochester. For most dioceses the series of surviving certificates begins with the reign of Elizabeth I.

Institutions to livings during the Commonwealth period (1649-54) are recorded in the Register of Presentations to Livings by Commissioners under the Great Seal: British Library, Additional MS 36792.

Institution Books serving as a means of access for the period 1556-1838 are available in the public areas, IND 1/17000 - IND 1/17015