Heraldic Visitations
by Terri Paajanen
If you are doing any genealogical research in the UK, particularly in the 1500-1650 date range, you will find the Harleian Society's heraldic visitations to be of enormous value.
Between the years 1530 and 1688, herald's traveled through England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, collecting family records in order to establish pedigrees and ancestry relationships. For some locations, there was only one visit, but many large regions had 2 or 3 of them. My own family comes from Cheshire, and there are heraldic visitations for 1580, 1613 and 1663.
This project was actually undertaken because of a rampant misuse of coats of arms, and declarations of nobility. In 1530, King Henry VIII gave warrant to Thomas Benolt to begin the official visits and to determine if arms were being used illegally. The visiting heralds and their deputies even had the authority to deface monuments if the proper proof was not presented for their use.
The contents of the visitations are a mix of narrative description for each family, as well as actual drawn pedigree charts. Large families were divided up and different branches were labelled by their locations with the region. Though relationships were clearly outlined, birth and death dates were not frequently recorded since they were not necessary for the specific task at hand. Illustrations of family crests were usually included.
The herald's visitations are not infallible. The records that were presented by the nobles may have been incorrect or perhaps just recorded wrong by the heralds. I have examined my own family history in the Cheshire visitations for 1580 and 1613 and found discrepancies between them. Namely, one pair of men are recorded in 1580 as father and son, but in 1613 they are shown as being brothers.
Today, an organization called the Harleian Society has published many of them for public use. The group was named for Robert Harley, the 1st Earl of Oxford, who began the collection of visitations. The original notebooks and manuscripts are housed in the British Library in London. The Harleian Society continues to publish copies of other historic documents of interest to genealogist, such as parish and church registers, visitation records, and other manuscripts. You can subscribe to their mailing list on their website.
Some of the visitations are available online for free (either scanned images or transcribed documents), but most of them are not. The UK Genealogy Archives site has several that you can view online.
You can buy CD versions of these records from places like Archive CD Books.