Ecclesiastical Court Records
Yet another remarkable resource of interest to the legal history buff is now available online. The York Cause Papers document the Ecclesiastical Courts of York from 1300 to 1858, detailing accounts of disputes relating to church taxes, marriage, wills and inheritance. Although the Court of Chancery became the domain for estate disputes in England and Wales after 1588, the Ecclesiastical Courts had jurisdiction to intervene in the administration of estates prior to that time.
"Cause Papers" are the papers of individual cases heard in the Church Courts. Those cases that deal with Testamentary Disputes are separately categorized and generally consider situations were the Court was asked to intervene when an estate had not been administered.
Professor Mark Ormrod, University of York, quoted in an article of the York Cause Papers published online by the BBC, said the project would allow the widest possible public access to the records: "The resource is of tremendous importance to specialists in social, economic, religious and legal history and in the history of gender, sexuality, marriage and domesticity, as well as to a wide range of users with interests in family and local history."
Digitization of the records was funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), a British technology consortium for higher and further education. The work was performed by the University of York and the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Sheffield.
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