Published Articles
A Selection of Articles by David Wright
David Wright continues to write articles for magazines and other scholarly publications. A short selection are presented here:
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CITY OF CANTERBURY CONSOLIDATED PROBATE INDEX
by David Wright, MA, PhD, FSA, FSG, FHG This article is based on the gradual construction of a consolidated probate index for the city of Canterbury and its seventeen parishes and various extra-parochial places both within and without the walls which comprise the modern conurbation. The cathedral city of England’s oldest diocese (which comprised the eastern two-thirds of the ancient county) lay some fifty-five miles from London and was directly accessible from the capital along the Roman Watling Street. Three separate probate courts had jurisdiction over the city and diocese: overriding all others was the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, latterly housed at Doctor’s Commons, St Benet Paul’s Wharf, in the City of London.
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Article by David Wright, No.110, Winter 2018
William Somner (1606-1669) was one of the great English scholars of the seventeenth century. Somewhat forgotten today, his reputation is in need of restoration as we approach his 350th anniversary.
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The Earliest Parish Registers of the Diocese of Canterbury:
some Observations, Questions and Problems All genealogists (with a bit of luck) will trace one or two lines of their family tree back to the Tudor period and the reign of the first Elizabeth. They will then be dependent upon surviving parish registers for the basic details of baptism, marriage and burial of those distant ancestors. Thomas Cromwell ordered parish registers to be kept from 1538, and although many hundreds of such volumes have survived, using and interpreting them can present many problems: is the first register an original or one of the many copies ordered to be made in 1598? Do the original paper and copy parchment books still both exist in order to see whether the copying process was full and accurate?
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I was approached a few years ago and asked whether I would be interested in translating the Faversham charters with a view to eventual publication. They comprise a remarkable collection of some fifteen early mediaeval charters, including a copy of Magna Carta, and unusually are still all in the possession of the town, housed in the mayor’s parlour.
I set to work and over the period of a few weeks, whilst literally locked in the room where the charters had been taken out of their great safes, I proceeded to work on the texts, taking them in chronological order from the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries. It was just as well a large table was available, as some of them are many feet wide and long. |
An Obituary to Common SenseI wrote this article as a bit of fun and I hope you enjoy reading it.
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