10/09/2025
Kent Ecclesiastical Court Depositions Index added to IHGS library collection.
Ecclesiastical court depositions are unique for family history research because they often preserve the spoken words of ordinary people, recorded in detail by clerks.
Unlike many official records, these depositions can include personal testimony about daily life, family relationships, disputes, reputations, and community ties. They may reveal information about individuals who appear nowhere else in the written record, offering vivid insights into character, behaviour, and social networks. For genealogists, they provide a rare glimpse of ancestors’ voices and experiences, enriching family histories with colour and context beyond names and dates, whilst at the same time providing valuable evidence of family relationship.
However, they can be difficult to search as many have not been indexed. This index is invaluable in indexing depositions for Kent from the 1500 to 1700s allowing you to find if your ancestor appeared in an ecclesiastical court case.
The information in the index varies but will usually provide you with a name and catalogue number so you can easily obtain a copy of the deposition from the relevant archive. For 20% of the entries more information is given which may provide other details, such as residence, occupation and family relationships.
The index covers mainly East Kent parishes but there are entries for West Kent.
Find out more about the collection
Some forty-five years ago the late Duncan Harrington had already perceived the extreme value of church court depositions and gathered a small group of volunteers to help in their transcription and indexing. With grateful thanks to Dr David Wright for his recent work on collating the index and for his description of the index below.
Between them the extremely rich records of the Archdeaconry and Consistory Courts of Canterbury which covered the entire diocese of Canterbury (that is, the eastern two-thirds of the county), as well as certain other lesser sources, have produced an index of some 25,000 entries, now searchable in an alphabetical sequence.
The depositions of witnesses in such ecclesiastical court cases are amongst the most valuable but hitherto least exploited sources for social history, and one from which local historians and genealogists could greatly profit. The witness statements are often recorded verbatim and include many details to be found nowhere else: parish and length of occupancy, age, status or occupation, lifetime moves and, crucially, age and birthplace. The details are then completed by the witness signing or making a mark. This is an extraordinary range of information and applicable to many kinds of study – parish or community structure, migration and distances travelled, and literacy. All this will far surpass the fragile evidence of parish registers, and in the case of the declared age and birthplace will surely extend many pedigrees and likely overturn some others where an assumption has only too easily and dangerously been made.
The depositions of witnesses in ecclesiastical court cases are part of the written records of the Instance Court and illustrate the many activities of the church courts which included non-payment of tithes, defamation, paternity, adultery, matrimonial disputes (often in the form of breaches of promise), illegal sale of glebe and wood, non-repair of vicarage property, non-payment of a parish clerk’s wages, vestry affairs, and endless disputes over the provision and ex*****on of wills.
Information given in the index
It should be said immediately that the index is based only on the start of each case where in an opening short preamble the witness details are recorded. These are in Latin (before 1733), but in a common form and should present no problems to anybody who can interpret Roman numerals (whether in words or figures) and has some familiarity with Kentish geography and surnames. Then follow perhaps several pages detailing the case where may be found references to family, neighbours, parish officials and other people. There are many deponents amongst both senior and junior clergy whose career movements (and college origins) may sometimes be revealed. The fuller entries tend to be in the middle part of the period, say 1580-1650, the earlier ones from 1411 and the later to 1755 giving less detail, but of course still equally valuable in at least establishing an individual’s residence in a certain parish at a certain date.
About 80 per cent of the slips give a minimum of name and precise archival reference. Of the balance many add at least parish and occupation/status. Others add birthplace and parish moves, these usually part of Duncan’s casework and subsequently transferred. For some individuals there are multiple references which may prove particularly valuable in constructing a biography, but care should be taken that they do not relate to two or more persons of the same name.
Extraordinary as the depositions are, there are some caveats. Whilst those called as witnesses are from all social classes and occupations, they tended to be the more respectable and established in the case of tithe disputes and some other matters. Witnesses might not have recited all the places they had lived in, through ignorance or forgetfulness, and equally the officials may not have been willing or able to write down a tedious list, sometimes rather just giving the parishes of current abode and origin. Whether people moved alone or with family, masters or servants cannot be determined. No indication of routes taken between places is given and nor are moves within larger parishes, although moves within the various Canterbury city parishes are sometimes given. Whilst the details given are probably for the most part true, human frailty in a largely illiterate and innumerate population should always be borne in mind (ages are nearly always prefaced by ‘or thereabouts’). How many of us today could recite with accuracy our lifetime’s house moves?
Wealden Parishes
Here we are on much firmer ground. References to deponents in the eighteen Wealden parishes of Benenden, Bethersden, Biddenden, Cranbrook, Frittenden, Goudhurst, Hawkhurst, Headcorn, High Halden, Marden, Newenden, Rolvenden, Sandhurst, Smarden, Staplehust, Tenterden, Wittersham and Woodchurch were transcribed and indexed by the late Jules de Launay and helpers into seven manuscript volumes with copious accompanying indexes (c. 4,000 entries). In all cases the full details of the informative preamble are given. All this material is quite separate from the main card index and is taken from PRC39/1-55, X10/1-21 and X11/1-21.
Rochester Diocese
There is very little surviving deposition material for west Kent other than the national records mentioned elsewhere. The main index (and also the Wealden parishes) do have scattered references to such individuals but only if they have moved eastwards and then indicate a western birthplace.
There are, however, two Rochester diocese deposition books held at Maidstone which have been included.
DRb/Jd1 (1541-1571) about 375 entries roughly transcribed into a paper book with accompanying calendar of surnames.
DRb/Jd2 (1631-1636) about 125 entries fully transcribed into an index book arranged by initial letter of surname.
Sources and scope of the index
The following list of contents includes notes on individual coverage where known.
Kent Archives and Local History (Maidstone)
PRC38/ 1-4 Depositions (1694-1755) complete
PRC39/1-55 Depositions (1555-1649; 1661-1694) complete
J/X/ 6, 8, 9 Depositions (c.1570-c.1610)
J/X/10/1-21 Depositions (c.1540s-c.1580s) possibly complete
J/X/11/1-21 Depositions (1585-1687; 1693-1696; 1713-1753) taken from and improving on the Tyler and Woodruff index which William Urry thought to have been compiled in the course of research but was incomplete.
J/Z/2/29 Depositions (1693-1696) complete
J/Z/3/20 Depositions (1717-1753) complete
J/Z/4/13, 15 Depositions (1730s-1740s)
PRC5/1 Caveats (c.1620-1630s)
PRC18/42; 51-53 Miscellaneous (c.1700-1799)
PRC44/3 Commission Acts
PRC44/4/6-7 Allegations 1617-1620; 1723-1726
PRC44/6; 14-16 Miscellaneous
PRC48/5 Inventories
Q/SRP Quarter sessions (c.1630-1631)
The National Archives
Exchequer Depositions E134: Kent entries 1558-1695 complete
Country Depositions C21; C22 (coverage unknown)
Town Depositions C24 (coverage unknown)
High Court of Delegates DEL 3/2; 3/6 (1634-1647) (coverage unknown)
Star Chamber STAC J3, J22; T7, T17, T18, T20, T22, T31, T36 (coverage unknown)
Canterbury Cathedral Archives
Boxes B51; K2; Marlowe 3
U31/L1 (1709-1711)
Archdeaconry of Lewes
Ep. II/5, 9, 18 Depositions (1580s-c.1606) (Kent references, perhaps complete)
Summary
The contents of the index offer a cornucopia of valuable detail easily worthy of far greater analysis, perhaps to dissertation level. Its contents stand as a remarkable finding aid, and although its exact coverage and completeness are now probably irrecoverable, this is not to look a gift horse in the mouth, for the range of surnames is vast and, armed with the basic entry, the researcher can then follow through in reading the full case to gain more information. Kentish researchers will be eternally grateful to Duncan Harrington for this extraordinary achievement.
