If the searcher cannot produce the necessary ticket, he will be given a form to fill up and get signed by the householder, which he will be requested to send to the Record Office before his next visit.
On receipt of this form, duly signed, a ticket entitling him to make researches there will be posted to him.
At the Record Office the pedigree-hunter will, of course, find most of the various classes of miscellaneous MSS. which have been mentioned as likely to be of greatest service to him. There, also, he might consult hundreds of indexes which would not help his particular object in the least, and he may indeed be bewildered by the vast stores of antiquarian information so lavishly offered to him.
A most useful book, which he will find on the shelves, is Scargill-Bird’s Guide to the Record Office. It enumerates the various classes of documents stored there.
But the searcher may still be in doubt as to his individual case. If so, and he, having looked up the various MSS. recommended, thinks additional information might be forthcoming, he should then consult one of the Record Office officials, stating the exact point on which he is anxious to obtain information; probably the required document will be in his hands a few minutes later.
The following classes of documents will be found the most generally useful to the genealogical searcher in the Record Office: The State Papers, Chancery and Exchequer Proceedings, The Parliamentary Surveys, Feet of Fines, Royalist Composition Papers, Patent and Close Rolls.
The Heralds’ College.—The fees payable at the Heralds’ College are not exorbitant, and, of course, stores of armorial and other genealogical information are preserved there. The London pedigree-hunter has the advantage here also; for though he cannot, as in the Record Office, search himself through all the requisite documents, yet if he applies in person at the Heralds’ College (this is called a personal search), the fee for information on a required point will be five shillings; if the inquiry is made by correspondence, ten shillings and sixpence.
The treasures of the Heralds’ Office are divided broadly into Records and Collections. A general Record search costs two guineas, and a search through Records and Collections five guineas.
Somerset House.—In this vast storehouse of documents the two classes which will most appeal to the genealogist are the collection of Wills and the general Registers.
Wills earlier than 1858 are found in the local Diocesan Registries, and are in a variety of places scattered over England. Formerly, if a person owned property in more than one diocese, his will would be proved in the Archbishop’s Court. So wills were proved in Canterbury Prerogative Court for all parts of England, and not merely locally. All these Canterbury Prerogative wills are at Somerset House. Some northern wills are at York for the same reason. But all wills since 1858 are deposited at Somerset House.