British Emigration Records, 1573-1677

This collection comprises The National Archives’ series E 157 (titled Registers of licences to pass beyond the seas, 1573-1677). There are two main register types in this collection: the statutory oaths of allegiance taken under the Act of 1609 by soldiers before leaving to serve in the Low Countries (1613-1633), and the licences for individuals travelling to Europe (1573-1677). Additionally, there are included some registers pertaining to individuals travelling to Barbados, New England, and other colonies from 1634 to 1639 (and one register from 1677).  

The records showing passengers licensed to embark to the Americas are tremendously rare early survivals. We see parties bound, for example, for Barbados, for St Christopher, for Maryland, and for Virginia, mostly in the 1630s. After 1609, all travellers over the age of 18 had to take an oath of allegiance to the monarch, which was registered by the Clerk of the Passes and led to the issuing of a licence. There was an expectation that the licence would be used quickly and, indeed, some were time-limited and required return to England within a specific period of time. The dates shown in the records are the date of the oath or the date of issue of the licence, not the date of actual departure. 

Researchers should remember that these early records are dated by the old calendar, when March 1634, for example, would be immediately followed the next month by April 1635.  

Name transcription criteria 

All the surviving documents within this collection are written in the so-called secretary hand common of the time, which features strong use of abbreviations and elision. The original images in this series are accompanied by transcriptions of key names and dates, and the following criteria have been used: 

• In the original records forenames are often subject to abbreviation and, in most cases, we have expanded these, e.g. Jno to John, Ric and Ricd to Richard, and Willm to William. The abbreviation Jo, which usually refers to John, has been left abbreviated as in some cases it will refer to Joseph. Typically, though, Joseph is abbreviated as Jos. 
• Spelling at the time these records were created had not settled, and was still relatively fluid and phonetic. The same forename can be spelt several ways, e.g. Henerie, Henrie, and Henry are all the same name, as are Gregorie, Gregory, Grigorie, and Grigory. In many cases, we have silently standardised such forenames (i.e. to Henry and Gregory), for ease of searching. You may expect to see the variants when viewing the images. 
• We have not normalised the spelling of surnames, because of the high risk of error in doing so. Thus, for example, Haieward is the usual spelling of Hayward in these records, while the surname Harris may also appear as Harrice, Harries, and Harriss. Please exercise care when searching; you may wish to use name variants and/or wildcards to optimise your results. 
• Many words were pronounced differently in the 17th century, and this is reflected in spelling. For example, au was often used where today we have the single vowel a, for example, Frauncis for Francis, Launcelot for Lancelot, and Fraunce for France. Souldier was the common spelling of soldier, and you’ll see this frequently in this collection’s images. Where we were able to do so confidently, we have silently modernised such spellings.