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Palaeography Notes · Wills & Probate · Latin · March 2026

What Does the Latin Mean? Reading the Probate Clause on a PCC Will

Most people who download a will from The National Archives find Latin at the top and bottom and have no idea what it says. Here is a complete plain-English guide — phrase by phrase, with date conversions and a full phrase table — to exactly what the PCC probate clause records and why it matters for your research.

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The 1740 settlement examination of Ann Lefever, showing her mark at the foot of the document beside George Howard's signature

Document Spotlight · Poor Law · Westminster · March 2026

The Woman Who Kept Coming Back: Ann Lefever, Westminster Vagrant 1697–1756

A settlement examination from 1740 becomes the key to recovering an entire life. Ann Lefever — daughter of a Huguenot householder, unable to write her own name — spent nearly two decades cycling in and out of the St Martin-in-the-Fields workhouse, admitted at least eighteen times before dying there on 30 May 1756. Her story, recovered from thirty documents across multiple Westminster poor law registers, shows what a single transcription can unlock.

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The Hawkhurst Gang raiding Poole Customs House, 18th century engraving

Case Study · Wills & Probate · Kent · February 2026

The Money Man of the Hawkhurst Gang: What a Will Reveals

A transcription of James Stanford's 1760 will — chosen for its connection to the notorious Hawkhurst Gang — opens a window into Georgian smuggling, a Kentish mercer's family, and a genealogical mystery stretching back to Tudor England. The research that followed produced something unexpected: a possible connection to my own family tree, and a case study in what careful genealogical detective work can yield from a single document.

Read the full post → Hawkhurst GangKent18th Century

Ancestor Stories · Family History · Sussex · February 2026

A Name in the Tree: Following the Bysshe Line to Percy Shelley

The discovery of Sarah Bysshe (1696–1732) in a West Hoathly parish register opens a door into one of Sussex's most remarkable dynasties. The Bysshe family of Burstow, Surrey included Sir Edward Bysshe, Garter King of Arms, and their blood runs — through two separate branches — through both Percy Bysshe Shelley and through my own family tree.

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Thames lightermen working a coal-laden lighter on the industrial Thames

Ancestor Stories · Family History · London · February 2026

Working the River: The Pealing Family of Rotherhithe

There is a particular kind of family history that leaves few traces in the grand archives. It is written instead in the grain of a working life — in the knowledge of tides and currents, in three generations born within the same riverside parish, in the address of a death recorded in the shadow of London Bridge. The Pealings of Rotherhithe were such a family.

Read the full post → LondonWorking Lives18th Century

The Bysshe-Shelley illuminated family scroll unrolled at the Bodleian Library

Ancestor Stories · Archives · Manuscripts · February 2026

Touching the Past: A Day with the Shelley Manuscripts at the Bodleian

A visit to the Bodleian Library, Oxford — guided by Stephen Hebron, Curator of Special Projects — to view the Shelley-Bysshe Collection. Percy Shelley's notebooks with Ozymandias in his own hand. The crossings-out still visible in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein manuscript. And a twenty-foot illuminated family scroll that turned out to be part of my own story too.

Read the full post → ShelleyBodleianSussex