Catalogue description Court rolls, manorial accounts and other records of the manors Wheathampstead and Rothamsted of Harpenden; estate and family papers of the Myddelton, Wittewronge, Benet and Lawes families 1060; 1221-1930

Court rolls, manorial records, title deeds, family and estate papers

Lawes, Sir John Bennet, 1814-1900, 1st Baronet

[Accessions 1069, 1175 and 1192]

Deposited 1965, 1967, 1968

Before being received at the Hertfordshire Record Office this collection had clearly been worked over by many hands; its original arrangement had been much disturbed and possibly its integrity lost. By the time (i e about 1936) when the late Mr Bernard P Scattergood worked upon it, few original bundles remained and some had been created from differing sources. He appears to have preserved scrupulously the order in which he found the documents. The calendar he made of a large proportion of them, though difficult to consult because of the order the collection imposed upon it, is far too valuable to ignore. Consequently an appendix has been added to this inventory which notes the numbers appearing in Scattergood's calendars against the references assigned to the documents here. Also one copy of the calendars in the Record Office has been annotated so that readers may find their way from it to the present inventory. Bundles numbered but not calendared by Scattergood have not been noted in the appendix. In 1903 a collection of about 250 documents not included in Scattergood was listed by Messrs Hardy and Page, record agents. These documents (formerly referred to as the 'extra list') are also included in this collection and cross-reference is made to them in the appendix. In addition to documents listed by Scattergood and by Hardy and Page there is also a large number up to this time unlisted. Some of these were looked at by Mr F G Emmison but it is not known whether any list resulted from his inspection

• Myddelton family of Hertfordshire
• Lawes Wittewronge family, baronets, of Rothamsted, Hertfordshire
• Wittewronge, Lawes, family, baronets, of Rothamsted, Hertfordshire
• Benet family of Hertfordshire

The existing lists are:

1. Scattergood, vol i, 489pp containing bundles 1 to 37 with the following exceptions: numbers 24-28 and 30 were not calendared and number 29 was not deposited in this office. However it came in in a later deposit and appears in this inventory as DE/Lw/M35.

2. Scattergood, vol ii, 686pp containing bundles 38 to 52, all being calendared. Documents calendared in these two volumes are given the prefix 'S' in the appendix.

3. Scattergood's index of personal names and places mentioned in the calendars.

4. Hardy and Page, 64pp containing mainly brief calendars or descriptions of about 250 documents with index of places and personal names. Documents in this volume are designated 'H' in the appendix