(c/chlsl) - Catalogues of the County Hall Local Studies Library, Matlock

(DARJ) - From series of articles published in the Derbyshire Archaeological Society Journals written and material abstracted from the manuscripts by J. Charles Cox

(uc/chlsl) - Unpublished catalogues of the County Hall Local Studies Library, Matlock

a. - acre or acres [of land]
Explanations of measurements of land included in FAQ

A. - Queen Anne (reigned 1702-14)

b. - Cox uses this to indicate the back of a document, though most of the references use the letter d (i.e. dorse). See dorse

c - century (e.g. 18thc. = 18th century)

c. - (if before a date) circa, meaning about

Ch. - King Charles

co. - County of

d. - dorse (back of) a document, though the page is not marked as such. So, for example, there is a f.16 that is marked but not a folio marked f.16d.

def(s) - defendant

Ed. - King Edward

Eliz. - Queen Elizabeth I (reigned 1558-1603)

esq. - esquire

et. al - and the rest

f. or ff. - folio, folios

gent. - gentleman

G. - King George

H. - King Henry

Hen. - King Henry

Ja. - King James

M. - Queen Mary

n.d. - no date

P. - King Philip (Spanish husband of Queen Mary, who reigned 1553-8)

p.a. - per annum

Ph and M - Philip and Mary

pl. - complainant (also qu. or quer.)

temp. - tempore (in the time of e.g. temp H means in the time of King Henry)

qu. - complainant (also pl. or quer.)

quer. - complainant (also pl. or qu.)

q.v. - quantum vis (Latin, = as much as you wish)

v. - versus

W. - King William

yeo. - yeoman

[ ] Square brackets

Information within square brackets will not be found in the actual documents. They contain additional information to aid research.

Dates

A slash in the date [year] indicates that it was a date using the old calendar. The 'old calendar' format applied to dates before January 1752.

What is meant by the term 'old calendar' is that the church year did not begin on the first of January before that time. Prior to 1752 the church year began on Lady Day, which was 25th March. Parish registers, therefore, ran from the March of one year to the March of the following year and the calendar applied to legal documents as well.

The Wolley Manuscript Indexes on this site are presented using the 'modern calendar', with the year beginning on 1st January. So some of the dates have been adjusted to avoid confusion. You will notice this for all dates between the months of January and March for the years before 1752. For these dates there will be a slash [/] shown in the year (e.g. 15 Feb 1741/2 shows it was an old calendar date for the year 1741, but acknowledges the modern calendar where the actual year would have been 1742).

See Dates: Old and New Calendar in the Notes on Phillimore's Marriage Indexes elsewhere on this website.

There has been no attempt to distinguish between dates of original documents and dates of copies of documents that are held in the manuscripts.

Names

1. Before end of reign of Henry VIII (1547):

Names of both people and places are given as found in original documents, though Christian names have been translated from Latin into English.

It is sometimes difficult to tell whether the surname is referring to the place. For example, whether Ann de Matlock would be Ann of Matlock or whether it would be Ann Matlock.
Please note that these names are only an example and are not found in the documents
See the Surnames Index

2. Reign of Edward VI onwards (post 1547):

Names of both people and places generally show modern spelling, unless indicating a different pronunciation. However, surnames, smaller places (eg. farms, fields, manors) are as in the documents.