THE COLLECTION OF GLEBE TERRIERS AND ITS PROVENANCE

Just over fifty years ago the glebe terriers for the old Archdeaconry of Cornwall were separated from the collection of glebe terriers of the former diocese of Exeter, then housed at the Diocesan Registry in Exeter, and removed to the office of C. L. Cowlard, then Registrar of the diocese of Truro, at Launceston. At this time the Cornish terriers were subdivided into two groups to correspond to the modern (that is, post-1876) archdeaconries of Cornwall and Bodmin. Subsequently the terriers were taken to Truro, with other records of the diocese, when the registry was transferred to the legal firm of Messrs. Sitwell, Harvey and Money. In 1952 Mr. R. Money, the present Diocesan Registrar, deposited most of the glebe terriers on permanent loan at the Cornwall County Record Office. For some years it was believed that the terriers for parishes in the archdeaconry of Bodmin with the initial letters N-W had been lost, but these have fortunately come to light and have also been transferred to the care of the County Archivist. The entire collection, comprising over seven hundred documents extending in date from 1601 to 1821, has recently been re-grouped by the County Record Office, and the distinction between the two modern archdeaconries removed.

The main series of terriers for the diocese of Exeter follow a sequence closely allied to the years of episcopal visitation: 1601 and 1613 (the Primary and a second Visitation of William Cotton), 1679-80 (the Primary Visitation of Thomas Lamplugh), 1726-27 (the Primary Visitation of Stephen Weston) and 1746 (the Primary Visitation of Nicholas Clagett).

With such a large collection available and in order to represent as much of the county as possible, it was decided to limit this volume to those terriers compiled between the years 1673 (the date of the first extant post-Restoration terrier) and 1735 (that of the last extant document prior to the main series of 1746) inclusive, thus in corporating the two al series of 1679-80 and 1726-27, and covering the period when the contents are historically at their most informative.

A number of terriers seen by Charles Henderson at Launceston in 1921 seem not to have survived and where practicable abstracts have been made from Henderson's notes on the missing documents.