The Court of Common Pleas
The Court of Common Pleas (CoP) was established in the late 12th to early 13th century and was a common law court in the English judicial system. It covered common pleas actions, between subject and subject, which did not concern the king.
Documentary evidence from this period is rare and has proved most enlightening, as it actually pre- dates some Churchwarden's accounts. Unfortunately, no translations of the pages are available, but there is a lot of useful information that can be gleaned from the indexes.
- The original documents are from the CP40 class (Common Pleas) in The National Archives (TNA) and there is no index available at TNA.
- The Index collated by Vance Mead and Rosemary Simons can be found here. I have extracted all the references to bell founders and included them as a separate page in this database.
- This is a .pdf file and can be searched in the normal way by pressing Control-F and putting in the search term. However, I have retained all the original spellings, so you may wish to widen your search criteria.
- I have highlighted in bold type the names of bell founders and the relevant parish where known.