Order books provide considerable information about the county, local leaders, and a fair amount of gossip unavailable in the more formalized document registers such as will books and deed books. Because will and deed books offer a "quick fix" for finding lineage, the order books are often ignored. Another reason for their limited use is that they are poorly indexed if indexed at all. They must be read entirely, day by day, in order to locate critical clues. Read together with a basic knowledge of the law of the time, brief entries may yield significant information.
2020, paper, 215 pp.
107-HNOB2
