“No love amongst us”: Seven centuries of Yorkshire life go online
Posted on Thursday 2 April 2026
From a lonely year in a North Yorkshire parish where no one got married to the final testimony of a 17th century mother dying in childbirth, the records offer a unique, and at times, bleak snapshot of life in the north.
The records have been released through a major partnership between the University of York and Ancestry. The project has digitised the Bishops’ Transcripts and the Wills of the Prerogative and Exchequer Courts of York, both of which are held at the University’s Borthwick Institute for Archives.
Survival and loss
The digitised collection spans from 1389 to 1858, and includes a wealth of information. In one entry from 1736, the compiler for the parish of Bossall noted there was “no love amongst us” after a year passed without a single wedding.
Other records tell bleaker stories of survival and loss. The 1604 registers for Hornsea record a community ravaged by “plage tyme”, while a 1756 entry from Kilnsea details the shipwreck of the Charles from London, noting the burial of Captain William Burwood and nine of his crew.
Ordinary people
The collection includes the wills of famous figures such as Charlotte Brontë (listed under her married name as Charlotte Nicholls) and the diarist Anne Lister. However, it’s the accounts of ordinary people that often prove most poignant.
Researchers can now access the 1613 will of Ann Stackhouse, who gave her final wishes orally to her midwife while dying in childbirth. The archives also reveal the philanthropy of John de Gysburn, who in 1385 left money to support four “houses of lepers” in the York suburbs, and the fastidious Matthew Chitty St Quintin, who struggled to decide on his final wishes, adding more than 20 amendments to his will in 1785.
Profoundly moving
Gary Brannan, Keeper of Archives and Research Collections at the Borthwick Institute for Archives, said: “People have a huge desire to trace their roots, and the discoveries they make can be intensely personal and profoundly moving. Individuals living around the world are always rightly proud to discover they have roots in Yorkshire.
“These records are quite unique as they are incredibly well kept and cover a long time span in a community that is always growing and changing. We currently have around 30,000 people from more than 140 countries accessing our catalogue each year. Because the vast majority cannot travel to York in person, this partnership makes these vital documents globally available.”
Original records
Created as annual copies of parish registers for the Archbishop, the Bishops’ Transcripts will fill gaps where original records were lost or damaged. Experts estimate that the transcripts contain more than 20,000 entries that do not exist anywhere else.
The records will be free to discover onsite at the Borthwick Institute for Archives, or can be accessed remotely via a subscription to Ancestry.co.uk. The Parish Register Transcripts complement digitised images of the original parish registers from record offices across Yorkshire.
Income generated by the partnership will be used to develop and support the Borthwick’s activities, enabling the University to preserve the region's history and make more records accessible to the global community through new access projects, additional staffing and updated equipment.
