JISC

Latest News (March 2012): The University of York has now digitised the papers as set out in the original plan, and has added them to the Cause Papers website.

This project will digitise the York Cause Papers, 1600‐1800, a highly significant collection of manuscript material held at the University of York. The papers record the proceedings of early modern church courts, and paint a vivid picture of north England's social, economic and agrarian history.

These Cause Papers record the proceedings of the church courts which had wide jurisdiction including over cases concerning marriage, sexual morality, defamation and slander, the granting of probate, the maintenance of the Church, the orthodoxy of its services, the regulation of the moral and professional conduct of the clergy, schoolmasters, physicians and midwives, and the payment of tithes.

Their significance to the international scholarly community was evidenced by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation which enabled the creation, over three years, of a highly detailed catalogue of these records, successfully launched in November 2010.

This project builds on the success of this catalogue by proposing to image the Cause Papers themselves and link them to the existing catalogue. This will enhance the research and teaching uses to which this resource can be put, greatly enrich the range and depth of content available to the JISC community and expose the records for the use of family and local historians.

The project will allow the University of York to develop, build and test a methodology for mass digitisation that will benefit future projects and will allow the university to continue the digitisation of supplementary material after the completion of the project. In addition it will contribute to the preservation of the fragile original manuscripts.