London sheriffs' court roll

An edition of the court roll for 1320 is now live. Edited by Dr Matthew F. Stevens, it gives a complete edition and index of London's only surviving such roll for the medieval period, for July-Sept 1320. It was produced as part of the Centre for Metropolitan History ESRC-funded 'London women and the economy before and after the black death' project (2009-10).

Usability test for BHO and ReScript

We would like to ask your help, as a user of British History Online, to find ways in which we can improve the website and our prototype collaborative editing platform, ReScript. If you could spare a few moments to take two online tests, we would be very grateful. They are part of a programme of tests designed to tell us if the changes we've made to the sites will be an improvement.Not only wil

Site changes

The first set of enhancements designed to improve usability on British History Online specifically produced as part of the JISC 01/11B funding are now live.

Usability test for British History Online

We would like to ask your help, as a registered user on British History Online, to find ways in which we can improve the website. If you could spare a few moments to take an online test about how well the current British History Online website works, we would be very grateful.The survey is part of wider research that we are doing into reducing the impact of 'information overload' on the useful

Survey of London monographs

This series of 17 volumes is now complete. Detailing individual buildings of particular note, including the church of St Bride Fleet Street and the County Hall, it complements the parish volumes of the Survey, also available on BHO.

New datasets for London history now live

Two major new sources for London history are now live. The hearth tax returns for the cities of London and Westminster and the county of Middlesex are now available for the 1662-66, containing over 60,000 names. Also recently released is an edition of the records of the Court of Common Pleas (CP40) for the fifteenth century.

New video tutorials available

Two new screencasts (video tutorials) are available on the site. They are very brief and are designed to help people get the most out of their use of British History Online.One screencast explains how to use the advanced search function, and the other shows what can be done on the browse page.We plan to add more screencasts in the coming months, introducing some key content of the site.

Four more Somerset volumes live

Four more volumes of the Victoria County History of Somerset are now live. These volumes, numbers 1, 4, 5 and 9, cover the natural history and early history of the county, the Crewkerne and South Petherton hundreds, the Hundred of Williton and Freemanors, and Glastonbury and Street respectively.

London Record Society

Volumes 31 and 32 are now live. Produced with the kind support of the Society, these two volumes continue to extend BHO's holdings of these key London sources.

Alumni Oxonienses, 1500-1714

The first two volumes of the Alumni Oxonienses, 1500-1714, are now online. The Alumni Oxonienses lists all known members of the University of Oxford, along with biographical details where known, and the relationships between members (such as fathers and sons and siblings). There are entries for the famous, such as John Donne or Lancelot Andrewes, but the great value of this source is its coverage

Five more House of Lords journals

Five more volumes of the Journal of the House of Lords have been added to British History Online. These cover the years 1776 to 1793, and thus a time of revolutions in France and North America. Several volumes also detail the protracted trial in the Lords of Warren Hastings, former governor-general of Bengal. Edmund Burke was one of the prosecutors and described Hastings as "the captain-general of

Thoroton's history of Nottinghamshire now complete

Thoroton's history, as amplified by Throsby, is now live. First appearing in 1677, and re-published by Throsby in three volumes a century later, it has been described as the first and greatest county history of Nottinghamshire.

New Ordnance Survey Map Function

A new feature has recently been added to the historical maps on British History Online. This allows users to compare the historic map with a modern Ordnance Survey map on the same screen.This function is available for both the 1:10560 and the 1:1,250 maps. Simply click on the "Show modern OS" button to see the modern map, and the same button will hide it again. The modern map can be dragged wi

Blomefield's History of Norfolk

With the launch of volume 11, Blomefield's history is now complete.

Rymer's Foedera With Syllabus

Volumes eight and nine of Rymer's Foedera have now been published. This printed collection of treaties was published in the early eighteenth century; in the nineteenth century the Record Office produced a syllabus, or English summary, of its contents. To make the Foedera more useful and searchable we have combined the two texts in a tabular format, with the Syllabus entry on the left and the full

Calendar of Papal Registers Now Complete

The Calendar of Papal Registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland is now complete. These 14 volumes cover the period 1198 to 1492, and thus the papacy of Innocent III through to that of Innocent VIII. These volumes provide a detailed insight into the relations of the papacy with Great Britain and Ireland in the medieval period.

Easier Annotation

We have now made our annotation tool easier to use. If a text is available for annotation you can still follow the old procedure, and click on "Comment on this article" at the top of the page. However it is now also possible to double click the text you wish to annotate with the left mouse button. Using this function inserts a hyperlink at the relevant point in the text, so that your annnotation w

Calendar of Treasury Books now complete

The Calendar of Treasury Books is now complete. These calendars detail state income and expenditure from the Restoration up to 1718, in 32 volumes. This series complements two others on BHO: the Calendar of Treasury Papers and the Calendar of Treasury Books and Papers.

Parliament Rolls of Medieval England now online

The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England are now available on British History Online, as part of the premium content section of the site.In this publication historians describe every parliament held between 1275 and 1504, that is those for the reigns of monarchs from Edward I to Henry VII. Where the rolls for the parliament survive, as happens for nearly all of the later parliaments, these are

10 volumes of the Journal of the House of Lords

10 more volumes of the Journal of the House of Lords are now live. These new volumes cover the period 1718 to 1764, and thus the end of the reign of George I, the whole of that of George II, and the very beginning of the reign of George III. Four more volumes will be added to the site in the coming months.

New volumes for VCH Wiltshire

Six new volumes for Wiltshire are now live. The addition of volumes 5, 7, 11 and 13-15 completes the published coverage of the parishes of the county.

Lincolnshire wills

Transcribed wills for the historic county are now live. These three volumes, covering the period from 1271 to 1532, were originally published by the Lincoln Record Society between 1914 and 1930.

Suckling's History and Antiquities of Suffolk

Volume 1 of Suckling's 'History and Antiquities' is now live. This is the first of the two volumes of the Reverend Suckling's projected History of the county that were completed in the 1840s. They describe three and a half hundreds in the north-east of the county. Volume 2 will be added in the next few weeks.

Calendar of State Papers, Colonial now complete

We have now added the final volume of the Calendar of State Papers, Colonial. This volume, number 45 in the series, deals with the year 1739.

New Timeline Function on BHO

We are pleased to announce a new monarchs timeline function for British History Online. This is a compact way of displaying all relevant series for a particular monarch; it will enable our users to see at a glance the periods covered by the given volumes in a series and, additionally, to drag the timeline forward and backwards in time.At the lowest level is a compressed timeline, divided into

Cecil Papers

The Calendar of the Cecil Papers Preserved in Hatfield House is now live. These 24 volumes cover the papers of the leading political family of Elizabethan and Jacobean England. William Cecil, Lord Burghley, was chief advisor to Elizabeth I, and his son Robert was Secretary of State to both Elizabeth and James I. Unusually, these state papers have remained in the family archives at Hatfield House.

Six Volumes of Papal Documents

Six volumes of Papal documents are now live. These consist of Petitions to the Pope, the Calendar of Vatican Papers for the first part of the reign of Elizabeth I, and three volumes of the Papal Registers. The Registers are entries in the Vatican archives which relate to Great Britain and Ireland; more volumes in this series will be published online in the coming months.

British History Online user survey

Please help us improve British History Online by taking a short user survey. We are conducting an investigation into the ways in which digital resources are used in teaching and research, which should help us to improve British History Online. We would be very grateful to hear from users about how they use the site and how we could improve it. Thank you.

New sources for the history of Norwich

Volumes 3 and 4 of Blomefield's 'History of Norfolk' are now live. These two volumes give chronological and thematic accounts of the local history of the city.

Calendar of Papers Preserved in France

The Calendar of Documents Preserved in France is now live. This volume consists of Record Commission transcripts of documents found mostly in Normandy, and dated up to 1206 (the end of English control of the region).