Staffordshire Archives have added an index to Indictments in the Quarter Sessions Rolls, 1581-1733, to the Staffordshire Name Indexes website. They are very grateful to Jim Sutton for the work that he has put in over several years creating this index – work made more difficult by the source material being in Latin.

Quarter Sessions Indictments - Staffordshire Name Indexes (staffsnameindexes.org.uk)

Indictments were formal legal complaints of wrongdoing made by a local official or private individual against one or more people. The range of offences complained of is extraordinarily broad, within six general categories – violent offences, offences against property, agricultural offences, economic, social and religious offences. A list of offences is available on the index homepage, linked above, but hopefully the following sample of one type of offence from each broad category hopefully gives a flavour of the whole: forced marriage; poaching; failing to scour a watercourse; selling unwholesome food or drink; fathering an illegitimate child and playing games during the time of divine service.

This is an index that could be useful to family, local and social historians alike.