In a message dated 09/03/2009 09:34:14 GMT Standard Time, sue.horn@ntlworld.com writes: Durham protestations; or, The returns made to the House of Commons in 1641/2 for the maintenance of the Protestant religion for the county palatine of Durham, for the borough of Berwick-upon-Tweed and the parish of Morpeth This book will be volume 135 (for the year 1922) of the publications of the Surtees Society. The introduction, although not the easiest of things to follow if you have no background knowledge, will tell you what it is all about. Very briefly, it comes from 1641, when Parliament was falling out with King Charles I. As part of its "establishing a position" with regard to the King's supposed over-sympathetic relationship with the Catholic Church (he was widely thought to have been a Catholic himself, and his wife certainly was one), Parliament required every able-bodied man aged between 16 and 60 to assent to a statement whereby they said that they were loyal Englishmen, Protestants, and willing to fight, if need be, to keep the country Protestant. A few days were set aside during which, in every parish in the country, all those eligible had to report to their parish church and give their support to the statement, or "Protestation". I suppose the parish clerk wojuld have read it out and got all those present to say "Aye" or some similar procedure. Their names were then taken, and at the end of the period allowed, all those eligible had been recorded as having agreed to the Protestation - apart, as my friend Erasmus Bottle might have said, from those who hadn't. They would be the local Catholics. The usual practice was for the clerk to add their names at the end, as "those who have refused", which makes the list of names complete - but only for able-bodied males aged between 16 and 60. From Jarrow, for instance, there were 110, besides parish officers, who took the Protestation, and 10 who refused. The huge job of transcribing and editing the list of names foorm the original MS in the House of Lords Library was undertaken by the same Herbert Maxwell Wood who was responsible for the excellent Wood Transcripts in Newcastle Library and who was Secretary of the Durham and Northumberland Parish Register Society. The book itself is quite a dull one - long lists of names, with 17th century spelling, arranged under the parish - but use of the index followed by a quick check to see which parish was being dealt with on the relevant page, may be all that is required to establish the presence of a person in a certain place. It is of little use for common names, of course, but for ones that may be locally unnique, it can be very useful. Another useful aspect of it is the informative footnotes, relating mainly to the more wealthy families, especially of the "Recusants" or Catholics, which Wood has added. However, what I am wondering is how, if you didn't know what the list was, or even what date it referred to, could you have any idea as to whether the person you mention was your ancestor? Before anyone asks, the equivalent Northumberland list has not been published. I am not even sure whether it survives - if it does it is probably in a poor state. "Brewas" is almost certainly the Northumbrian surname of Brewis, thought by some to have originated as "Brewhouse", from someone who had worked in a monastic brewhouse - but that is at least partly speculative.