This is about some of the data I uploaded to Github last week, but it deserves a short post of its own. In the 17th century, many business premises were identified by sign boards with a picture painted on them, and were known in speech and writing by a phrase that described the picture, such as ‘The White Bear’. It’s important to remember that these signs could identify almost any kind of premises. It was only later, after other businesses stopped using them, that they came to be particularly associated with pubs. This dataset is a list of 249 of these building signs from addresses in and near London, taken from the accounts of horses contributed on the Propositions. This is a small dataset compared with some of the other data I’ve uploaded, but it’s a fairly large sample of signs compared to the few that can be extracted from other sources I know of, and I think it should be safe enough to treat it as if it’s a random sample. There’s plenty of scope to analyse the iconography of these signs either quantitatively or individually. What were the most popular colours and symbols? What meanings did they have besides identifying the people and businesses that occupied a building? What’s the story behind ‘The Dog’s Head in Pot’, which was the name of not one but two buildings in London?

This week I’ve uploaded to Github a fairly large amount of data and documentation about the Propositions. This was a system of voluntary contributions to the parliamentarian war effort in the early part of the First English Civil War. It was very successful at first but didn’t last long and was replaced by compulsory taxes. The readme file in the main directory that I’ve linked to gives a slightly more detailed overview of the system, with links to sources. There’s also a list of manuscript records that I haven’t transcribed but that could be useful if anyone else wants to research the Propositions in the future.

The most important dataset that I’ve uploaded is a transcript of three account books in TNA, SP 28/131/3-5 listing horses, arms, and riders contributed for the parliamentarian army in 1642 and 1643. These books name thousands of horse owners, often with their address and status. They also give descriptions of the horses, often including details of colours and markings. The transcript is marked up with XML. This data needs more systematic analysis, as most historians have only cherry-picked examples from it. There is also lots of scope for more detailed research on individual people and places. The record linkage that I’ve done is only very rough and could be improved on.

There were probably far more contributions of money and plate than of horses and arms, but there isn’t such a comprehensive record of money and plate. One source that I’ve transcribed and uploaded is an account covering Propositions money and assessments on non-contributors in part of the county of Essex. This can only be a tiny fraction of total contributions, but it’s unique as far as I know in allowing a direct comparison of contributors and non-contributors. Some accounts of money collected in other places are listed in the readme file but not transcribed. Even these are likely to be only fragments of the total.

This week I’ve uploaded to Github transcripts of accounts of money paid out by two of the treasurers of the Earl of Essex’s army in the First Civil War (there was a third treasurer but I haven’t found any accounts of his payments). Together these include over 4,000 rows of data giving details of payments to army officers, providing useful evidence for the careers of individual units and members of their personnel. There may be a few entries for civilian contractors for purchase or hire of goods or services. Like the New Model Army procurement records, these could be useful for business history.

These accounts are strong evidence for some important facts that may not be well-known, and where better known sources are either misleading or are correct but are weaker evidence than contemporary financial records (see readme file for more details and references):

• the parliamentarian forces at the siege of Portsmouth were commanded by Sir John Meldrum, not Sir William Waller.
• Philip Skippon’s foot regiment first appears in the surviving accounts for Essex’s army in November 1642. Skippon was first paid as Major-General of Essex’s army in January 1643. In both cases, there may have been earlier payments from the other treasurer whose accounts have not been found.
• Henry Billingsley was moved sideways from Lieutenant-Colonel of Denzil Holles’s foot regiment to be assistant to the Major-General in late August 1642.
• Nathaniel, John, and Francis Fiennes were all paid only as captains of horse in 1642. Nathaniel was first paid as Colonel in March 1643.

Now that the wiki is out of the way, I’m uploading some separate datasets to Github in case they’re of any use for anyone else’s research. To start with, I’ve added a catalogue of manuscript volumes created by the Ordnance Office in London recording contracts, deliveries, and issues of equipment for the New Model Army from 1645 onwards. This is obviously relevant to military history, and it is potentially very valuable for business history. The names of suppliers and the descriptions of equipment they supplied show what someone was actually trading in. This can be obscure in 17th-century London because women were usually described by their marital status, and men’s occupational descriptors could refer to their actual trade or livery company membership, which were often not the same thing. Matching contracts, deliveries, and warrants and receipts for payment can sometimes reconstruct a whole transaction, showing not only who supplied what, but the time from contract to delivery to payment. Gerald Mungeam published the largest collection of contracts from the London Museum (and scans of the original manuscript are now free to view at their website), but the rest of these records are less well known and have not been used to their full potential for business history.