British History Online
British History Online
British History Online is a digital library of core printed primary and secondary sources for the history of Britain and Ireland, maintained by the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. It gathers calendars of state papers, parliamentary and ecclesiastical records, local and burgh histories, colonial papers, and related series covering England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and Britain’s early overseas territories.
This page highlights the Guthrie and variant-name references recovered from those sources. Because the name appears not only in Scottish records but also in English administrative, diplomatic, financial, and colonial documents, a search limited to Scottish repositories alone leaves important gaps. These collections place the Scottish evidence in its wider British and Atlantic context.
Calendar of Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland
This series publishes English summaries of entries in the papal registers preserved in the Vatican Archives that relate to the British Isles. The fourteen volumes form the principal published finding aid for papal letters, provisions, dispensations, and other business concerning Scotland, England, Ireland, and Wales.
For Guthrie research, the later volumes—especially those spanning the fifteenth century—are particularly useful because they contain multiple references to individuals of the name in connection with Scottish benefices, prebends, dispensations, and ecclesiastical appointments.
Calendar of Treasury Books
The Calendar of Treasury Books is a multi-volume series published by the Public Record Office, later The National Archives, calendaring the official records of the English—and after 1707 British—Treasury from the Restoration of Charles II through the early eighteenth century. British History Online provides the principal run of volumes for 1660–1718, with related continuation material in the Calendar of Treasury Books and Papers.
These records include warrants, money orders, salary establishments, petitions, secret-service payments, civil-list accounts, passage money, pensions, bounties, and other matters involving Crown revenue. For family research they can identify people who otherwise appear only briefly in government service, military, diplomatic, colonial, or administrative contexts.
Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII
Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII is a fundamental calendar of the English Crown’s state papers for 1509–1547. Although an English source, it contains extensive material relating to Scotland, particularly during periods of diplomacy, conflict, and the minority of Mary, Queen of Scots.
For Guthrie research it preserves three especially useful mid-sixteenth-century references: the provost of the collegiate church of Guthrie appearing in a high-level request from James IV to the pope in 1509; Alexander Guthre serving as herald and diplomatic messenger for the Scottish government in 1544; and William Guthre being summoned for treason in connection with the murder of Cardinal Beaton in 1546. Together they illuminate both the status of the Guthrie collegiate foundation and individual Guthries participating in Scotland’s ceremonial, diplomatic, and political life.
British History Online provides the wider documentary setting for Guthrie references that cross the borders of Scotland and appear within English, British, ecclesiastical, diplomatic, financial, and Atlantic records.