This index does not contain every named person but attempts to identify particular individuals referred to in the documents. As the records only survive in sufficient variety to make a clear identification possible from the middle of the sixteenth century it does not include people only referred to before 1559.
Each person has been given an unique identifier consisting of the first letter of the surname and a number. Thus the three separate Abigail Abbots are A1, A2, A3.
Aliases are listed under all names. For women, the earliest surname generally provides the identifier; all other references with later surnames through marriage or subsequent marriages have been grouped with the first identifier. Thus A66 is Sarah Abbot, who became Sarah Hayward by her first marriage and Sarah Gover by her second marriage. All references to her are together under A66 in the A index, but there are cross-links to her in the G and H indices.
References that are too ambiguous to make a firm identification possible appear in brackets with a question mark. The ambiguous references are also listed separately under identifiers with an 'x' suffix.
A personal name is the necessary link in all records except for Josselin's diary. There we have made specific links to "wife" etc. as the diarist rarely mentions her by name, and to other unnamed members of the family where we can infer by the context about whom he is writing.
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