These volumes, three published in 1949 and two in 1975, have been digitised to enable all researchers to have easy access to the considerable resource on our membership they offer. The information they contain is derived from admissions recorded in the proceedings of Middle Temple’s Parliament from 1501 and from the separate series of admissions recorded from 1658.  They also contain a record of those who were admitted to the Inn prior to 1501 which has been compiled from various sources.  Names of those admitted from February 1525 to February 1551, for which the Inn’s records have not survived, have been similarly compiled.

Although these records are searchable thanks to Optical Character Recognition (OCR), this has only a limited use, partly due to the limitations of the technology and partly because the 1949 publication reproduced the erratic and variable spellings of personal names and place names found in the original documents.  An example of this is the spelling used by the three Ashley brothers admitted between 1575 and 1590: Antony Assheleigh, Robert Ayshley and Francis Aishley.  The same issues arise with English place names in the earlier centuries and to British colonial possessions in the 19th and 20th centuries.  The most reliable way of ensuring a comprehensive search remains to read the full text of the period being researched.

The fifth volume also includes an appendix which includes the subsequent history of members included in volumes one to three, including Calls to the Bar and Bench. Accordingly, where a member was admitted before 1945, the appendix to volume five should be checked for any subsequent details. Correspondingly, where the index to volumes four and five refers to the Appendix, one ought also to consult the index to volumes one to three for the individual's original admission record.

In order to assist the researcher, the scanned volumes are available in two different forms.  It is possible to access the larger files in three complete volumes, which will take longer to download, or in smaller sections, which will download faster but which will require a number of separate searches to cover the span of centuries.

Whole volumes and indices:

20MB sections (for index see above):