Search Tips
The search box on this website searches through titles, summaries, keywords and transcripts of archival material. It also searches 'authored' text - ie the text written by our staff or sent in by users of the site.
The petitions that have been transcribed have separate search facilities embedded within their transcripts. Click on the 'transcript' tab for each petition to find this.
To search for a phrase - ie more than one word appearing next to each other, use speech marks around the words like this:
"William Wilberforce"
If you don't use speech marks but search for more than one word, the search will find every item that mentions either of the words.
Once your search results have been returned you will be offered the chance to narrow them down if need be.