The Register of William Melton, Archbishop of York, 1317–1340 (review)

In volume VI of the Register of Archbishop William Melton, David Robinson, who also edited the second volume in this series in 1978, calendars, primarily in English, the 741 documents dealing with the archdeaconry of the East Riding. In addition to these brief summaries, Robinson furnishes fuller or even complete renderings of many documents, sometimes in English, sometimes in Latin. Robinson has carefully edited this work, occasionally suggesting corrections to the Latin text and referring where appropriate to printed collections of sources such as the Calendar of Patent Rolls.

This volume records the routine business of an archdiocese: licenses for ordination, licenses for private confessors and chaplains, appointments to churches, excommunications (in one case, for stealing the archbishop’s swans), visitations of parishes and monasteries, penances imposed on nuns and canons for various sins, marriage cases, purgations from alleged crimes, disputes over benefices, establishment of chantries and one monastery, dispensations for illegitimate birth, and permissions for or punishment for clerical nonresidence. Occasionally a document refers to something of more than local significance, like destruction of property by Scots. There also are the occasional human-interest references like the license given to the prioress of Nunkeeling to visit the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury “provided that she returns as soon as possible to her house” (p. 31). This was, after all, Chaucer’s century, and perhaps here was another Madame Eglentyne. Chaucer’s clerk might also have found a kindred spirit in Thomas de Eston—acolyte and rector of Heslerton, to whom in 1322 the archbishop grants permission to be absent from his church for seven years so he may study at a studium generale. Ten years later, the archbishop grants Thomas, now a priest, permission to study at a studium generale for another three years. Three years later, Thomas gains an extension of two more years. In another interesting case, the archbishop orders the nun Joan de Ledes, who feigned her own death and burial, to return to her priory.

In short, this volume from Melton’s register, especially when complemented by the others in the series, provides the kind of information utilized by Craig Harline and Eddy Put in A Bishop’s Tale (New Haven, 2000). The forty-nine pages of indices, as a further example of the potential of this source, provide an extremely useful synopsis of the contents of the register. Almost three pages of those indices concern abbeys and priories of men and women. In addition to general issues like appointments of officials appear a purgation of a prior on a charge of adultery, a restriction on expenses for dogs and horses, and multiple references to corrodies. The archbishop warns the canons of the Augustinian Priory of Bridlington, in the interest of a free election, not to discuss the election of their next prior with the local notables. Apostate religious may return to their abandoned monasteries a third time but no more. After visitations of the priories of Nunkeeling and Swine, the archbishop directs that secular women are not to reside in those institutions without his permission. The archbishop also forbids secular priests and friars access to certain areas in those priories. In several documents the archbishop warns both canons and nuns about novelties in dress. Hens and chickens may not be present in the choir, church, or chapter of Swine priory.

Students of the fourteenth-century English church owe a considerable debt of gratitude to Robinson and the Canterbury and York Society for this book.