The Heads of Religious Houses: England and Wales, II. 1216–1377 (review)

The Heads of Religious Houses: England and Wales, II. 1216-1377. Edited by David M. Smith and Vera C. M. London. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 2001. Pp. lxviii, 730. $120.00.)

The prosopography of the religious has been a key concern of English medieval historians during the last forty years. We now have biographical registers of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and of the members of the English cathedral priories in the southern province. ¹ Furthermore, detailed lists of the higher clergy of both the secular and monastic cathedrals in England and Wales have been published covering the period 1066 to 1541, in two series, the first from 1066 to 1300, and the second from 1300 to 1541. The latter period has been concluded; for the earlier period only Exeter, Coventry and Lichfield, and the Welsh dioceses, remain to be completed, and they will come out within the next two to three years. ² For the heads of religious houses a volume covering the early period, in this case defined as 940-1216, came out exactly thirty years ago, and a corrected edition in 2000. ³ These volumes all have some common ground.

The present volume is a continuation to complete the project of the heads of religious houses up to 1377. It is the work mainly of David Smith with the assistance of Vera London, one of the editors of the first volume of The Heads, who now a nonagenarian—surpassing, incidentally, the years of Prior Henry of Eastry of Canterbury—continued work on the printed sources for a second volume as time allowed. The new lists had to take account of the numerous medieval titles that were coming out with further information on monks and particularly on nuns who were rapidly becoming a major area of research interest. There were the general works, such as Sally Thompson on women religious and Donald Logan on apostates, and studies of individual houses and editions of cartularies and so forth that included actual lists or materials for such lists. Furthermore, vast new original sources by no means all in print had to be searched.

The sources for the period before the thirteenth century, mainly charters and chronicles, are less extensive and much more difficult and intractable to use and interpret as they were not primarily concerned with giving dates; this is especially the case with charters, which were not dated in England until the late thirteenth century. The new sources commencing in the thirteenth century, on the other hand, are official records of Crown and Church concerned with recording in detail the operations of the administration. Joining the early records of royal finance are royal administrative rolls and rolls of the courts: the patent and close rolls and the plea rolls. Special sources for ecclesiastical prosopography within the Chancery records are ecclesiastical petitions and significations of excommunication. Among the Exchequer records (the financial series), clerical subsidies are another useful source. These are the most relevant classes, but almost every class of record at this time is likely to reveal some prosopographical material for the clergy. The registers of the English bishops begin in the thirteenth century: they are an invaluable source at a time when reforming bishops were eager to supervise elections to abbeys and priories—the election being the key point for chronology. The earliest episcopal registers are those of Lincoln—an enormous diocese covering most of central England and seven counties between the Humber and the Thames. The registers of most of the other dioceses are from the fourteenth century. Until they become formalized, the information recorded can be very diverse. The bishop of Worcester wrote to the bishop of Exeter of the prior of Warwick as "going from bad to worse, [he] has troubled us in many ways in the Court of Arches and elsewhere, about which more when we meet," and this letter is recorded...