¹ S. Satta, The day of judgement, trans. P. Creagh, London 1994, 14. I am grateful to Mike Harvey for introducing me to this sombre Sardinian novel.

² See J. A. F. Thomson, ‘“The well of grace”: Englishmen and Rome in the fifteenth century’, in R. B. Dobson (ed.), The Church, politics and patronage in the fifteenth century, Gloucester 1984, 99–114, esp. pp. 99–100.

³ 25 Henry VIII, c. 21 (The statutes of the realm, iii, London 1817, 464–71). This was passed by parliament in November 1533 and received the royal assent on 7 April 1534.

⁴ Ibid. 465 (clause 2). The latter phrase was understood to exclude dispensations to marry a brother's widow, which Henry viii considered invalid since contrary to Leviticus; hence he had famously doubted the validity of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, widow of his brother Arthur, authorised by such a papal dispensation, and sought a divorce. See, for example, Scarisbrick, J. J., Henry VIII, London 1968Google Scholar, chs vii–viii, and Bernard, G. W., The king's reformation: Henry VIII and the remaking of the English Church, London 2005Google Scholar, ch. i.

⁵ This was later extended by an act of 1536 to 3 November 1534 for marriage dispensations and Michaelmas 1537 for all other papal dispensations, because these had still been ‘temerously and ignorantly accepted, receyved, used, and erroniously … exercised’ since the original deadline: 28 Henry VIII, c. 16 (Statutes of the realm, iii. 672–4).

⁶ See Hooper, W., ‘The court of faculties’, EHR xxv (1910), 670–86Google Scholar; Churchill, E. F., ‘Dispensations under the Tudors and Stuarts’, EHR xxxiv (1919), 409–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the useful introduction to Chambers, D. S., Faculty office registers, 1534–1549, Oxford 1966Google Scholar. The Faculty Office began issuing such grants by April 1534 when its registers start. It was meant to extend to Ireland but a separate Irish Faculty Office was later created: Hooper, ‘Faculties’, 684–6; Chambers, Faculty office, pp. xxix–xxx. Ireland will not be treated here.

⁷ Canon 50 of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) reduced the prohibited degrees of affinity and consanguinity to four from the seven in Gratian's Decretum (c. 1140); X 4.14.8.

⁸ Enregistered chancery letters responding to petitions from the British Isles are noted in Calendar of entries in the papal registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland: papal letters, ed. W. H. Bliss and others, London 1893–1960; Dublin 1978– .

⁹ For the office's history down to 1569 see Göller, E., Die päpstliche Pönitentiarie von ihrem Ursprung bis zu ihrer Umgestaltung unter Pius V, Rome 1907–11Google Scholar.

¹⁰ This statistic is from Entries concerning England and Wales in the papal penitentiary registers to 1503, ed. P. D. Clarke and P. N. R. Zutshi (Canterbury and York Society, forthcoming). The registers are held in the Vatican Archives and can be consulted only with the permission of the current Apostolic Penitentiary. Valuable studies of the registers are Schmugge, L., Hersperger, P. and Wiggenhauser, B., Die Supplikenregister der päpstlichen Pönitentiarie aus der Zeit Pius’ II (1458–1464), Rome 1996Google Scholar, and Salonen, K., The penitentiary as a well of grace in the late Middle Ages: the example of the province of Uppsala, 1448–1527 (Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae, cccxiii, 2001)Google Scholar.

¹¹ See Helmholz, R. H., Roman canon law in reformation England, Cambridge 1990CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Outhwaite, R. B., The rise and fall of the English ecclesiastical courts, 1500–1800, Cambridge 2006Google Scholar. The need to include dispensations in this wider picture is emphasised by Helmholz: ‘A full account of ecclesiastical jurisdiction [in this period] … would certainly have to examine in some detail the work of the Office of Faculties’ (p. 45).

¹² Some papal dispensations were not even available from the penitentiary, notably those for pluralism, but they might be obtained from other curial offices, especially the chancery. For papal graces that the penitentiary was competent to grant however, most petitioners approached it rather than the chancery since its fees were usually lower than the chancery's.

¹³ Chambers, Faculty office, pp. xvii–xviii; Gwyn, P., The king's cardinal: the rise and fall of Thomas Wolsey, London 1990Google Scholar, 278, 284–5.

¹⁴ Originals: LPL, papal documents 131–4; Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin, ms 212 (kindly drawn to my attention by Dr Patrick Zutshi). Copies: Lincolnshire Archives, Lincoln, episcopal register xxvi (Register of John Longland, bishop of Lincoln 1521–47), fos 70v, 84r–v, 96v–99r, 118v–119r, 125r–v, 128r–129v, 155v–156r, 156r–157v, 158v–159r; Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office, Trowbridge, D1/2/15 (Register of Lorenzo Campeggio, bishop of Salisbury 1524–35), fos 57r, 58v, 59r, 61r, 61v, 64v (bis?), 65r, 67r, 72v, 73r (bis), 74r, 74v (bis), 75r, 75v (bis), 77r (bis), 77v, 78v, 81r, 81v, 82r, 82v, 83r, 84v; Borthwick Institute, York, reg. 27 (Register of Thomas Wolsey, archbishop of York 1514–30), fos 109r–v, 130r, 130v, 132v (bis); Worcestershire Record Office, Worcester, b 716.083–BA.2648/8(ii), p. 25; b 716.083–BA.2648/9(i), p. 176 (Register of Geronimo de’ Ghinucci, bishop of Worcester 1522–35). More copies are to be found in other contemporary bishops’ registers. List of 1525–6: TNA, SP1/39, pp. 18–23. Another article, which will include an edition of this list, will give more detailed treatment to this evidence.

¹⁵ Chambers, Faculty office, p. xviii.

¹⁶ ASV, Penitenzieria Ap., Reg. Matrim. et Div., 74, fos 101r–v (Exeter diocese), 224r–v (Bath and Wells diocese), 244v (St David's diocese), 246r–v (Bath and Wells diocese). The register relates to the third year of Clement vii's papacy (1523–34); a second register should exist for the same year, recording supplications for marriage dispensations, but does not survive. Therefore the number of supplications from England and Wales to the papal penitentiary was probably higher than four in this period. Wolsey's list certainly under-represents his graces; some ten others not listed in it but also from July 1525–July 1526 are known: LPL, papal document 132; Register of Lorenzo Campeggio, fos 59r, 72v, 73r, 77r (bis); Register of John Longland, fos 128r–129v, 129v, 152v–153r; Register of Thomas Wolsey, fo. 130r. On these episcopal registers see n. 14 above.

¹⁷ Gwyn, The king's cardinal, 102–3; Chambers, Faculty office, pp. xvii–xviii. Leo x's letter is printed by Rymer, T., Foedera, 3rd edn, London 1739–45Google Scholar, vi. 191 (xiii. 734–5), and Chambers interprets it in this sense but it is not explicit about the faculties that it granted to Wolsey. The earliest of his letters of dispensation found so far is dated 12 August 1521 (Register of John Longland, fo. 70v) and the latest, 15 May 1529 (Register of Lorenzo Campeggio, fo. 67r).

¹⁸ Evidence of this comes from the office's surviving registers, which begin in 1409, and form a near continuous series from 1449; but its formularies of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries refer to earlier grants of marriage dispensations. The new registration system was introduced in 1513; the first extant instance is from 1517: ASV, Penitenzieria Ap., Reg. Matrim. et Div., 61–2.

¹⁹ Consanguinity meant kinship through blood, and affinity, relationship through marriage.

²⁰ More detailed figures for his list will be published in a separate article on Wolsey. The remaining three entries about marriage in his list concern licences to marry without banns, which bishops often issued ex officio (but the penitentiary rarely) and the Faculty Office would also grant (see p. 42 below).

²¹ There were four general ordination days in a year, the so-called sabbata quatuor temporum, i.e. the Saturdays after the first Sunday in Lent, Pentecost, Holy Rood Day (14 September) and St Lucy's Day (13 December). Of these ten dispensations four also allowed promotion to two holy orders on the same day, likewise uncanonical. It further appears from the Register of Lorenzo Campeggio (fos 58v, 77r (bis), 81v, 82r) that such grants of Wolsey's usually also permitted ordination by a bishop other than one's own, normally licit only with letters dimissory.

²² Register of Lorenzo Campeggio, fo. 72r–v (which suggests this and will be discussed more fully in a separate article). Only one such dispensation appears in Wolsey's list; another survives as an original letter in Texas (see n. 14 above). On the penitentiary and illegitimacy see Schmugge, L., Kirche, Kinder, Karrieren: päpstliche Dispense von der unehelichen Geburt im Spätmittelalter, Zürich 1995Google Scholar, and Clarke, Peter D., ‘Central authority and local powers: the apostolic penitentiary and the English Church in the fifteenth century’, Historical Research lxxxiv (2011), 416–42Google Scholar, at pp. 431–5.

²³ These dioceses were also rarely represented in the penitentiary records. In this and Wolsey's case the probable explanation is that not only were they small, notably Rochester, but also the archbishop of Canterbury had long enjoyed extensive papal faculties to grant dispensations, so inhabitants of these neighbouring dioceses doubtless sought most graces from him: Churchill, I. J., Canterbury administration: the administrative machinery of the archbishopric of Canterbury illustrated from original records, London 1933, i. 506–7Google Scholar. The faculties of the archbishop need investigation, particularly in the light of the subsequent development of his Faculty Office.

²⁴ Hook, J., The sack of Rome, 1527, London 1972Google Scholar, esp. pp. 182, 192–6, 221, 232–3.

²⁵ ASV, Penitenzieria Ap., Reg. Matrim. et Div. 74, fos 1r, 2r; for example ‘expeditiones 4^ti, V^ti, 6^ti, et 7^mi Clementis pape VII non fuerunt registrate’. In fact two registers survive for the fourth year (1526–7), but these are the latest ones before this lacuna: ibid. 75–6.

²⁶ Register of John Longland (as n. 14), fo. 188v; another example dated 12 June 1531 occurs at fos 215v–216r. Such letters were often copied into English and Welsh episcopal registers: Clarke, ‘Central authority’.

²⁷ Confusingly Antonio Pucci had become ‘major’ penitentiary, nominal head of the office, on 1 October 1529. This post was normally held by a cardinal, and until he became cardinal the office continued to issue letters in the name of his predecessor and uncle, Cardinal Lorenzo Pucci, including the letter of 7 November 1530 above. The flyleaf inscription in Antonio's first register indeed states that the office started to issue letters in his name on 28 September 1531: ASV, Penitenzieria Ap., Reg. Matrim. et Div., 77, fo. 4r: ‘1531 / Regestrum [sic] de diversis intitulatum materiis anno octavo [i.e. 1530–1] sanctissimi in Cristo patris et domini nostri domini Clementis divina providentia pape vii videlicet a quarto kal. Octobris quo die fuerunt incepte expediri bulle sub nomine reverendissimi in Cristo patris et domini domini Anthonii miseratione divina tituli sanctorum 4^or coronatorum presbiteri cardinalis sancte Romane ecclesie maioris penitentiarii’. On Antonio and Lorenzo Pucci as major penitentiary see Göller, Die päpstliche Pönitentiarie, II/1, 11.

²⁸ Setton, K. M., The papacy and the Levant (1204–1571), III: The sixteenth century to the reign of Julius III, Philadelphia 1984, 269–311Google Scholar, esp. pp. 274–5.

²⁹ Hook notes that when Lorenzo Pucci fled to the Castel Sant'Angelo as Rome was invaded, he ‘was trampled underfoot by the crowd and had to be hauled up into the castle through a window’: Sack, 182–3. On the Curia in the aftermath of the Sack see B. McClung Hallman, ‘The “disastrous” pontificate of Clement vii: disastrous for Giulio de’ Medici?’, and A. Reynolds, ‘The papal court in exile: Clement vii in Orvieto, 1527–28’, in K. Gouwens and S. E. Reiss (eds), The pontificate of Clement VII: history, politics, culture, Aldershot 2005, 29–40, 143–63.

³⁰ This is quoted by Reynolds, ‘The papal court in exile’, 154. The bull dated 18 December 1527 excepted such grants to permanent members of the Curia and to the higher nobility.

³¹ Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, 202–4, quotation at p. 203; Kelly, H. A., The matrimonial trials of Henry VIII, Stanford 1976, 41–2Google Scholar. Lorenzo Pucci notoriously made the dispensation conditional on Henry's divorce from Catherine.

³² However, a retrospective dispensation was also obtained from Clement vii at Orvieto in May 1528 for the marriage of Charles Brandon to Henry viii's sister Mary. It was probably solicited by Sir Gregory Casale, another of Henry's agents who was seeking his divorce: Gunn, S. J., Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk, c. 1484–1545, Oxford 1988, 95Google Scholar. I am grateful to Lesley Harris for drawing this to my attention.

³³ Letters and papers, foreign and domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII, ed. J. S. Brewer, J. Gairdner and R. H. Brodie, London 1862–1932, IV/2, 1539, no. 3401.

³⁴ Statutes of the realm, iii. 467 (clause 6); Chambers, Faculty office, p. xviii; but cf. pp. lxi–lxii.

³⁵ This curial tax list is printed by Göller, Die päpstliche Pönitentiarie, II/2, 146–80, and discussed and dated by Müller, W. P., ‘Die Gebühre der päpstlichen Pönitentiarie (1338–1569)’, Quellen und Forschungen aus Italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken lxxviii (1998), 189–261Google Scholar at pp. 204–6.

³⁶ Göller, Die päpstliche Pönitentiarie, II/2, 146, 174, 179. The list falls into three parts: scribal taxes (pp. 146–73); composite fees including sealing, scribal and proctorial taxes (pp. 173–7); and sealing taxes (pp. 177–80).

³⁷ On the conversion rate and similar comparisons with Faculty Office fees see Chambers, Faculty office, p. lxi.

³⁸ Göller, Die päpstliche Pönitentiarie, II/2, 173; TNA, SP1/39, pp. 18, 20.

³⁹ Göller, Die päpstliche Pönitentiarie, II/2, 173; Müller, ‘Die Gebühre’, esp. pp. 213–37.

⁴⁰ Schmugge and others, Die Supplikenregister, 48–51, 86–7; Salonen, Penitentiary, 86. In the penitentiary registers requests for such graces were usually approved by a fiat clause including the phrase ‘et componat cum datario’.

⁴¹ For what follows see Lea, H. C., ‘The taxes of the papal penitentiary’, EHR viii (1893), 424–38Google Scholar, esp. pp. 435–6.

⁴² This is suggested by Chambers, Faculty office, p. lx.

⁴³ Statutes of the realm, iii. 467 (clause 6). Of course it could be argued that hidden extra costs also existed in the case of Wolsey's dispensations, but no evidence of this has been found unlike in the case of curial dispensations.

⁴⁴ Ibid.; Register of John Longland (see n. 14 above), fos 215v–216r.

⁴⁵ For fuller discussion of execution see Clarke,‘Central authority’.

⁴⁶ An example would be a couple contracting a clandestine marriage (unless it was subsequently approved by the church authorities): X 4.3.3; 4.17.9.

⁴⁷ The witness Richard Fox, aged forty, testified that he had known John for twenty years and Joan for thirty, and had heard from older neighbours and relatives at Chesham (Bucks.) and even Joan herself that her mother was John's godmother, adding that ‘dicta Iohanna est impregnata et prope tempus pariendi, et fama est quod dictus Iohannes Briche impregnavit eandem, et hoc, ut asserit, audivit a vicinis suis et ut ipse videat ex aspectu dicte mulieris que visa est gravida’: Register of John Longland, fo. 216v.

⁴⁸ Cf. ibid. fos 188v–189v. This also concerns a marriage dispensation but one executed much more quickly, i.e. in under three months: the penitentiary letter was dated 7 November 1530 and its execution, 19–20 January 1531. For examples of fifteenth-century practice see Clarke, ‘Central authority’.

⁴⁹ Cf. Register of Lorenzo Campeggio (bishop of Salisbury 1524–34), which similarly includes only papal graces issued by Wolsey down to 1529.

⁵⁰ ASV, Penitenzieria Ap., Reg. Matrim. et Div. 78 (1531–2), fos 248v–249r; 79 (1531–2), fos 271v–272r, 289r–v, 606v–607r, 607r, 624v, 708v, 721r, 737v, 741v, 769r; 80 (1531–2), fos 20v–21r, 62v–63r, 72v–73r, 199r, 232v, 314v (bis); 81 (1532–3), fos 249v, 252r–v, 270r–v, 501v–502r, 625r–v, 758v–759r, 916r–v; 82 (1532–3), fos 62r, 111v, 178r, 208r, 293v, 298v, 325v, 327v, 445r. However, garbled diocese names in six petitions from 1531–2 make identification of the petitioners as English or Welsh uncertain (78, fos 248v–249r; 79, fos 624v, 737v, 741v; 80, fos 199r, 232v). The registers are also far from complete for the early 1530s, especially for the years 1530–1.

⁵¹ For example dispensations issued by Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio (LPL, papal document 135; Register of Lorenzo Campeggio, fo. 81v); Petrus Vannes, papal collector (Register of John Longland, fos 227r–v, 247v–248r) etc. Episcopal dispensations also occur in this period but not very often and some bishops who issued them were curialists in any case: Silvestro de Gigliis, bishop of Worcester and papal nuncio (Register of Lorenzo Campeggio, fo. 78r) and John Longland, bishop of Lincoln (Register of John Longland, fo. 236r) etc.

⁵² See, for example, the remarkably generous dispensation of Clement vii dated 13 February 1534 allowing the fourteen-year-old Robert Bennett to hold four or more benefices in plurality (Register of John Longland, fo. 239r–v); the fact that he was the brother of the king's orator at the Curia, William Bennett, doubtless helped.

⁵³ Salonen, Penitentiary, 381–2.

⁵⁴ ASV, Penitenzieria Ap., Reg. Matrim. et Div., 81, fos 758v–759r. On his university career see Emden, A. B., A biographical register of the University of Cambridge to 1500, Cambridge 1963, 332Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ ASV, Penitenzieria Ap., Reg. Matrim. et Div., 84, fos 421r–422r, 422r; both were approved on 1 April 1534 and were requests to leave the religious life. The other register for 1533–4 (ASV, Penitenzieria Ap., Reg. Matrim. et Div., 83) does not contain any petition from England or Wales.

⁵⁶ See n. 5 above.

⁵⁷ LPL, F I/Vv. Edited by Chambers, Faculty office, 1–227, it runs from 12 April 1534 to 27 December 1540.

⁵⁸ Chambers, Faculty office, p. xxxvi; cf. pp. xxxvii, xxxviii, lvii for other statistics for 1534–5.

⁵⁹ Chambers observed (ibid. pp. lix–lxii) that in practice ‘the Faculty Office also charged high prices for dispensations’ and concluded that the Curia was probably cheaper. Given the hidden costs of petitioning Rome this assumption is not entirely convincing and further research on the costs of petitioning both institutions is needed.

⁶⁰ For examples of resistance to the new system see ibid. pp. xxxix–xl. Certainly the register of John Longland and the Worcester bishops’ registers of Geronimo de’ Ghinucci (1522–35), Hugh Latimer (1535–9), and John Bell (1539–43) have no papal letters of dispensation obtained after 12 March 1534; the latter two registers are Worcestershire Record Office, Worcester, b 716.083–BA.2648/9(ii), 9(iii).

⁶¹ See Chambers, Faculty office, pp. xxxiii–xxxvi, esp. p. xxxiii.

⁶² This is edited in appendix 1 below. For the suggestion that the affinity arose from Henry's affair with one of Jane's second cousins, what canon law termed affinitas ex coitu illicito, see Kelly, Matrimonial trials, 259–60.

⁶³ 32 Henry VIII c. 38 (Statutes of the realm, iii. 792); Chambers, Faculty office, pp. xxxiii–xxxvi; Helmholz, Roman canon law, 74. However the Faculty Office did not stop issuing them as soon as the act came into force, although their numbers declined significantly thereafter: Chambers, Faculty office, p. xxxvi.

⁶⁴ Register of Hugh Latimer (as n. 60), pp. 8–14, 17 (the various hearings of the case began on 30 August 1536). Ironically Darius as a papal collector had been empowered to grant certain dispensations, notably for marriage: see the examples in the Register of Thomas Wolsey, fos 48r–v, 53r.

⁶⁵ 28 Henry VIII, c. 13 (Statutes of the realm, iii. 668–9).

⁶⁶ Chambers, Faculty office, pp. xxxvii–xli; cf. Salonen, Penitentiary, 156 (deformity), 160–1 (fasting), 192–203 (illegitimacy).

⁶⁷ For example Register of Hugh Latimer, p. 5; Register of Lorenzo Campeggio, fo. 71r; Register of John Longland, fo. 308v. The first two of these Faculty Office grants are also recorded in Chambers, Faculty office, 13, 59. Cf. n. 21 above.

⁶⁸ ASV, Penitenzieria Ap., Reg. Matrim. et Div., 74 (1525–6), fo. 246r–v; 81 (1532–3), fo. 270r–v (see n. 55 above). Wolsey's list of 1525–6 also recorded six capacities; others he granted are found in LPL, papal document 133; Register of Geronimo de’ Ghinucci, p. 25; Register of Lorenzo Campeggio, fos 73r, 83r, 84v; and Register of John Longland, fo. 70v.

⁶⁹ For further discussion of this see Hodgett, G. A. J., ‘The unpensioned ex-religious in Tudor England’, this Journal xiii (1962), 195–202Google Scholar, and Chambers, Faculty office, pp. xlii–lviii.

⁷⁰ Chambers, Faculty office, pp. xxiv–xxvi; Göller, Die päpstliche Pönitentiarie, I/1, 159–61; II/1, 57–9. Another parallel is that both offices employed a legal advisor: at the penitentiary he was called the auditor, usually held a doctorate in canon law and advised on the more complex cases. Similarly some Faculty Office letters are signed not only by the archbishop or his commissary but also by a John Hughes legum doctor: see, for example, LPL, CM VI 69, a marriage licence of 1 July 1536 granted to Lord Henry Maners and Lady Mary Nevell. Incidentally Hughes had also served in Wolsey's Faculty Office: Chambers, Faculty office, p. xxvii.

⁷¹ Chambers, Faculty office, pp. xxvii–viii. However, scribes of the penitentiary were apparently not responsible for registration as the clerk of the faculties was.

⁷² Clement vii had appointed him as such in 1530: ibid., p. xxxiv; J. Ridley, Thomas Cranmer, London 1962, 30–1; MacCulloch, D., Thomas Cranmer: a life, London 1996, 48–9Google Scholar (‘The Penitentiary[–General] was traditionally appointed on a recommendation by the King of England to the Pope, and the duties involved a watching brief over papal dispensations which might affect England … His appointment as Penitentiary[–General] was simply a natural corollary of his status as an English representative in Rome’). He was probably one of the minor penitentiaries, subordinate to the major penitentiary, traditionally drawn from different nations including England: Göller, Die päpstliche Pönitentiarie, I/1, 129–59, esp. p. 141.

⁷³ On the form and diplomatic of papal penitentiary letters see Tamburini, F., ‘Note diplomatiche intorno a suppliche e lettere di penitenzieria (sec. xiv–xv)’, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae xi (1973), 149–208Google Scholar, esp. pp. 178–82, and Göller, Die päpstliche Pönitentiarie, I/2, 78–89.

⁷⁴ Chambers, Faculty office, p. xxix.

⁷⁵ On the Faculty Office seal see MacCulloch, Cranmer, 117–19.

⁷⁶ These diplomatic features can be found in the two Faculty Office letters printed in appendices 1 and 2 below. Both are marriage dispensations and comprise an arenga (‘Et si … remittatur’ in appendix 1; ‘Sancte matris … cognoscit’ in appendix 2), narratio (‘Cum itaque … obtenta’ in appendix 1; ‘Sane … dignaremur’ in appendix 2), and dispositio (‘Nos vero … non obstantibus’ in appendix 1; ‘Nos vero … non obstantibus quibuscumque’ in appendix 2). Another original Faculty Office letter is Canterbury Cathedral Archives, Christ Church Letters vol. ii, no. 273, a marriage licence of 15 February 1538 for William Grene and Joan Wormeston of Stepney, London diocese (corresponding to the entry in Chambers, Faculty office, 174). Chambers notes others at pp. xxiv–xxix.

⁷⁷ The provision in appendix 2 that the bride should not have been forced into the marriage is also typical of the penitentiary's marriage dispensations.

⁷⁸ Register of John Longland, fos 301v–302r; a letter patent issued under the privy seal allowing William Tirwit to hold a Lincoln canonry and the prebend of Brampton (Hunts.) although underage (he was fourteen years old) and to marry. More generally see Chambers, Faculty office, pp. xxiv, xxxix–xl.

⁷⁹ ‘The King of England gives a dispensation like his Holiness and I believe will soon want to say Mass’, quoted in Churchill, ‘Dispensations’, 410, from Letters and papers … of Henry VIII, XIII/1, no. 1538.

⁸⁰ Register of Geronimo de’ Ghinucci, pp. 177–8 (dispensation for religious to hold benefice with cure); Register of John Longland, fo. 293v (capacity); Borthwick Institute, York, Reg. 28 (Register of Edward Lee, archbishop of York 1531–44), fos 105v (dispensation for religious to wear secular habit), 106r–v (licence for community to bury dead at chapel of ease instead of parish church), 111r–v (capacity), 111v (dispensation for religious to hold benefice as secular clerk), 138v (dispensation for plurality). See also n. 67 above. Some of these letters relate to entries in Chambers, Faculty office, 28, 48, 151, 153, 225; cf. pp. xxviii–xxix.

⁸¹ However the letter for the community in n. 80 above had no addressee but was simply directed ‘ad perpetuam rei memoriam’, in the manner of papal letters for general circulation, like encyclicals.

⁸² Statutes of the realm, iii. 466 (clause 4). See also Chambers, Faculty office, pp. xx–xxiv. Petitioners might, at their discretion, also seek royal confirmation of letters costing under £4. Chancery enrolments of dispensations do not survive before Elizabeth i's reign.

⁸³ Such grants were approved by the formula ‘Fiat de speciali et expresso’ under a papal mandate given vive vocis oraculo to the cardinal penitentiary.

⁸⁴ On episcopal letters of execution see Clarke, ‘Central authority’. In at least one instance a royal letter patent was tied by its seal strings to the Faculty Office letter that it confirmed: Chambers, Faculty office, p. xxviii. A similar example of an episcopal letter tied to the penitentiary letter that it executed can be found in BL, Add. charters 73878–9.

⁸⁵ For example LPL, CM IV/8–11; XI/62, 65–71; XII/44, 45, 50, 54. Some of the graces ratified are of kinds issued by the penitentiary, notably CM IV/9 and XI/67–8 (dispensations for underage ordination) and XII/44 (dispensation from illegitimacy), but none have been identified in its extant registers. I am grateful to Professor L. Schmugge for checking the relevant registers. Other papal dispensations were endorsed, perhaps by royal chancery clerks, in 1536–7, for example BL, Stowe Charters 582, 584–8, 590–7, 599–600, and LPL, papal documents 108–26 (Chambers, Faculty office, p. xxii n. 2, described in Sayers, J. E., Original papal documents in the Lambeth Palace Library: a catalogue, London 1967, 42–8Google Scholar).

⁸⁶ See Garnett, G., Marsilius of Padua and ‘the truth of history’, Oxford 2006CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which argues that the Defensor pacis presents an interpretation of Christian history in terms of growing papal power leading the Church astray.

⁸⁷ For other evidence of this, notably in the church courts see Helmholz, Roman canon law.

⁸⁸ Hooper, ‘Faculties’, 678. See also R. Houlbrooke, ‘The decline of ecclesiastical jurisdiction under the Tudors’, in R. O'Day and F. Heal (eds), Continuity and change: personnel and administration of the Church in England, 1500–1642, Leicester 1976, 239–57, esp. p. 251.