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Synods in the Diocese of Ely in the latter Middle Ages and the Sixteenth Century.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Extract

The immediate occasion of this paper was my discovery, when I began to catalogue the sixteenth-century visitation books of the diocese, that what Gibbons and some of the eighteenth-century registry clerks had thought of as libri cleri for visitations were in fact lists of those summoned to diocesan synods. Professor Cheney has pointed out that there is an unusual quantity of evidence for the existence and working of the Ely synod in the fourteenth century, but I do not think that he would have expected, certainly I did not, to find it surviving and working in the sixteenth century. When this fact emerged, it seemed worth while to look again at the medieval evidence of the synod’s working, to see whether the continous existence of the institution could be traced, and to discover how it was being used. The sources quoted are almost entirely the diocesan records in my own care: I have not yet explored even the capitular records, and this is therefore no more than an interim report.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1966

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References

Page 207 of note 1 A. Gibbons, Ely Episcopal Records, privately printed, 1891, 36-39. Gibbons’s identification of E D R , B2/1 and 7 is based on titles written in the late eighteenth century above the original name of liber sinodorum.

Page 207 of note 2 C. R. Cheney, English Synodalia of the Thirteenth Century, 1941, 17.

Page 207 of note 3 The records are deposited in the University Library, Cambridge, and may be used there.

Page 208 of note 1 E D R, G1/1, ff. 1, 63.

Page 208 of note 2 F. R. Chapman, Sacrist Rolls of Ely, privately printed, 1907, passim.

Page 208 of note 3 C. L. Feltoe and E. Minns, Vetus Liber Archidiaconi Eliensis, 1917, xiv. The sacrist’s duties were set out in a laudum she arbitrium of 1417, which is printed by Bentham, James, History and Antiquities of the Cathedral Church of Ely, Cambridge 1771, app., 28 Google Scholar.

Page 208 of note 4 Vetus Liber, 184; E D R, C5/9/2, a collecting book kept by a series of archdiaconal officials, 1600-1640.

Page 208 of note 5 E D R, D 2/1, f. xxiiii, Articuli expositi et publicati in synodo per officialem Eliensem in presencia officialis domini archidiaconi.

Page 208 of note 6 Vetus Liber, 184.

Page 219 of note 1 Quoted from Arundel’s Lambeth register by I. J. Churchill, Canterbury Administration, 1933, II, 144-5.

Page 219 of note 2 E D R, D2/1, passim.

Page 219 of note 3 Cheney, op. cit., 138. One of these versions is copied into the Vetus Liber, 9.

Page 219 of note 4 W. Lyndwood, Provinciale, Oxford 1679, Constitutiones Provinciales, 47.

Page 219 of note 5 Morris, Mr. Colin has described in detail one such development: ‘The Commissary in the Diocese of Lincoln,’ J E H, X (1959), 5065 Google Scholar.

Page 220 of note 1 E D R, G 1/2, f. 11.

Page 220 of note 2 Bentham, loc. cit.

Page 220 of note 3 Vetus Liber 6.

Page 220 of note 4 E D R, B 2/1, 7, 19; C5/27, ‘Expenses at the synod kept the Tewseday after Trinity Sondaye 1563, the dinner at Mr. Brumpsteades house, £3. 2.’

Page 220 of note 5 E D R, B 2/1, ff 96 seq. For the events of these years, see H. C. Porter, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge, 1958, 44-49.

Page 221 of note 1 S T C, 10628-10631; four editions were printed before 1530 by W. de Worde, J. Notary, and R. Pinson.

Page 221 of note 2 That is, Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament.

Page 221 of note 3 E D R, F 5/35, f. 78. This miscellaneous memorandum book appears to have been compiled for Thomas Ithell, the official of Bishop Coxe, c. 1565.

Page 221 of note 4 H. Gee and W. J. Hardy, Documents Illustrative of English Church History, 1896, 467-75.

Page 222 of note 1 E D R, B 2/1, f. 78.

Page 222 of note 2 e.g. ibid., f. 18, convocado et congregado held at Caxton by a commissary for the deaneries of Barton, Bourne, Shingay, and Chesterton, 2 May 1520.

Page 222 of note 3 E D R, B 2/8, f. 59 seq. (Isle); B 2/6, f. 198 seq. (county).

Page 222 of note 4 Since this paper was read, synodal lists have been discovered for the years 1584 to 1587 (E D R, D2/14-16); it is clear that the holding of the synod was, in these years at least, closely linked with the official’s annual visitation.

Page 222 of note 5 Payments of 2s. 4d. for synodals and 1s. 6d. for procurations were made for the parish of Stow cum Quy throughout the sixteenth century, but in the accounts for 1627 a single payment of 3s. 10d. is made for procurations.