¹ For the church courts in late medieval England, their competence and procedures, see now R. H. Helmholz, OHLE, 1: The Canon Law and Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction from 597 to the 1640s (Oxford, 2004). Most surviving court records are surveyed in Charles Donahue Jr, ed., The Records of the Medieval Ecclesiastical Courts, 2: England, Comparative Studies in Continental and Anglo-American Legal History / Vergleichende Untersuchungen zur kontinentaleuropäischen und anglo-amerikanischen Rechtsgeschichte 7 (Berlin, 1994). The main York Cause Papers are held at York University, BIA; images are now available online at: <http://dlibcausepapers.york.ac.uk/yodl/app/home/index>, with a searchable catalogue (but incomplete set of images) at: <https://www.dhi.ac.uk/causepapers/>, both accessed 9 September 2018.

² Northampton, Northamptonshire RO, IL.730. From memory, this is the only surviving original text of such a document that I have seen, suggesting their general rarity. For an almost parallel case, see Forrest, Ian, Trustworthy Men: How Inequality and Faith made the Medieval Church (Princeton, NJ, 2018), 57Google Scholar.

³ ‘[P]ro bono pacis et concordie inter partes ipsos componendi’ (similar phrasing regularly occurs): Linda Fowler, ‘Forms of Arbitration’, in Stephan Kuttner, ed., Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference of Medieval Canon Law, Toronto, 21–25 August 1972, Monumenta iuris canonici, Series C: Subsidia 5 (Vatican City, 1976), 133–47. See also Ziegler, Karl-Heinz, ‘Arbiter, arbitrator und amicabilis compositor’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte. Romanistische Abteilung 84 (1967), 376–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Karl S. Bader, ‘Arbiter, arbitrator seu amicabilis compositor’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte. Kanonistische Abteilung 77 (1960), 239–76.

⁴ Some processes are terminated by rulings which, while declaring that the parties had agreed to submit the case to the determination of the arbiter after earlier protracted negotiations, nevertheless leave open the possibility that the ruling itself was the outcome of authoritarian intervention rather than voluntary submission: see, for example, The Register of Henry Chichele, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1414–43, ed. E. F. Jacob, vol. 4, CYS 47 (London, 1947), 226–32, headed as a ‘compositio’, in which the parties ‘se subjecerunt et submiserunt … ordinacioni, laudo, statuto, diffinicioni, sentencie nostris’: ibid. 227. The archbishop declares that he had been involved in working towards a solution as an intermediary (ibid.), but the authoritarian vocabulary is used throughout, leaving it unclear how much he was acting as amicabilis compositor rather than imposing his own resolution. See also n. 19 below.

⁵ Powell, Edward, ‘Arbitration and the Law in England in the later Middle Ages’, TRHS 5th series 33 (1983), 49–67Google Scholar; idem, ‘Settlement of Disputes by Arbitration in Fifteenth-Century England’, LHR 2 (1984), 21–43; Anthony Musson, ‘Arbitration and the Legal Profession in Late Medieval England’, in Matthew Dyson and David Ibbetson, eds, Law and Legal Process: Substantive Law and Procedure in English Legal History (Cambridge, 2013), 56–76, especially 62 (arbiters in a secular case identified as amicabiles compositores). Arbitration receives only passing acknowledgement in Helmholz, OHLE, 1: 328, 446. Forrest, Trustworthy Men, 53–61, pertinently incorporates ecclesiastical arbitrations into a broader examination of trust and the mechanics of dispute resolution (this work became available to me only after presenting the original paper).

⁶ For a matrimonial case in which the ancillary financial elements were put to arbitration but the main issue (not clarified in the record) would progress through to formal judgment, see Stafford, Staffordshire RO, B/C/1/1, Lichfield consistory court book, 1464–71, fol. 248^r.

⁷ But see ibid., fol. 62^v. Although entered in a consistory court act book, this note of an agreement to go to arbitration is not explicitly tied to an identified court case. Nothing indicates its motivation, but it may reflect an agreement made on the very brink of litigation.

⁸ For one collapsed set of negotiations, even though compromise had been suggested by the court (in this case actually the Council of Constance), see Crowder, C. M. D., ‘Four English Cases determined in the Roman Curia during the Council of Constance, 1414–1418’, Annuarium historiae conciliorum 12 (1980), 315–411Google Scholar, at 372–3, 376–80. For other litigation when one side resorted to law despite lay-engineered arbitration, see Legge, M. Dominica, ed., Anglo-Norman Letters and Petitions from All Souls MS 182, Anglo-Norman Texts 3 (Oxford, 1941)Google Scholar, nos 74, 327. See also Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 588/737, fol. 66^r–^v, in which a rector accuses his opponents (seeking funding from him for a permanent chaplain at their local chapel) of reneging on an agreement negotiated before the case was brought (but not explicitly arbitrated, and while called a compositio, not designated an amicabilis compositio).

⁹ For litigation abandoned and followed by a negotiated settlement, after the chantry priest who began the process had been replaced, see Oxford, Lincoln College Archives, OAS/135–136. For an amicabilis compositio proposed when the litigants had already taken their dispute to the curia, see London, BL, Add. MS 32089, fols 154^r–155^v.

¹⁰ Staffordshire RO, B/C/1/1, fol. 97^v.

¹¹ BL, MS Harley 2179, fols 131^r–133^v.

¹² Cambridge, UL, MS Ll.1.18, fol. 88^v.

¹³ For tuition, see comments in Helmholz, R. H., ‘Local Ecclesiastical Courts in England’, in Hartmann, Wilfried and Pennington, Kenneth, eds, The History of Courts and Procedure in Medieval Canon Law (Washington DC, 2016), 345–91Google Scholar, at 353–4. The proposed leap to Rome and loss of appropriate English records usually makes it impossible to detect whether a successful appeal for tuition did actually go to the curia. Documents scattered through BL, Add. MS 32089 make it clear that tuition did not end matters, challenging the suggestion that ‘a tuitorial appeal may often have been an empty gesture, from which no result was expected’: Dorothy M. Owen, ‘The Practising Canonist: John Lydford's Notebook’, in Kuttner, ed., Proceedings, 45–51, at 50; repeated in eadem, ed., John Lydford's Book, Devon and Cornwall Record Society Publications 19 / HMC Joint Publication 22 (London, 1974), 20. For one dispute meant to be terminated by discussion and agreement following an appeal for tuition, see Lutgens, Christine, ‘The Case of Waghen vs. Sutton: Conflict over Burial Rights in Late Medieval England’, Medieval Studies 38 (1976), 145–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 165 (especially the quotation in n. 125), 179–80. Further litigation soon followed: ibid. 149.

¹⁴ See, for example, Staffordshire RO, B/C/1/1, with arbitrations noted at fols 62^v (see n. 7), 80^v, 97^v, 118^v, 140^v, 142^r (submission to episcopal laudum, with penances imposed), 248^r, 281^v, 282^v, 283^r. See also ibid., B/C/2/1, Lichfield consistory court book, 1524–6, fols 5^v, 8^v, 12^v, 103^r, 104^r, 114^v, 121^v.

¹⁵ Northamptonshire RO, YZ.8252, 10 February 1519.

¹⁶ For a papal bull issued in response to an appeal from Taunton priory for modification because of the (alleged) impossibility of meeting the conditions, see CPReg, 6: 486. As this was confirmed in 1499, its provisions were presumably still considered relevant: CPReg, 17/1: 114 (no. 174). For modification by Archbishop Thomas Arundel of an earlier declaration he had issued as arbiter, arbitrator, sive amicabilis compositor, see London, LPL, Reg. Arundel I, fols 377^r–378^r. Bishops and other prelates perhaps normally reserved the power to amend their decrees, hoping to limit future disputes and maintain diocesan authority.

¹⁷ For fidei laesio, see Helmholz, R. H., Canon Law and the Law of England (London, 1987), 268Google Scholar: all the awards cited in his n. 29 actually originated in secular disputes, but the principle holds for ecclesiastical disputes. As demonstrated in BIA, CP.E.132 (not cited by Helmholz, but invoking an ecclesiastical compromise), such cases might involve full denial by the defendant of the existence, or terms and conditions, of the earlier settlement. Aspects of this case are discussed in Forrest, Trustworthy Men, 45. For bonds in secular courts, see Robert C. Palmer, Selling the Church: The English Parish in Law, Commerce, and Religion, 1350–1550 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2002), 35–6, 44 (and n. 54), 51, 132.

¹⁸ Powell ‘Settlement of Disputes’, 24.

¹⁹ Forrest, Trustworthy Men, 53 (quotations), 57–8.

²⁰ For indulgences and confessors, see Swanson, R. N., Indulgences in Late Medieval England: Passports to Paradise? (Cambridge, 2007), 27, 45, 117–19Google Scholar. For dispensations, see Clarke, P. D., ‘Central Authority and Local Powers: The Apostolic Penitentiary and the English Church in the Fifteenth Century’, HR 84 (2011), 416–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 421–42; see also broader comment in Arnaud Fossier, Le Bureau des âmes. Écritures et pratiques administratives de la Pénitencerie apostolique (XIII^e–XIV^e siècle), Bibliothèque des écoles françaises d'Athènes et de Rome 278 (Rome, 2018), 25–8, 59–60, 280–4, 319–21, 481–3. For papal provisions, see Clarke, ‘Central Authority’, 441–2, drawing on Geoffrey Barraclough, ’The Executors of Papal Provisions in the Canonical Theory of the 13th and 14th Centuries’, in Acta congressus iuridicii internationalis Romae 3 (Rome, 1936), 109–53, which I have not seen. For a range of common forms for executorial bulls which are also thereby delegations, see Michael Tangl, Die päpstlichen Kanzleiordnungen von 1200–1500 (Innsbruck, 1894; repr. Aalen, 1959), 312–16, 335–6, 339, 340–1.

²¹ Quotation from Jane E. Sayers, Papal Judges Delegate in the Province of Canterbury, 1198–1254: A Study in Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction and Administration (Oxford, 1971), 101.

²² Helmholz, ‘Local Ecclesiastical Courts’, 349.

²³ The only extensive study of delegation in England remains Sayers, Papal Judges Delegate. Despite its title, Robert Brentano, York Metropolitan Jurisdiction and Papal Judges Delegate (1239–1290), University of California Publications in History 8 (Berkeley, CA, 1959), does not provide a broad discussion of the system, homing in on the specific dispute over diocesan autonomy and archiepiscopal authority between York and Durham. It nevertheless offers a valuable and detailed reconstruction of that case and its convolutions: ibid. 90–2, 115–16, 125–44, 148–64.

²⁴ Charles Duggan, ‘Judges Delegate’, in Hartmann and Pennington, eds, Courts and Procedure, 229–43, at 243.

²⁵ J. Sayers, ‘The Records of the Courts of the Judges Delegate in England’, in Donahue, ed., Records of the Courts, 27–34, at 34. The comment can be extended to the early sixteenth century.

²⁶ One potential obstacle was the praemunire legislation of the later fourteenth century; but clear evidence of its use to obstruct judges delegate has not yet been found. Limited subject indices in the original series of Calendar of Papal Letters, published by HMSO, generally make the detection of matters relating to papal judges delegate (if any were registered) almost a lost cause. The ‘Dublin’ continuations are more rewarding; see, for example, Fuller, ed., CPReg, 17/1: nos 2, 8–9, 28–9, 46, 94, 197, 261, 298, 365, 405, 442, 456, 529, 661, 905–6, 924, 987–8, 990–1. For a papal judge delegate active in the mid-1520s when a long-running dispute revived, see BIA, CP.G.129,133 (image 9); for earlier stages, see Lutgens, ‘Waghen vs. Sutton’, 145–67, 179–84. For a court in session, see Chippenham, Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre, D5/19/1, 1531–2, fols 1^r–3^v. For a delegation which ended in arbitration, see Staffordshire RO, B/A/1/7, fols 128^r–137^r; see also Francis Roth, The English Austin Friars, 1249–1538, 2 vols, Cassiciacum: Studies in St Augustine and the Augustinian Order (American Series) 6–7 (New York, 1961–6), 2: 268*–277*. Further indications of activity appear in fragments of legal processes copied into formulary or similar volumes, such as Leeds University, Brotherton Library, MS Dep.1980.1/355, fols 21^v–23^r, 48^r–^v, 176^r–179^v; Gonville and Caius College, MS 588/737, fols 48^r–50^r, 53^r–54^v, 72^r–^v, 74^r–76^r, 79^v–80^r, 113^r–^v, 114^r–115^v, 180^r–^v, 189^r–^v, 190^v–191^r, 256^v, 296^v–298^r, 347^v–350^r, 360^r–361^r, 367^r–^v, 373^r–374^r, 375^r. See also the case abstracted in Dorothy M. Owen, ed., The Making of King's Lynn: A Documentary Survey, RSEH n.s. 9 (London, 1985), no. 127 (original record not consulted), for which further material is in BL, Add. MS 32089, fols 103^r–105^r, 122^r–125^r.

²⁷ BL, Add. MS 32089, fols 146^r–149^r. From the late 1380s, these documents originate in an action brought by a testamentary executor from York against changes in the provision of probate judges by Archbishop Alexander Neville of York, with Archbishop William Courtenay of Canterbury as judge. The first document (fol. 146^r–^v) excuses non-completion of the appeal at the curia, and seeks an extension of the deadline into a second year. See also BL, MS Harley 862, fols 258^v–259^r, a libel of c.1407 in a case before a sub-delegate which clearly substitutes for action in the curia after an appeal to Rome against a process in Arches.

²⁸ For petitions for appointments and papal responses, see CPReg: Petitions to the Pope, 1: A.D. 1342–1419, 105, 120, 135, 155, 171–2, 264, 266, 284, 335, 480 (requests for perpetual appointments cut down to six years at 172, 335; other modifications at 135, 264, 284). Repeated grants are indicated by the petition of Simon Islip as newly appointed archbishop of Canterbury for the ‘usual privileges, dispensations and indults’, including ‘letters conservatory for five years’: ibid., 189, cf. 105; see additional evidence at n. 32 below.

²⁹ No obviously relevant index entry was noticed in Hartmann and Pennington, eds, Courts and Procedure; or in Helmholz, OHLE, 1. There is very brief discussion of early conservators (before the Council of Vienne) in Sayers, Papal Judges Delegate, 108–9, cf. 265–6. For later conservators, see the brief remarks of R. W. Hunt, ‘The Abbot and Convent of Merevale v. the Rector of Halsall: A Tuitorial Appeal in the Fourteenth Century before the Court of Arches’, THSLC 101 (1949), 47–61, at 49. The regular appointment of heads of religious houses as conservators is acknowledged in Martin Heale, The Abbots and Priors of Late Medieval and Reformation England (Oxford, 2016), 194–5.

³⁰ For the main form, and a variant, see Tangl, Die päpstlichen Kanzleiordnungen, 321–4. Occasional petitions requesting appointment of conservators ask that they be granted ‘according to the form of the Council of Vienne’: CPReg: Petitions, 1: 15, 89, 138, 155, 264. Where the incipit of the bull of appointment is indicated in the calendared entries from the papal registers (see n. 28 above), it is generally the form in Tangl.

³¹ Awareness of conservation as a variant of delegation is sometimes indicated by formal designation of judges as ‘conservator and/or judge delegate’, e.g. Gonville and Caius College, MS 588/737, fol. 252^r; Brotherton Library, MS Dep.1980.1/355, fol. 164^r.

³² For sub-delegations, see A. C. Wood, ed., Registrum Simonis Langham, Cantuariensis archiepiscopi, CYS 53 (London, 1956), 154, 177–8, 189, 204, 213–14 (see also the disciplining of a sub-delegate at 157); Register of Chichele, ed. Jacob, 4: 44–51. Issue of letters is sometimes noted in papal registers, but how fully is untested: see, for example, CPReg, 5: 29, 115–16, 211, 290–1, 397, 425, 558, cf. 547; CPReg, 8: 209, 241; (for an extraordinarily generalized appointment) CPReg, 20: no. 360. For other indications of legal processes, in fragments of cases copied as formulary exemplars and in similar volumes, see Brotherton Library, MS Dep.1980.1/355, fols 6^r–8^v, 102^r, 102^v, 164^r–167^v, 182^r–193^r (the first three citations all concern the same case, cf. BIA, CP.F.167); Gonville and Caius College, MS 588/737, fols 52^r–^v, 81^r–^v, 103^r–105^r, 111^r, 113^v–114^r, 191^r–^v, 252^v–253^r, 314^r–^v, 347^r–^v and the following note.

³³ Documents at BL, Add. MS 32089, fols 108^v–110^v are from a conservatorial case of 1374 with the Carmelites as plaintiffs against obstruction by the clergy of one Norwich parish of their privilege of allowing burial to all who so choose and receiving funeral offerings. This suggests a whole class of actions involving the mendicant orders which potentially avoided the diocesan system.

³⁴ Legatine courts are not mentioned in Helmholz, ‘Local Ecclesiastical Courts’.

³⁵ Gwyn, Peter, The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (London, 1990), 282–4Google Scholar. For appeals and other interventions, see, for example, Staffordshire RO, B/C/2/1, fols 2^v, 8^r, 28^v, 59^r–^v, 84^v, 92^v.

³⁶ Kew, TNA, SC 8/145/7224 (I thank Alison McHardy for drawing my attention to this document); Oxford, Queen's College, MS 54, fols 259^r–260^v; Exeter, Cathedral Archives, 1541. The encompassing case for the last two is examined in A. K. B. Evans [A. K. B. Roberts], ‘Litigation for Proprietary Rights: The Case of the Obstinate Vicar’, in Nigel Saul, ed., St George's Chapel, Windsor, in the Fourteenth Century (Woodbridge, 2005), 117–34, but she is unaware of this (and other) additional material. The dispute eventually terminated with an imposed arbitration: ibid. 131–2.

³⁷ Evans, ‘Litigation’, 125–6. The judges’ discussions are recorded in Year Book, Mich. 2 Henry IV, in Les Reports des cases, 11 vols (London, 1678–80), 6: 9–10 (plea 45).

³⁸ BL, MS Harley 862, fol. 72^v.

³⁹ The narrative is most fully reconstructed in Hunt, ‘Merevale v. the Rector of Halsall’; for proceedings in the Lichfield diocesan courts, see Annie Cottam, ‘An Altcar Tithes Dispute in the Fourteenth Century’, THSLC 82 (1930), 136–62. Other documents are in Gonville and Caius College, MS 588/737, fols 66^v–67^r, 93^v–95^v, 304^r–^v, 306^v–307^v.

⁴⁰ Lutgens, ‘Waghen vs. Sutton’, 152, 182–3 (note also 162), and n. 13 above.

⁴¹ Brentano, York Metropolitan Jurisdiction, 176, 164, commenting specifically on delegate procedure, but the general pattern of entanglement justifies wider application.