Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
John le neve is alive and well and is living in the university of London. Indeed, letters are still addressed to him: he received one quite recently from his present publisher, the Athlone Press. It was in 1716 that this petulant, not to say paranoid, cleric confounded his enemies and his creditors by publishing his Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae. The volume represented years of tiresome research, and it could be argued that Le Neve made a better job with the materials at his disposal than did his nineteenth-century reviser and continuator, T. Duffus Hardy, whose edition appeared in three volumes in 1854.
1 Le Neve, John, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae: or, an Essay towards deducing a Regular Succession of all the Principal Dignitaries in each Cathedral, Collegiate Church or Chapel (now in being) in those parts of Great Britain called England and Wales (London 1716)Google Scholar.
2 Le Neve, John, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, corrected and continued to the present day by Hardy, T. Duffus, 3 vols (Oxford 1854).Google Scholar
3 [Le Neve, John,] Fasti [Ecclesiae Anglicanae] 1066-1300, [ed Greenway, D.E.], 21 vols (London 1968, 1971)Google Scholar in progress; ibid 1300-1541, ed Horn, j.M., Jones, B. and King, H.P.F., 12 vols (London 1962-7)Google Scholar; ibid 1541-1857, ed Horn, J.M., 2 vols (London 1968, 1971)Google Scholar in progress.
4 Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae Medii Aevi ad annum 1638, second draft ed Watt, D.E.R. (St Andrews 1969)Google Scholar.
5 For a select bibliography of modern works containing fasti covering the period 1066-1300, see Fasti 1066-1300, I, pp 100-1.
6 BM Harley MS 6956 fols 91r-6r , and St Paul’s Dean & Chapter Library WD 2 fols 110/17r-112/19’; see Brooke, C.N.L., ‘The Composition of the chapter of St Paul’s, 1086-1163’, CHJ 10 (1951) pp 111-32Google Scholar; Morey, [A.] and Brooke, [C. N. L.], Gilbert Foliot [and his Letters] (Cambridge 1965) pp 276–88Google Scholar; Fasti 1066-1300, I, p. xiv and passim.
7 For example, Simon of Wells (Fasti 1066-1300, I, p 33), Robert Losinga [ibid p 42), Robert de Esthall (ibid p 46), Godfrey de Lucy (ibid p 47), Hugh of Wells (ibid p 48), Robert Burnell (ibid p 54), William de Greenfield, John Cumin (ibid p 55), Jocelin de Bohun, Robert of Salisbury, John de Greenford (ibid p 57), and many others.
8 Dean, Durham & Chapter Muniments Cartuarium II fol iv Google Scholar, and Registrum II fol 350v; and BM Cotton MS Vespasian A VI fol 62V.
9 See Offler, H.S., Medieval Historians of Durham (Durham 1958)Google Scholar.
10 See Fasti 1066-1300, II, pp 102–9.
11 Annales de Waverleia, Annales Monastici, [ed Luard, H.R.], RS 36 (1864-9) II p 257.Google Scholar
12 Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi Benedicti Abbatis, ed Stubbs, W., RS 49 (1867) I p 195.Google Scholar
13 Matthaei Parisiensis Monachi Sancti Albani Chronica Majora, ed Luard, H.R., RS 57 (1872-83) IV p 588.Google Scholar
14 Ibid, III pp 210-11.
15 For example Annales de Dunstaplia, Annales Monastici, III p 185.
16 Exeter Dean & Chapter Library MS 3518.
17 See, for example, Fasti 1066-1300, I, p x, n I; but compare HRH p 9 and n 1.
18 A large number of canons of Lincoln are known only from their obits, for example: Adam de Ely, Ajax, Alberic, Albinus, Asketil, Ansold, in obituary printed in Statutes of Lincoln Cathedral, ed Bradshaw, H. B. and Wordsworth, C., 3vols (Cambridge 1892-7) II pp ccxxxiv-ccxliiGoogle Scholar.
19 The lists are printed ibid, III pp 787-99; in the forthcoming Fasti 1066-1300, III (Lincoln) I shall discuss their dates.
20 Vetus Registrum Sarisberiense alias dictum Registrum Osmundi, S. episcopi, ed Jones, W.H.R., RS (1883-4) II pp 70-5Google Scholar; and see K. Edwards, in VCH Wilt shire, III p 160.
21 Taxatio Ecclesiastica Angliae et Walliae auctoritate P. Nicholai IV circa AD 1291, ed Astle, T. and others, Record Commission (1802) pp 168–70.Google Scholar
22 BM Harley MS 6956 fols 88v-9r; and see Fasti 1066-1300, I, p 99.
23 Morey, A., Bartholomew of Exeter (Cambridge 1937) app II no 21, and pp 86–7.Google Scholar
24 Facsimiles of Royal and Other Charters in the British Museum, ed Warner, G.F. and Ellis, H.J. (London 1903) nos 68-9 and n.Google Scholar
25 Transcripts of Charters relating to Gilbertine Houses, ed Stenton, F.M., LRS 18 (1922) p xxxi.Google Scholar
26 HRH, p 10; also Morey and Brooke, Gilbert Foliot, p 201 n 4.
27 ‘Attestations of charters in the reign of John’, Speculum, 15 (1940) pp 480-98.Google Scholar
28 In RR, II p xxviii, Johnson and Cronne doubted that all witnesses were necessarily present at the attestation of Henry I’s charters, but their reason is unconvincing. Compare Barrow’s, G.W.S. comments on Scottish royal charters, where he finds no evidence to support the view that witnesses were not present; Regesta Regum Scottorum (Edinburgh 1960-) IGoogle Scholar: The Acts of Malcolm IV, 1153-6¡, PP 78-9; and II: The Acts of William I, 1165-1214, p 80.
29 See Cheney, C.R., Notaries Public in England in the Thirteen and Fourteenth Centuries (Oxford 1972) pp 106, 123–5.Google Scholar
30 HL V 2 (1913) p 1353; compare DDC V p 242.
31 The Acta of the Bishops of Chichester 1075-1207, ed Mayr-Harting, H., CYS 56, no 101 and p 41 Google Scholar.
32 BM Harley MS 6956 fols 84v-5r; this is Matthew Hutton’s transcript from St Paul’s Liber F fol 35, a volume now lost.
33 Radulfi de Diceto Decani Lundoniensis Opera Historka, ed Stubbs, W., RS 88 (1876) II pp lxix–lxxiii Google Scholar; for a witness, William of Ely, omitted by Stubbs, see Richardson, H.G., EHR 57 (1942) p 132 n 1Google Scholar. Both documents, of 1150/1 and c 1192, are cited in Fasti 1066-1300 I.
34 See Morey and Brooke, Gilbert Foltot, p 271 n 2.
35 Speculum, 15 (1940) p 481. In a remarkable document of 1147, from Lincoln, sixty-one witnesses appear in four groups, each group being separated from the others by a symbol: the first group consists of twenty-seven canons, the second of five abbots and twelve other ecclesiastics, the third of six knights, and the fourth of eleven men who lived in or near the village of Searle, with which the charter is concerned: The Registrum Antiquissimum of the Cathedral Church of Lincoln, III, ed Foster, C.W., LRS 29 (1935) no 921Google Scholar; also printed EHR 35 (1920) pp 212-14.