English Episcopal Acta, 43

With these two volumes, begun by the late Jeffrey Denton and completed by Philippa Hoskin, the sequence of episcopal acta for the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield in the period before the revival of episcopal registers is brought to completion. Coventry and Lichfield was one of the largest medieval English dioceses, covering the north-west Midlands and southern Lancashire, but it was one of the least well endowed, giving its bishops many problems in running it. For the twelfth century, surviving documents are fewer than one might expect; for the thirteenth century, however, survival is rather better, and at least 660 acta are known to have been issued by the five bishops holding the see between 1215 and 1295—though only 448 texts have been preserved. Volume 43 contains the introduction to both volumes, including biographies of the bishops, an account of their households, and a diplomatic analysis of the charters with a discussion of the most frequently occurring types of document, together with the acta of William of Cornhill, Alexander of Stainsby, Hugh Pattishall and Roger of Weasenham. Volume 44 contains the acta of Roger de Meuland, nearly 400 in number, three appendices (46 documents issued by episcopal officials, 26 acta omitted from earlier English Episcopal Acta volumes for the diocese, and the episcopal itineraries) and the indexes to both volumes. Of the five bishops, Cornhill and Pattishall were royal clerks, Stainsby and Weasenham were theologians and Roger de Meuland appears to have been the illegitimate son of Richard of Cornwall. In spite of differences in their earlier careers, however, the picture that emerges of diocesan administration is a relatively unified one. Concern about suitable funding for vicarages emerges as a consistent theme in the acta of all the bishops from Stainsby onwards; the bishops were often prepared to record these arrangements in considerable detail, for example in no. 71, which explains carefully how the buildings on the church demesne at Burton Dasset are to be divided between the vicar and the rector. Parish churches are the most common theme, with concerns about chapels, institutions and inductions surfacing frequently: of some interest is no. 621, an order from Roger de Meuland demanding the sequestration of all income from a parish church in Staffordshire where the rector had granted it at farm to several laymen. Other topics do occur as well, however, notably the endowment of the common fund of Lichfield cathedral and its status within the diocese (it achieved the right to help elect new bishops under Stainsby). A sizeable part of the collection is formed of letters to the king, above all significations of excommunication, but also notifications of depositions and elections of heads of religious houses and requests to release the property of clerics who have purged themselves of criminal accusations. Throughout, the edition and commentary are of a high standard and the very full captions will provide assistance to a wide readership. Errors are few, but there are occasional typographical mistakes (an aggressive automatic spell-checker has changed vicarius into vicarious in no. 125, for example); the grant of a church ‘ad communam panis et cervisie’ is not ‘bread and ale to the common fund’ but rather ‘commons of bread and ale’ (no. 46), and John Extraneus in no. 139 needs to be identified as a member of the Shropshire Lestrange family. But overall, this is an impressive addition to the series and will be enormously helpful to anyone working on thirteenth-century ecclesiastical administration or on Midland history

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