INTRODUCTION

Summary

The purpose and scope

This book aims at providing lists of all known superiors of the religious houses in England and Wales between 1377 and 1540. Like the two previous volumes, covering the years 940–1216 and 1216–1377, the interpretation of religious house has been restricted to cover all establishments of monks, regular canons, and nuns, whether of abbatial or lower rank and whether autonomous or dependent. These lists are based on houses in existence between 1377 and 1540 as recorded in the relevant sections of Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales (KH). A few small houses have failed to reveal the names of any heads and, for the reasons given in the second volume, I have intentionally omitted hospitals, colleges, the military orders, and the mendicants.

The materials

The archival advantage noticed for the second volume over the first, namely the development of record-keeping in the thirteenth century and the consequent great growth of surviving material, holds true for this final volume, and in particular the extent of records available for the period of the dissolution in the reign of Henry VIII is considerable, thanks to the activities of the Court of Augmentations. The period saw a few foundations, mostly under royal patronage, notably a handful of Carthusian houses and the Bridgettine abbey of Syon, and these have left documentary evidence relating to their foundation in governmental records and elsewhere.