Bishop Sutton and his Archives: a study in the keeping of records in the thirteenth century

Extract

In the course of his work a medieval bishop was bound to collect a great number of archives. In the thirteenth century these included his register (the official record of his out-going letters and institutions), his visitation-rolls and lists of the persons whom he had ordained, as well as incoming letters which ranged in importance from papal bulls to complaints about the depredations of poachers. In the see of Lincoln it was the custom to classify the institutions and memoranda separately. Oliver Sutton is the first bishop whose memoranda survive, but we have the institution-rolls of the bishops from Hugh of Wells to Richard of Gravesend. Moreover Canon Foster has shown, from MSS. now in the munimentroom of the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln, that records of institutions were kept for the periods between the death of St. Hugh and the consecration of William of Blois, and between the death of Hugh of Wells and the consecration of Robert Grosseteste. The MSS. now existing, which Canon Foster dated about 1240, are not the original records made at the time of the institutions, but it appears probable, to judge by the care generally taken of the official rolls of the see, that such originals still survived in the time of Oliver Sutton. It is quite certain, from a reference in Sutton's register, that he possessed the memoranda of Bishop Gravesend, a MS. which is now lost.