Register of John Waltham, Bishop of Salisbury 1388-1395

Late 14c ecclesiastical records from the diocese of Salisbury.

The 235 folios of John Waltham's register contain letters, dispensations and letters dimissory, institutions; parochial visitations, and judicial acta. Five of the calendar's seven appendices supply additional related matter. As well as expediting routine business, the bishop is seen resolving, with royal support, a longstanding dispute with his chapter, resisting metropolitical visitation, using canon law to excuse his failure to levy papal taxes and statute law to safeguard patronage from papal provisions, and uncovering details about Lollard masses. It is of some interest that the clerks who preside over his courts differed markedly in their methods and sentencing policy.
The medieval diocese of Salisbury covered the old counties of Berkshire, Dorset and Wiltshire, and the register will be of considerable interest to local historians as well as to medievalists.