Documents assembled from a wide range of sources shed vivid light on the lives and
careers of the Franciscan movement. The Franciscans, frequently known as Greyfriars,
were inspired by the charismatic figure of Francis of Assisi (+1226). Pledged to a life of
penitence and evangelical poverty, they strove to bring Christianity to life through
theirexample and preaching. In the late summer of 1224 they reached England, where
they quickly established a presence at Canterbury, London, Oxford and Northampton.
Attracting a large number of recruits from the universities, the regular and secular clergy
and laymen, they spread rapidly throughout the country, establishing communities in the
cities and principal boroughs. The custody of York, with its friaries of Beverley, Boston,
Doncaster, Grimsby, Lincoln, Scarborough and York, a regional cluster, began with the
friars' arrival in the cathedral cities of Lincoln and York before 1230. The custody reached
from Whitby to Spalding.
Although several monastic ruins adorn the landscape of northern Lincolnshire and much of
Yorkshire, the seven friaries have left little visible trace, and there are few vestiges of the
friars' once teeming archives and impressive libraries. However, despite the dispersal of
these documents, there are other sources which illuminate the friars' ministry and shine a
spotlight upon an individual friar. This biographical register of 1,704 friars draws upon a
range of materials, including the wardrobe accounts, the episcopal registers, papal
documents the probate registers, urban records, chronicles and diverse sources,
illuminating their daily lives and activities, from studying the liberal arts and theology to
celebrating Mass and hearing confessions. While some friars are represented by a single
entry, other lives are better chronicled, particularly those who were active in the
universities, the service of the crown and the local community.

Kathleen Hey's diary provides an insider's view of an industrial city in wartime Yorkshire.
As a shop assistant in a working class district of Dewsbury, she documented the stresses
and complex exchanges in a grocery - from both sides of the counter. Regular customers,
usually close neighbours, were eager to learn what scarce and coveted items might be in
stock, and sometimes went in several times a day to discover what was available, as well
as to chat about the war, complain about the provisions they were getting, or seek
assistance with their ration books. While the frustrations and satisfactions of shop-work
are at the heart of her diary, she also wrote about leisure, popular culture, public events
and political debates, civil defence, domestic tensions, and her hopes for the post-war
future. Life was often unpredictable; events happened unexpectedly - and could be
recorded by her immediately; one social encounter might give rise to a surprising and
revealing conversation. Hers is a richly detailed, observant, wide-ranging and sometimes
amusing account of wartime social life. It is presented here with full introduction and
explanatory notes.

St Leonard’s Hospital, once one of York’s most powerful institutions, was founded in the late 11th century and remained a significant component of city life for four and a half centuries, until it fell in the reign of Henry VIII. It was for many years the largest foundation of its kind in the kingdom, its income bearing comparison with that of the more powerful monasteries. The hospital’s cartulary, written in the first quarter of the 15th century, is a masterpiece of accuracy and organisation. This edition is supplemented by material from other cartularies, antiquarian transcripts, and surviving originals.

From 1705 to 1709, a legal battle was fought out in the court of exchequer between Thomas, Lord Wharton, and Reginald Marriott Esq. over the lead mines on Grinton Moor in Swaledale. In its day this was a cause célèbre due to the high political office occupied by Lord Wharton and because of the vast sums of money that were at stake. Large numbers of local people were drawn in as witnesses on both sides and their testimony provides a fascinating insight into the life of this remote Yorkshire valley in the opening years of the 18th century.

The Middletons were an old established Yorkshire Catholic gentry family who suffered greatly for their faith at a time when grave decisions had to be made. This book captures their lives and preoccupations at two crucial periods in the 16th and 17th centuries: the repercussions of the Rising of the Northern Earls (1569) and of the English Civil War (1641-8), which left the Middleton family in precarious financial circumstances.

The house of regular canons of the order of St Augustine, founded at Embsay in 1120-21, was re-founded at Bolton within forty years. By the early 14th century the estate was largely complete, and it was at this point that the "lost" cartulary was created - roughly contemporary with the Compotus (see Record Series 154). Both documents recorded essential administrative detail, and document legal claims on property. The main evidence for the cartulary derives from two sources: the Coucher book, held at Chatsworth, and an incomplete transcript made by Roger Dodsworth in the 17th century.

Sir Stephen Glynne was one of the greatest church enthusiasts of his time, visiting over 5,500 churches in England and Wales, and making careful notes and sketches on their architecture, plans and furnishings. This volume contains architectural descriptions of 400 Yorkshire churches and abbeys compiled during many visits. Interesting in their own right, they also provide an extremely accurate and valuable record of the fabric and fittings before their removal in restoration or the total demolition of churches. An introduction places Sir Stephen’s life and work in a wider context of developing architectural and ritual scholarship.

The passage of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act created an immense amount of paperwork. The papers form part of the huge Ministry of Health archive held at the National Archives at Kew, where the lack of an effective index or list of contents hinders access to this key resource. Paul Carter’s transcription of the Bradford Poor Law Union correspondence is thus the first regional collection to have been fully transcribed, and from it we can see the wealth of social and historical detail contained in the papers.

This second volume of documents from the extensive medieval archive of the Vicars Choral of York Minster provides an edition of charters from the earlier 13th century onwards, relating to the vicar’s property in Yorkshire, together with texts describing the process by which four parish churches were appropriated to the vicars in the 14th and 15th centuries. The volume sets the acquisition of both city and Yorkshire property in the context of the vicars’ fluctuating economic fortune. This reflected general changes in urban prosperity and, more specifically, how it impinged on the vicars’ ability to maintain a common life.

A fascinating insight into the economic and social conditions prevalent in West Yorkshire in the middle of the 18th century. Brearley worked as a cloth frizzer, operating a mill which put fine raised nap on woollen cloth by running it between two sand-covered boards. His memorandum entries mainly reflect his familiarity with the region’s woollen and worsted industries, covering all aspects of the trade. Other entries – ranging from recipes, to get-rich-quick schemes, to observances on women, drinking, and the marital habits of merchants – provide a flavour of life in the pre-industrial north at the beginning of George III‘s reign.

A unique account book [in Latin] for an Augustinian Priory in the Yorkshire Dales, providing extraordinary insight into the material side of monastic life in the late 13th and early 14th century. Additionally, a recently discovered later account illustrates the changes in the running of the Priory’s estates in the later 14th century. The accounts provide comprehensive details of its affairs. The Priory’s dealings with Italian wool-merchants, the build-up of its estate, the running of its granges, the patterns of household food consumption, and the devastating impact of agricultural crisis compounded by damage inflicted by marauding Scottish raiders, are all documented.

This volume brings together 210 16th-century wills and inventories from the records of the Archdeaconry of Ripon. They provide information on many aspects of the life of the dale at this time; houses and their contents, clothes, food, farming, lead mining and the woollen industry and other trades. They also provide information about property holding, the status and rights of women, provision for the upbringing of children, charitable bequests and the settlement of disputes. All this against a background of great religious and social change, the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the Pilgrimage of Grace and the Rebellion of the Northern Earls.

In 1274 Edward I returned to England from crusade, and ordered a major investigation into encroachments upon his rights and the misconduct of local government officers. Enquiries were made hundred by hundred, and wapentake by wapentake. Subsequently the king required claimants to prove by what authority they held delegated royal powers: they were summoned by the writ quo warranto (by what warrant). The two sets of records became known as the “hundred rolls” and the “quo warranto rolls.” This edition is the first published translation for any English county and provides a valuable source for many aspects of late 13th-century Yorkshire society.

In the early 16th century Yorkshire contained 35 abbeys and priories, 19 friaries, two major monastic hospitals and 21 nunneries in addition to the double house of Watton. By c.1530, just before the Dissolution, these foundations accommodated well over a thousand monks, canons, friars and nuns, some of whose subsequent careers are detailed in this volume. This has been possible using information gathered from government and church records, including wills and probate registers.

To a greater degree than perhaps any other comparable institution, the late medieval collegiate church at Beverley preserved within its constitution clear traces of its Anglo-Saxon origin. In his introduction the editor discusses the continuity of the Beverley tradition, and the subsequent developments which tend to obscure it. He also explores the nature of the clerical and other offices in the Minster and their various sources of income. The biographical notices provide information on individual careers. Details are given of preferment at Beverley, employment and family connections and other preferments and dignities.

This volume contains the information collected by Francis Gastrell (Bishop of Chester 1714-25) about the Yorkshire parishes within his diocese – the Archdeaconry of Richmond had been part of the diocese of York until 1540. His 'Notitia' of the diocese is a mine of information concerning the ecclesiastical, administrative and social history of the archdeaconry, its townships, parishes, schools and charities.

Some of the surviving early Tudor assessments and lay subsidy returns for the West Riding wapentakes of Staincliffe and Ewcross, covering the period 1522 to 1547. The appendices include a guide to other subsidies collected in the reign of Henry VIII, for which no returns are extant, and the township organization of the district. The final appendix contains a new edition of a muster for Craven c.1510. The Yorkshire Dales was one of the few areas of highland England for which such returns were made, and this volume will be of interest to historians of highland communities.

This volume provides transcripts of all known surviving customs accounts for Kingston-upon-Hull for the period from 1450 to 1500. Medieval customs accounts are invaluable sources for both economic and social historians whether with international, national or local interests. They offer a wealth of information on the merchant and sea-going communities of English ports; on the international trading links of England and the pattern of this trade; on the shipping used; on the aliens who traded with England; and on the commodities exchanged between England and the rest of Europe.

This volume brings together information from a number of manuscript and printed sources on the churches in the deanery of Buckrose. A brief history of each church is given along with the names of vicars or rectors. Following the practice adopted in the printed Dickering deanery volume (Record Series volume 129), these lists extend to the first institution after the restoration of the Established Church in 1660.

Charles Fothergill’s diary of his travels through Yorkshire in 1805 provides a remarkably vivid impression of the county at the height of the Romantic movement. Fothergill (1782-1840) was a member of a distinguished and long-lived Wensleydale family.

In his quest for the history, antiquities and customs of Yorkshire, there are few aspects of life in the county at the beginning of the 19th century which Charles Fothergill completely neglected. Although primarily a naturalist, and especially and ornithologist, it may be the author’s comments on the contemporary social scene which gives his diary its special fascination to the modern reader.

A register of leases and indentures compiled by Abbot William Thryske, in c.1533. The lease book provides an insight into the economy of the richest Cictercian abbey in England from the late-15th century until the Dissolution. By that time a significant proportion of the abbey’s income was derived from dairy-farming, and the Lease Book contains important information about this aspect of late-medieval pastoral husbandry, as well as on transhumance in relation to sheep flocks. It also provides details of the relationship between the monastery and its tenants, and of their social status, inheritance customs and ambitions.

This minute book, an edition of the earliest minute book of meetings for church business of Leeds Quakers, reveals the difficulties faced by the preparative Meeting (held in preparation of business for the executive Monthly Meeting). It makes available material to illustrate the workings of democratic process in a religious body which took its rise in the aftermath of the Civil War. A general introduction discusses the organisation of the Society of Friends in Yorkshire, and the survey is completed with biographical notes on people who make an appearance in the record.

This book continues Angelo Raine’s York Corporation House Books, published in the Record Series between 1939 and 1953. This volume covers the period 1588 to 1591, by which time House Book entries were more like traditional minutes. The entries are made in the context of the great social changes of the time: the Reformation, with all its implications for York – the dropping of the Creed plays and other traditional ceremonies, the gradual dismantling of decorations in churches and hospitals – and the settling down of Corporation routine – a process partly encouraged by the important charter of Henry VIII, which fixed the organization of elections.

This volume is a continuation of Court Rolls of the Manor of Acomb Volume 1 (Record Series 131). This volume contains calendars of court rolls which includes material supplementary to the period included in the first volume, as well as filling gaps in the remaining series after 1761. The new sources include documents in private hands, but which have been calendared in typescript for York City Library, and an important group of rolls ranging in date from 1594 to 1759, discovered at the Castle Museum. Entries for 1798-1800 were obtained from a series of Court Books discovered by Messrs Harland, Solicitors.

The volume features the correspondence between Sir Marmaduke Constable of Everingham Hall (East Riding) and his chaplain, Dom John Bede Potts, who from 1726, became the supervisor of his estate and business affairs.Sir Marmaduke, a leading member of the Catholic landed gentry in Yorkshire, left Everingham in 1730 for a continental tour. He only after Pott’s death in 1743. The correspondence provides a rare two-sided picture of circumstances on a medium-sized estate in the early 18th century. Moreover, the letters form part of an extensive collection of family papers preserved by the Constables and their successors.

This volume contains a translation from the Latin of three documents concerning Bolton Priory; a rental drawn up by the canons of Bolton in 1473; an inventory taken at Bolton on the day of the Dissolution of the house, 28th January 1539; and the extensive Ministers’ Accounts which provide a rental of the priory’s estate in the year of its suppression, 1538-9. In addition the volume contains an introduction providing a context to the records and discusses the growth of the Bolton Priory estate and the development of rental income.

Acomb was a township within the wapentake of Ainsty, two miles to the west of York (Acomb is now included within the boundaries of the city). The manorial court met in three capacities – the Court Baron for freehoders, the Court Customary for Copyholders, and the Court Leet, which was concerned with keeping the peace in the manor. The court rolls in this volume cover the period 1544–1760. Included alongside the court rolls are leases, surrenders, call rolls, lists of presentments and pains bringing together documents held in York City Archives, The Borthwick Institute for Historical Research, and private collections.

This volume brings together information from a number of manuscript and printed sources on the churches in the deanery of Dickering. A brief history of each of the churches is provided along with the names of vicars or rectors. Twenty-seven churches are included, in alphabetical order, as well as eight chantry chapels.

After attending Richmond School (Yorks), James Tate (1771-1843) was accepted as amanuensis by Archdeacon Blackburne, Rector of Richmond. He subsequently studied at Cambridge and was ordained a deacon in 1794 and a priest in 1800. In 1796 Tate was elected Master of Richmond School, a position he held for 36 years. Two days after his appointment he married Margaret Wallis, with whom he had eleven children. Tate was a most voluminous and entertaining correspondent. This volume contains 124 of his letters to four different correspondents in the period 1791 to 1843.