School Of History And Heritage

Printed in conference proceedings: Richard of Chichester: Bishop 1245-1253 : canonized 1262. (Chichester Cathedral Press 2009)


Examination, in the light of the second dedication, to Stephen Bersted, bishop of Chichester, of the use of the life of St Richard Wich as an expression of continued support for the aims of the Montfortian rebels after 1266.

Significations of excommunication are a neglected source for administrative history, yet their diplomatic provides valuable information. This paper examines significations issued by English bishops from the dioceses of Coventry and Lichfield, Exeter, Lincoln, Salisbury and York where thirteenth-century registers exist, or once existed, considering the relationship between common diplomatic form and early registration. It demonstrates that the episcopal register was not the apotheosis of the English episcopal chancery. The structure of episcopal registers developed in parallel with the use of common form, revealing chanceries still in flux and that those dioceses with the earliest registers were not necessarily the most organised by the start of the fourteenth century.

This paper presents the results of a case study of wax seals dated between 1225 and 1250 from St Ethelbert’s Hospital, Hereford. When medieval matrices were impressed into soft wax, handprints were often left on the reverse of the seal. The use of modern forensic techniques to capture and compare these prints provides evidence about the process of sealing and its relationship to the individual matrix owner. Seals with the same print on the reverse could be impressed with different matrices, and impressions of the same matrix have different prints on the reverse. The impressing of the matrix was not, then, as has been claimed, the responsibility of the matrix owner as the only way to impress their identity into the wax. This evidence allows a reappraisal of administrative developments in sealing, and the separation of the process of sealing from both the performance of livery of seisin and the seal owner.

It has long been supposed that Old Romney may have been the predecessor to the medieval Cinque Port of New Romney. Field-walking to the east of Old Romney located a number of medieval sites, but produced no evidence for the presence of a former town or port. Documentary research confirmed that the Domesday town of Romenel was very probably that of New Romney. Old Romney is identified as the sites of a shrunken medieval village.