Accessibility statement

To use the Archbishops' Registers, click here.

The Archbishops’ Registers held at the Borthwick Institute record the formal acts of the Archbishop of York, the earliest register dating from 1225, fifty years before the first Canterbury register survives, and fifty years earlier than the first registers for Carlisle and Durham, the other dioceses in the Northern Province. They are the earliest systematic records of the archbishops’ office, and document the government of the Church, the management and staffing of parishes and the Church’s oversight and regulation of the moral and spiritual conduct of the mass of the population across Yorkshire, Northern England and beyond.

The period covered by the Project spans the struggles over Magna Carta; the Anglo Scottish wars; the loss of nearly a quarter of the population to the Black Death in 1349; the Wars of the Roses; the societal earthquake of the Reformation and the first English Civil War in the seventeenth century.

As can be imagined, the registers deal with a range of subject matter, including:

  • The appointment of parish and diocesan clergy; for instance the institution of clergy to parishes as well as appointments of clergy to chantries and hospitals

  • Information regarding the management of parishes and parish clergy; such as the resignation of clergy, inquiries as to vacancies (i.e. why a parish is without clergy) and the occasional deprivation of a living (i.e. removal of parish clergy for an infringment)

  • Mandates demanding an action by the Archbishop issued by the Monarch or Pope

  • Information regarding inspections of parishes and religious houses (known as Visitations).

  • Wills and probate, dating from early as 1267

  • Church taxation, rates and payments for church upkeep.

  • Consecration and enthronement of bishops in Diocese within the Archbishopric of York

  • General memoranda, including information on papal indulgences, licences to preach, selected letters from the Archbishop, dispensations and other (varied) information.

The registers are key sources for the study of medieval and early modern religious and political history, for art and buildings history, for studies of the historic environment, and for legal and economic history, to name but a few of the areas covered. As a result of the project,  the content of the registers is now open to a much wider audience, including genealogists and local historians.