A Canon Lawyer's Compilation from Fifteenth-Century Yorkshire

The numerous surviving formulary volumes compiled by ecclesiastical administrators and lawyers in pre-Reformation England are valuable but neglected adjuncts to the period's surviving church court records. Using material in a fifteenth-century volume originally compiled by a lawyer of the courts at York, this article demonstrates the utility of such volumes to supplement and complement the surviving court books and papers. In particular it draws attention to two cases taken to the Council of Constance. These add to evidence of England's acceptance of that assembly's jurisdictional claims, and illustrate England's integration into the court structures of the broader Catholic Church.