The completion of Dr Knighton's edition of the first chapter minute book of Westminster Abbey records in detail Elizabeth I's refoundation of the collegiate church, including regulatio for preaching, the school and the library; the chapter's own housing is a continuing issue. Predominantly, however, the acts document the chapter's estate management: lease particulars shed light on the population of early modern Westminster and London. Favours sought by queen and courtiers are recorded, the exercise of the dean and chapter's ecclesiastical patronage is registered. At the end of the period the...

Westminster Abbey is one of the most significant ecclesiastical institutions in Britain and occupies a unique position in the life of Church and Nation. Founded as a Benedictine monastery c.960, it is the coronation church and a royal mausoleum, a place of worship and an architectural masterpiece, a national shrine whose collection of monumental sculpture is of international renown. The Abbey's history is inextricably linked with that of both Westminster School (governed directly by the Dean and Chapter of Westminster until 1868) and of St Margaret's church (built by the Westminster monks for...

This volume completes the edition of the two earliest manuscript Chapter Act books of Westminster Abbey, which is now the first cathedral or collegiate church to have all its Chapter Acts fully in print from the Reformation to the Civil War. It records the formal decisions of the Abbey's governing authority, many involving grants of office and leases of the Abbey's large and widely-scattered estate, principally in the midlands and the south-east, and especially in Westminster itself. A full introduction brings out the value of the documents in placing the Abbey in the tumultuous history of...

This book is the first volume in a new venture, the Westminster Abbey Record Series, which aims to publish documents, calendars, lists and indexes from the Abbey's large and continuous archive of over a thousand years, making its contents available both to scholars and to a wider interested public. This edition of the earliest Chapter Act Book of the Dean and Chapter is an essential source for the impact of the Reformation at Westminster. The years covered in this volume show the business of setting up a reformed cathedral; the administration of the Abbey's large estate is also well...