Lincoln Record Society

The abilities of Henry Burghersh as an administrator were recognised in his tenure of some of the highest offices in the government of King Edward III: Treasurer, Chancellor, and subsequently a diplomatic envoy overseas. The register of his memoranda as Bishop of Lincoln from 1320 to 1340 reveals the exercise of his talent in an ecclesiastical sphere. The huge quantity of business relating to the clergy and people of the most populous diocese in the country prompted the division of the register into classified sections. The first five of these are included in this volume. There are dispensations under the papal constitution Cum ex eo, permitting rectors of parishes to be absent from their duties while studying at a university. There are licences allowing incumbents to be non-resident for other reasons: to go on pilgrimage, to seek recreation, or to serve in the household of a great lord. There are commissions dealing with testamentary business, to grant probate, audit the accounts of executors, or protect the interests of minors. Among these are six copies of wills, the earliest to be preserved in the Lincoln registers, providing a wealth of incidental detail of medieval life. There is a lengthy series of letters dimissory, permitting clerks from the diocese to be ordained by bishops elsewhere. A short section interpolated into this deals with the issue of licences granted to those permitted to hear confessions, an issue that aroused not a little ill-feeling between the friars and the secular clergy.

‘Wonderful to Behold: this sentiment was conveyed to the Lincoln Record Society (in the appropriate telegraphic Latin form ‘Admirabile contemplatu’) by its younger colleague, the Suffolk Records Society on the occasion of the luncheon celebrating the completion of the monumental edition of the Registrum Antiquissimum in September 1973. It seems appropriate to use it again now, as the Society celebrates its Centenary with the publication of this, the one hundredth volume in the series inaugurated by its foundation in October 2010.

Charles Stansfield Wilson (1844-1893) was the engineer who supervised the civil works on the railway line from Bourne to Saxby. A keen amateur photographer, he took a series of photographs during the construction phase of the line from 1890 to 1893, 72 of which were mounted in an album: this is a priceless survival indeed, as photographs of the construction of a railway in Victorian England are extremely rare. This volume presents a selection of these illustrations, accompanied by full and extensive captions which tell the story of the construction, and detail the work of the men and machines involved. There are pictures of the various stages of construction, of temporary and permanent engineering structures and the locomotives themselves. The volume also includes other contemporary photographs of the Wilson family; colour photographs of what can be seen today; explanatory text, describing their significance in railway and social history; a biography of Wilson; a history of the line and its construction and a new edition of John Rhodes’ 1989 history of the line.

Edited by Martyn Beardsley Edited by Nicholas Bennett This volume presents [and completes] the edition of the diary and account books of Matthew Flinders, surgeon...