Editorial Note

Notes

There are particular difficulties involved in compiling Fasti for Chichester cathedral, in the period 1300-1541, due to the scarcity of bishops' registers and chapter act books. There is no bishop's register before that of Robert Rede, 1396-1415, and then a long gap, with only the brief register of Richard Praty, 1438-45, before the series of registers begins with that of Edward Story in 1478. Similarly, there is no chapter act book until 1472 when the White Act Book begins, and only a little material is to be gleaned from fourteenth-century cartularies. Therefore the main sources for the fourteenth century and much of the fifteenth have been the patent rolls and papal records, while the episcopal records of other dioceses (notably Exeter, Lichfield, Lincoln, London, Salisbury and Winchester) occasionally provided information concerning an exchange with a Chichester prebend or dignity, which would otherwise have been unknown. The lists are therefore inevitably incomplete, and it has been necessary to add a list of those men who had claims to Chichester canonries or who occur as canons, and yet whose prebend is unknown.

I am particularly indebted to Mr W. D. Peckham, who during a life-time of work on Sussex and Chichester has been collecting material for the cathedral Fasti, and most generously put this at my disposal. He also read the revised Fasti in manuscript, and made many valuable suggestions.

The dignitaries are given in the order of their precedence in choir (Archaeologia xlv 147-9; Statutes of Lincoln Cathedral, ed. H. Bradshaw and C. Wordsworth (Cambridge, 1892-7) 1 137), except that the subdean is added after the dean as in other volumes of the revised Fasti, although at Chichester he was not a member of chapter, and ranked with the vicars choral (Suss. Arch. Coll. lxxii 140). Prebends are given in alphabetical order, and are spelt according to the Diocesan handbook for 1962.