Selected Depositions from the Court of the Bishop of Hereford 1597-1601

Lead Editors:             Frank Klaassen and Sharon Wright

Student Editors:      Amanda Dawson, Eric Haller, Sydney Hiebert, Anna Hoimyr, Bex Martens, Hailey Park, Sara Parsons, and Zoey Schaffer.

The editions collected here derive from the earliest surviving volume of depositions for cases brought to the Episcopal Court in Hereford. It contains materials relevant to between 150 and 200 causes most of which are instance cases brought by individual parishioners. They provide a rich and colourful picture of life in the late sixteenth century including community tensions, travel and mobility, marriage, reproduction, and everyday tasks from doing laundry to tending crops and animals. The are also the product of scribes, judges, proctors, and the other participants in ecclesiastical judicial procedure, who influenced the production of these documents in different ways.

The initial transcriptions and research for this set of materials was conducted by students at the University of Saskatchewan in a course on pre-modern manuscripts (CMRS 333.3). In addition to those students listed above, the initial transcribers included Alex Galindo Barrones, Alicia Monson, Reagan Rohel, Jen Slager, and Hannah Willness.

We are profoundly indebted to the support, wisdom, patience, and generosity of the staff of the Hereford Archive and Record Centre, particularly the Senior Archivist, Rhys Griffith.  This project was made possible through financial support from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the University of Saskatchewan.