Royal Writs Addressed to John Buckingham Bishop of Lincoln 1373

Submitted by Chris Hunt

ROYAL WRITS ADDRESSED TO JOHN BUCKINGHAM BISHOP OF LINCOLN 1373

Mandate to attend parliament to discuss certain difficult and urgent business and for the king’s war expedition overseas, at Westminster on the morrow of the feast of St. Edmund [17 November], with praemunientes clause. [Edward III].

The writ is contained in a mandate of the bishop to the official of the archdeacon of Lincoln ordering him to order the clergy of his archdeaconry to be present in the church of St Mary by the Bridge (ad Pontem), Stamford, on the Monday after the feast of St Leonard the Confessor [7 November] to elect two sufficient proctors to represent the clergy in Parliament, and to certify to the bishop by letter patent what he has done. Liddington October 1373.

Source. Royal Writs addressed to John Buckingham Bishop of Lincoln 1363-1398. Lincoln Record Society, LRS Volume 86. 157 [Reg. 9C p.24]. A copy of the book is held in Stamford Library. 

Note. St Mary by the Bridge is the church that we see today at the top of St Mary’s Hill. The Bishop issued his writ from his palace at Lyddington in Rutland; parts of the building have survived as the former Bede House now owned by English Heritage. The parliament sat in the medieval Palace of Westminster from November 21st to December 10th 1373.

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