Description

This Latin Register of Richard Kellaw, Bishop of Durham (d. 1316), is the earliest to survive for this important diocese, where the bishop held quasi-royal authority within his palatinate. He was an active bishop, and the Register, covering the years 1311-16, includes information about ordinations, indulgences, loans, grants and licences to study, as well as about Kellaw's secular administration of his diocese. During his five-year episcopate, he also had to deal with constant trouble from the Scots under Robert Bruce. This four-volume work, published as part of the Rolls Series between 1873 and 1878, was edited by the historian Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy (1804-78). It is an important source on the civil and ecclesiastical history of the North of England in the early fourteenth century. Volume 1 contains the first 140 folios (of 366), which comprise documents from the years 1311-14.