Agricultural History Review, Volume 58 Part 1 (2010), p. 129

This is a lavish production, hardbound in the traditional Northamptonshire Record Society green case with gold lettering on the spine along with a glossy dust jacket complete (curiously) with two copies of an exquisite colour photograph of the present Pilsgate House. Unfortunately your reviewer’s reaction on opening the volume was coloured by annoyance at the number of sub-editorial errors which ‘spoiled the ship’. Some of these could perhaps be described as matters of taste, rather than complaints of substance. Using ‘[46]’ as a noun and the subject of a sentence is an unusual solution to the age-old editorial problem of how to refer to a particular document in an un-indexed cartulary, but it would have been helpful to have had this made clear initially, rather than some 30 pages into the introduction. Others are more serious: inconsistency in dating style (‘20.08.1361’ on p.xxvi, ‘20 October, 1357’ on the following page); contradictory handling of a range of manuscript folios (‘fos 148–156’ on p.xxxii, (correct if an en-rule were used, rather than a hyphen), but ‘Folio 8 to Folio 156 inclusive’ instead of ‘fos 8–156’ (‘inclusive’ is superfluous), to say nothing of incorrect elision (‘1330–1’, using an en-rule is correct for a period of time beyond the second decade of a century, not ‘1330–31’, using a hyphen (p.xxvi)). Failure to use ‘smart’ quotes (e. g. on p.xlix) is a further example of inattention to detail. Appropriate cross-referencing to standard reference works is customary in such volumes precisely because it makes them easier for scholars to use: for example, it would be helpful to know that [74], a charter of King Stephen, is in fact printed as Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum III no. 659, where further texts are noted and different dating inferences made (cf. also p.xix); this portion of the Register itself, BL, Ms Cotton Faustina B, iii fos 1–157, is customarily cited as Davis no. 765. Much is made of the changed dedication of the parish church in Barnack (at p.xxv, discussing [189]), suggesting that the modern ascription to St John the Baptist is not medieval. While recent literature on medieval rural church dedication practice in general remains limited, in the case of Barnack, most unusually, it happens that there is explicit documentary corroboration from within a quarter of a century of the document copied into Fraunceys register that the dedication of the parochialis ecclesia in Barnack was indeed to the Baptist. On 4 September 1311 Bishop John Dalderby issued an indulgence in favour of St John’s which was recorded in his memoranda register (Lincolnshire Archives Centre, REG/3, fo.229v). The reference in Fraunceys is probably to some chapel within the parish.

That said, this edition of part of one of the Peterborough sacrist’s cartularies is a welcome addition to the Mellows memorial volumes. An elaborate codicological description is provided, which is much more extensive than that in Janet Martin’s 1978 volume, no. 37 in the series. The text divides naturally into two parts: charters and other documents relating to tenurial change in the sacrist’s manor of Pilsgate from the late twelfth to the mid-fourteenth centuries and a collection of associated rentals and surveys from 1403 and earlier. An interesting excursus details a tithe dispute between the abbot of Peterborough and the rector of Barnack in the 1370s, including acta of Bishop John Buckingham which are said not to be recorded in the Lincoln registers ([199]n (p.219)). No original material survives with which to compare the transcription. The material from the first part is printed in extenso in the original Latin (along with two texts in Norman French), along with an English translation which ‘attempts to preserve some of the idiosyncratic features of the Latin charters’. A bibliography is provided, along with indices of personal and institutional names, place names and subjects.