PREFACE.

ONE only of the Medieval Episcopal Registers of England has as yet been printed entire. This is the Palatine Register of Richard de Kellawe, Bishop of Durham, 1311-16, edited by Sir Thomas Hardy.

The original Promoters of the present work desired that one of the Medieval Registers of the Bishops of Bath and Wells should be printed entire.

Two reasons for selecting, among those in the Wells Registry, the Register of Bishop Fox, were: first, the very interesting period to which it relates, a period quite anterior to the Reformation, and yet almost on the eve of that event; secondly, the comparative brevity of the volume, which enables the exact words of the forms used to be lastingly recorded, without oppressive repetition.

It was necessary to have an accurate transcript of the Register made for the printer, and the services of Mr. C. T. Martin were secured to make it. He had transcribed Bishop Kellawe's Register for publication. Relying on his skill and scholarship, the expanding the frequent abbreviations in the original manuscript was sanctioned, otherwise the abbreviated words would have been often. unintelligible to an ordinary scholar, and would have required a translation as well as a transcript.

It would have been unusual and unbecoming to present in a permanent form the Episcopal Register of Bishop Fox and not to give an account of the Life of that Great Man.