This is folio 66r from British Library MS Lansdowne 403, the Register of the York Corpus Christi Guild. This was the official record of the charter, possessions, and personnel of the York Guild of Corpus Christi, the most prestigious religious association in the city, devoted to the keeping of the Corpus Christi shrine and annual procession. This page shows the list of new guild-brothers and sisters for the year 1472. As new members joined the Guild every year, and others died, the book was regularly updated by the Clerk. Each year the current Masters acted as sponsors: each group of names below is headed by the name of its particular sponsor.

This reads Per dominum Willelmum Bell, 'By Don (the usual title for a priest - Roman Catholic prelates are entitled Dom today) William Bell'.

This exercise is largely to introduce you to (1) capital letters, and (2) the way in which names are recorded. Again, think of this as basically a Latin document in which some of the content, the names, happens to be English. In fact only the surnames are English: Christian names are usually Latinised, and turn up in the usual number of grammatical cases. They are also heavily abbreviated. For some help, see the page on abbreviations. This time, however, I shall leave you to work out what most of the names are.

Return to Index Page.

© MEG TWYCROSS 2000