The Accounts of Two Westminster Fraternities, 1474-1540

An edition of the surviving accounts of two important religious fraternities, one based at St Margaret's Westminster, the other at the Chapel of St Mary Rounceval at Charing Cross. In 1440, Dean Richard Caudray of the royal free chapel of St Martin le Grand in London oversaw the compilation of a cartulary or register for his collegiate church, now Westminster Abbey Muniment Book 5. More than a simple record of St Martin's charters from its eleventh-century foundation onward, the manuscript was a carefully curated legal dossier meant to demonstrate the church's bold claims to its jurisdictional independence from any secular or ecclesiastical authority saving the king himself.