Consistory

This website features witness testimony from lawsuits heard in the 1480s and 1490s before the London Consistory, the highest-level church court in the diocese of London. People from the London diocese – the City itself and Middlesex, Essex, and parts of Herefordshire – brought to the Consistory disputes about sacraments, oaths, and sins, which comprised a surprisingly wide range of issues about daily life. About half the cases involved marriage conflicts, while the other half centred on defamation, debt, the probate of wills, and other issues. The testimony of the litigants’ witnesses reveals much about marriage, gender, sexuality, law, urban life, labour, credit, material culture, concepts of honour and reputation, literacy, the workings of the ecclesiastical court system, and religious beliefs and practice.

The original records are in Latin; these translations to modern English are by Dr. Shannon McSheffrey, Professor of History at Concordia University in Montreal. This project has been supported over many years by the Ames Foundation at the Harvard Law School.

NEW: Download a full Latin transcription of the 1486-97 London Consistory deposition books (London Metropolitan Archives, MSS DL/C/A/001/MS09065 and 9065B).