Hereford Bishops 1066 - present

In addition to the list of Institutions, in those cases for which a register has been transcribed and placed into a spreadsheet, the spreadsheet is available via a link using the name of the bishop in the following list. Separate spreadsheets are available for each bishop, and for those who need it, a single spreadsheet is available with institution entries from the registers of all bishops.

The action of a browser when clicking on a spreadsheet link is proprietary but in most cases the user will be invited to choose between opening or saving it. I strongly advise saving the spreadsheet to a convenient folder rather than opening it online. Users will need a compatible spreadsheet package before opening a spreadsheet, and before doing so users should read the explanation provided which defines the spreadsheet columns and how they were derived.

Finally, when using one of my spreadsheets please respect my Conditions of Use.

The single spreadsheet with institution entries from the registers of all bishops is available here.

Explanation

Key to status (Sts) codes:

1. Register is not available.
2. N/A.
3. Register has been transcribed and is in the Institutions List
4. Register is not present in Bannister's "Hereford Institutions 1539-1900"
5. Register has been lost

The spreadsheets were prepared in MS Excel 2002 but use only simple fields so should be amenable to use by other spreadsheet packages such as Lotus 123. They vary in size and the largest is about 6000 entries. Each entry reflects the presentation of someone for appointment to benefice. The presentee was nominated by the patron who owned the advowson, and, if successful, the presentee was instituted by the bishop. In most cases this resulted in the receipt of tithes by the presentee and/or patron.

Columns

• REG. The name of the Bishop to whom the register's entries apply.
• DATE. The date of the entry in the register unless blank in which case the last date is used.
• KEY. A formula based on the date which provides a sort key taking account of the dates before and after 1753 when the start of the year changed.
• BENEFICE. The name of the benefice (parish, appointment etc).
• FOOT1. Footnote numbers associated with the date or benefice.
• PORTION. The name of the portion if a portion is involved.
• TYPE. The type of appointment.
• PRESENTEE. The name of the presentee.
• PATRON. The name of the patron owning the advowson.
• PREVIOUSLY. The name of the previous holder of the appointment.
• CAUSE. The reason for the presentation.
• FOOT2. Footnote text.

Technical Details

• The register headings (bishop and dates) have been added to every entry.
• The tithe/appointment types have been separated from the benefice names and held under TYPE (Vicarage, Curacy, Prebend etc). All those with a blank entry were said to be Rectories but there's no guarantee of that. There are also some exceptions like Presteigne (Rectory and Vicarage).
• Where a portion is being assigned (often Prebends but there are many exceptions) it has been separated from the parish name and held under PORTION.
• The footnote numbers associated with the DATE and BENEFICE fields have been separated and placed under FOOT1 in order to leave the benefice name easier to search.
• The text of footnotes from the references has been placed under FOOT2 but a few more have been added where necessary. Now that the data has been imported to a spreadsheet the footnote numbers are only relevant locally to associate a footnote with the data item that required explanation. Numbers other than 1 (one) are used only to differentiate footnotes that could otherwise be confused, e.g. 2 on the same entry. Where an entry has more than one footnote, all are included in the FOOT2 field, preceded by their number.
• The PATRON fields are much as recorded.
• The cause of vacancy has been separated from the name of (usually) the previous incumbent and the result divided into PREVIOUSLY and CAUSE OF VACANCY which is therefore now a stereotype with a limited set of values.

Notes

1. The year in the date field might be incorrect but it is always as entered in the transcribed registers. In the transcribed registers the editor has annotated the entries with a year but, in the early registers this seems to change on Jan 1. Of course, before 1753, New Year's day fell on Mar 25.
2. When the entries have been sorted (to merge in entries from exchanges and resignations), the sort order is primarily on the KEY field.
3. The bishop's clerks often referred to a portion as a prebend.
4. There is a list of the "official" prebends of Hereford diocese (see the Benefice Index for details).
5. The Ledbury portions were named Overhall (or Upperhall) and Netherhall (or Lowerhall) which were separate from Ledbury parish, and were assigned in parallel with the vicarage of Ledbury.
6. The Westbury portions were named Left and Right.
7. The Pontesbury portions were named Coldhall and Childshall.
8. Other portions were named 1st, 2nd etc.

The list of bishops was found originally in: Wikipedia.