Guide to the muniments of Westminster Abbey

摘要

This is the seventh volume of the Westminster Abbey Record Series, which combines editions of texts from the abbey collections with bibliographical and archival guides. Richard Mortimer, Keeper of the muniments at Westminster since 1986, has already made a major contribution to our knowledge of the abbey as editor of a number of scholarly volumes on its history and records; and his Guide to the Muniments of Westminster Abbey is another very welcome publication. Prior to the appearance of this volume, those seeking a conspectus of the abbey collections have had to rely on the rather dated works of Mortimer's predecessors as Keepers, Joseph Burtt and Lawrence Tanner. Burtt's description of the abbey muniments in the Fourth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts is highly selective and pre-dates the re-organisation of the archive by Edward Scott. Tanner's essay on 'The Nature and Use of the Westminster Abbey Muniments', published in the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society in 1936, is a valuable introduction to the archive, but an extended and updated overview of the abbey records has long been needed.