A Bailiff's List and Chronicle from Worcester

Abstract

This is an edition of an important and largely unpublished sixteenth-century chronicle from Worcester. The chronicle forms five folios in a manuscript volume of miscellaneous collections and memoranda completed in the early seventeenth century by John Steynor of Worcester. The volume is among the former episcopal estate papers taken over by the Church Commissioners and then lodged at St Helen's Record Office in Worcester. It is structured as a list of the annually-elected pair of senior and junior bailiffs of the city of Worcester from 1483 to 1578; to this list, annalistic entries have been added, within the framework of the city bailiffs' year of office from September to September. In its present form the chronicle is a copy of the early seventeenth century, all in the same hand. The section of the book which contains the chronicle is numbered from fol. 151, although only thirty-seven folios precede this section in its present format.