A new class of records begins in the thirteenth century with BISHOPS’ REGISTERS.  These, so far as they survive, are preserved in the diocesan registries.  Of printed registers for this period the most important is MARTIN’S Registrum Epistolarum J. Peckham (3 vols., Rolls Series, 1882-1886), the earliest surviving Canterbury register.  Other registers printed or calendared are HINGESTON-RANDOLPH’S Exeter Registers, 1257-1291, 1307-1326, and 1327-1369 (5 vols., 1889, etc.); excerpts, particularly from the York registers, in RAINE’S Letters from the Northern Registers, Rolls Series; the two oldest York Registers of ARCHBISHOPS WALTER GREY (1215-1255) and WALTER GIFFARD (1266-1279), both in Surtees Society; the Wells Registers of BPS.  DROKENSFORD, 1309-1329, and RALPH OF SHREWSBURY, 1329-1363 (Somerset Record Society); the Worcester Register of BP.  GIFFARD, 1268-1302 (Worcester Historical Society); the Winchester Registers of BISHOPS SANDALE and RIGAUD, 1316-1323, and WYKEHAM, 1366-1404 (Hampshire Record Society).  A society called the Canterbury and York Society has recently been started to set forth episcopal registers systematically in print.  It has begun to publish the earliest Lincoln Register extant, that of Hugh of Wells, bishop of Lincoln, 1209-1235, whose Liber Antiquus de Ordinatione Vicariorum was printed in 1888.  Analogous documents are LUARD’S Rob.  Grosseteste Epistola (Roll Series, 1861), and the like.

Monastic CARTULARIES are less important for general history in this than in previous periods; large masses of monastic records of this age have survived, not a tithe of which is to be found in DUGDALE’S Monasticon.  Some monastic records illustrate the domestic economy or religious life of the house as KIRK’S Accounts of the Obedientiaries of Abingdon, 1322-1479 (Camden Soc.); J.W.  CLARK’s Observances in use at Barnwell Priory, 1295-1296(1897), and the like.

For this period by far the most important series of foreign records is the magnificent collections of the papacy.  A summary of many of these is to be found in BLISS, JOHNSON, and TWEMLOW’s Calendars of Papal Registers illustrating the History of Great Britain and Ireland; Papal Letters (vols. i.-iv., 1198-1404), and Petitions to the Pope (vol. i., 1342-1419), of special importance for the fourteenth century.  These useful calendars, however, do not always dispense us from consulting the grand series of papal records published or analysed under the care of the French School of Rome, which has not yet sufficiently been studied in this country.  This enterprise is divided into two sections.  In the first the Registers from Gregory IX. to Benedict XI. are in course of publication; in the second the letters of the Avignon popes relating to France are printed or analysed.  Portions of the letters of John XXII, Benedict XII, and Clement VI, are already issued.  PRESSUTI has published one volume of the Registers of Honorius III (1888).  From the Vatican archives also comes THEINER’S Vetera Monumenta Hib. et Scot.  Historiam illustrantia (1864), beginning in 1216.