St Leonard’s Hospital at York, originally called St Peter’s, was once one of York’s most powerful institutions. Founded in the late eleventh century, it remained a significant component of city life for four and a half centuries, until it fell with the monasteries in the reign of Henry VIII. It was for many years the largest foundation of its kind in the kingdom, its income bearing comparison with that of the more powerful monasteries. The hospital’s cartulary, written in the first quarter of the fifteenth century, is a masterpiece of accuracy and organisation.
This edition of the volume containing the hospital’s charters for the West and East Ridings of Yorkshire, now in the Bodleian library, is supplemented by material from other cartularies, antiquarian transcripts, and surviving originals. The introduction discusses the production of the cartulary, and the fate of the hospital’s archive after the Dissolution. An appendix gives biographical details for the masters, and there are extensive editorial notes on the landholdings and the families appearing in the documents.

David X. Carpenter now works on the charters of William II and Henry I at the Faculty of History, University of Oxford.