Private correspondence between Rome and England in the fifteenth century is not unknown but is usually to be found among the business papers of proctors permanently resident at the Curia, such as William Swan and Thomas Hope. By contrast, the three letters printed below were written by an occasional visitor to Rome, charged with a specific errand. They tell us more about England than Italy, and more about the everyday concerns of a moderately successful clerical careerist than the procedures of the papal court, but they are unusual and valuable precisely for that reason. The author of these letters was Master Robert Thornton. A canon lawyer in the service of Archbishop Kempe, he began his career as an advocate in the prerogative court of York and, during the 1440s, established himself as one of the mainstays of the diocesan administration there: he acted as commissary-general to the court of York and official of the absentee archdeacon of York, besides serving on many ad hoc commissions. By the time these letters were written, Thornton's diligence in the archbishop's service had brought him several desirable benefices: already perpetual vicar of Silkstone (Yorkshire, West Riding), he became rector of Almondbury (Yorkshire, West Riding) in 1451 and was presented by William Bothe, Kempe'ssuccessor as archbishop, to a prebend at St. John's, Chester, in the following year. It was his membership of Kempe' familia that, indirectly, set him on the road to Rome. In May 1452 he was dispatched with a bundle of papers and sixteen marks in cash to pursue the claims of John Berningham, resident canon and treasurer of York, to the vacant deanery.
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