The registers of the bishops of Lincoln, in the bishop's office at Lincoln, begin earlier than those which are remaining either at Canterbury or York, or perhaps any other in England, viz. from bishop Wells, who was consecrated anno 1209, to bishop William Barlow anno 1608. The series is in good preservation. The institutions of Wells, Greethead, Lexington, and Sutton, are wrote on long narrow rolls; the Mss. of appropriations, confirmation of abbots, priors, &c. being endorsed on the same, excepting Sutton's, which are wrote in a vellum book; as all the succeeding bishops institutions and Mss. are down to the Reformation; after which period they are most carelessly written on paper. One of the most curious and useful records in that repository is a thin quarto, which contains all the endowments of all the vicarages in the diocese, written about 1210.