2024/5 Mark Ormrod PhD prize announced

Laura's thesis is on: Registers and Registration under William Wickwane and John le Romeyn (1279-1296). 

Laura was supervised by Dr Sethina Watson.

Episcopal registers have hitherto been seen as administrative records that became increasingly efficient throughout the thirteenth century. Viewed through this lens, the registers of Archbishops William Wickwane and John le Romeyn have been characterised as steps forward in the efficiency of York’s archiepiscopal registers. The thesis takes inspiration from scholarship of the ‘archival turn’ and the ‘social church’ to re-evaluate the development and use of registration under these two archbishops. Part One analyses Wickwane’s and Romeyn’s registers as objects and records to offer a new assessment of the development of registration in York. It shows that registers were the products of distinctly personal approaches to archiepiscopacy and registration practices were learnt through trial and experiment. Part Two explores the functions of registration within archiepiscopal practice. It uses thematic chapters (disputes and cura animarum) to explore how different types of archiepiscopal business were handled in and out of the registers. It reveals the distinct ways in which Wickwane and Romeyn used their registers to preserve certain aspects of their archiepiscopacy. In doing so, it reframes the registers as political documents designed to support specific archiepiscopal aims, as well as the broader aim of shaping future archbishops’ practice.

The thesis reveals a far closer relationship between archbishop and register than has typically been acknowledged. In understanding differences between registers, we must look first at the archbishops for whom they were kept rather than an abstract idea of advancement or efficiency. Despite their brevity, these archiepiscopates brought significant learning in registration practices and using registers to support particular modes of archiepiscopacy. At the core of this was the selection and omission of material. In choosing what to register, the archbishops and their administrators constructed and memorialised specific ideas of archiepiscopacy to shape future practice. Examining these choices has shed light on a wider issue: archiepiscopacy was something to be performed and constructed.

Investigating how distinct modes of archiepiscopacy shaped archiving even within the same diocese or institution also opens up new questions for archival studies more broadly. Often such studies have focused on a particular moment: the production of a cartulary as a response to a threat to the institution, or an individual’s desire to validate their authority. These have tended to focus on the newness of a particular record or style of record-keeping and have been shaped by similar ideas of development and efficiency to registers. Asking how archiving practices changed from one leader to the next, be it a bishop, prior, king, or count, offers a way of examining the archive as something that was in flux, adapted to suit the specific needs of the person or institution for whom it was kept.

The thesis also offers a model for using digitised manuscripts alongside physical manuscripts and published editions. Using registers digitised as part of the Archbishops’ Registers project has facilitated far closer consideration of how exactly material was registered, cross-referencing it with the editions, without the usual constraints of visits to the archive. Drawing on the registers in edition, in digitised form, and as physical manuscripts has facilitated the two-fold approach at the core of the thesis – addressing both registers as material compositions and registration as a process – and offers an approach for analysing digitised manuscripts more widely.

Laura is currently working as an administrator at the University of York. Alongside this, she is working on developing the first two thesis chapters, which offer a new assessment of Wickwane's and Romeyn's registers, into journal articles.

This prize was created in honour of Professor Mark Ormrod (1957-2020). Mark joined the University of York in 1990 and served as Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies, Head of the Department of History and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. He was a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the Society of Antiquaries, was a Trustee of the Richard III and Yorkist History Trust, a Councillor of the Pipe Roll Society, and a former Councillor of the Royal Historical Society.

Mark supervised thirty doctoral students at York, and served on the Thesis
Advisory Panels of dozens more individuals.

Image: Richard Dobson (Mark's partner) and Laura Atkinson at the Annual Medieval Bake-off on 10 December 2025.