The officials and bodies which compiled the mountain of paper which recorded the major activities of the Church were generally speaking located at four levels of a hierarchical structure. This was the case throughout England. In order to provide a concrete example of how this worked we shall describe the system in Essex and specifically the Archdeaconry of Colchester within which Earls Colne was located. As we have earlier stressed, those working on other areas will need to modify this account somewhat since each jurisdiction had its own idiosyncrasies. At the level of the parish there was the incumbent, helped by churchwardens and overseers of the poor, or other officials such as sidesmen. In Earls Colne the next significant level up was the Archdeaconry of Colchester, for the Deanery of Lexden does not seem to have been a record-producing body during this period, or at least no records are known to have survived. The bishopric was in theory above the archdeaconry. In practice they had coterminous jurisdiction, though there were rights of appeal upwards. In our case there was the Bishop of London who exercised his power principally through two courts, the Consistory and his Commissary in Essex and Hertfordshire. At the top level there was the Archbishop of Canterbury. Thus of our seven types of record, the parish produced the registers and the poor administration documents and had some part in producing accounts of church administration, while the archdeaconry and bishopric produced or stored the other records.

The jurisdictional boundary between the bottom level and the archdeaconry is clear, but it is necessary to say a little more about the relations between Archdeacon, Consistory and Commissary.