The years between the early fourteenth and the mid sixteenth century are of considerable interest in the history of the prelate. In some respects, this era might be regarded as a golden age of prelacy, culminating in the appearance of great ecclesiastical dignitaries across much of Europe, such as Wolsey, d'Amboise, Cisneros, Lang and Jagiellon. In terms of their political weight, their grandeur and their wide-ranging cultural patronage, these early sixteenth-century ‘cardinal-ministers’ arguably represented a high point in prelatical influence. Nor should they be regarded as wholly distinct from their clerical contemporaries: recent studies of Renaissance cardinals and the early Tudor episcopate indicate that the next rank of senior churchmen were no less concerned to express the importance and dignity of their office. However, the period c. 1300–c. 1560 also witnessed a developing critique of prelacy – not unconnected with these eye-catching assertions of ecclesiastical status and power – with complaints about senior members of the Church hierarchy a commonplace in the literature and preaching of the day. To these criticisms were added attacks on the very concept of the prelate, which was rejected as unscriptural by John Wyclif and his followers: a critique which would be taken up enthusiastically by sixteenth-century reformers in England and Europe.

Lollard opinion on ‘prelates’ was overwhelmingly governed by one fact: the term prelatus and its related noun prelatio are not to be found in the Vulgate text of the Bible. Terms that can be found in that text, and whose meaning might be thought close to those, are episcopus and episcopatum. Whatever the obscurity in detail of Wyclif's own conception of the ideals for which the Church in this world should aim, and from which the contemporary Church had so largely fallen away, it is clear that the basis of his conception and that of his followers was the model of the early Church set out in the gospels and the epistles. It is worth pausing on this linguistic point at the start of this discussion. The etymology of prelatus is transparent and unequivocal: it is the past participle of classical Latin praeferre, itself meaning simply ‘to bring forward’ in both material and abstract senses; the past participle as a noun can be traced from a date well before Wyclif in the sense of someone who has been advanced.

This volume has grown out of a conference on ‘The Prelate in Late Medieval and Reformation England’, held at the University of Liverpool in September 2011. All the papers delivered at that conference are published below, apart from those given by Natalia Nowakowska and Brigitte Resl. The volume also includes a chapter by Cédric Michon, offered subsequent to the Liverpool conference. I would like to thank the contributors to both the conference and to the volume, all of whom have been stimulating and good-humoured collaborators throughout this project.

I would also like to acknowledge gratefully the work and expert guidance of all those at Boydell & Brewer and York Medieval Press who have been involved with this volume and especially Caroline Palmer, Rohais Haughton and Professor Peter Biller. The Liverpool conference was funded partly by a British Academy Research Development Award, and partly by financial contributions from the department of History of the University of Liverpool and the Liverpool Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, without all of whose generous support the event could not have taken place. This publication has also been made possible by a grant from the Scouloudi Foundation in association with the Institute of Historical Research, acknowledged here with gratitude.