The election of Bishop Bernard of Osma, former prior of Osma, took place not later than 15 February 1174. But the validity of his election was subsequently challenged on grounds of simony, and he was deposed sometime after mid-July 1176. A decretal of Alexander III to Archbishop Cerebruno of Toledo, Consuluit nos, dealt in its opening section with the question of appeals where manifest crimes were involved, or frustratory tactics employed, and in its second part with the charges raised against the election of Bernard, quondam bishop of Osma. The letter was received into the canonical collections from 1179 onwards, and ultimately into the official Decretales of 1234. There is no ambiguity about the provenance of this letter.

In his Ymagines Historiarum, Ralph de Diceto paused in his chronicle of Henry II's reign to reflect on the circumstances and significance of the appointment of three chief justices of the realm in 1179. Ever anxious for the efficient and impartial administration of the law, Henry had diligently sought out lovers of justice who would not be corrupted by high office; he tried, without success, many classes of men: abbots, earls, tenants-in-chief, members of his household, even his closest personal advisers. When at last all else had failed, he raised his eyes to heaven; and, passing over those who could be swayed by worldly influences, he resorted to the sanctuary of God, and appointed as archjusticiars of his realm the bishops of Winchester, Ely and Norwich. If his earlier choices had shown too little respect for him, an earthly king, these at least would act in careful fear of God, the King of kings. And if it should be argued that in assuming this task the bishops would act in despite of the strict letter of canon law, there could be urged in reply the constraint of the king and his good intentions, pleasing alike to God and men.

This paper seeks to present merely a preliminary report on a twelfh-century English canonical manuscript of more than usual interest. The work in question is the Durham Cathedral MSC.III.i, ff. 1v-18r, of which a complete analysis with full palaeographical description will be published later, giving clearer definition to the discussions simply outlined here. To deal briefly with the physical appearance of the manuscript first: the folios are 13½ × 9½ in. in size, and the canonical matter is transcribed in double or triple columns with an average of sixty-five lines to the column, carefully written in several different hands of the later twelfth century, with many rubrics and occasional brief marginal references, comments or glosses. It may be said at once that one obvious point of interest in this work is the variety of types of composition, many of them common-place enough individually, gathered together compactly within a few folios of a single volume, revealing the many-sided activities of English canonical collectors at a very creative and formative period in the history of canon law.

Ecclesiastical historians are already aware of the richness of the British Museum in canonical manuscripts of all kinds. The Royal Library alone preserves at least one copy of the greater number of major canonical collections, as well as an imposing range of the works of leading commentators, decretists and decretalists alike, glosses and summae, together with the fascinating, if minor, canonistic exercises known as distinctiones, abbreviations, casus, quaestiones, transformationes and notabilia. A history of the canon law of the medieval Church could in most essentials be written on the basis of these considerable and varied sources. What is perhaps rather less familiar is the particular value of these manuscripts to the historian of the medieval English Church, both in a positive and a negative way: negative in the sense of the ample evidence provided of a rapid and wide-spread reception of ecclesiastical common law in England; and positive in the sense of the record preserved of the initiative and originality revealed by English canonists, and of the contribution which they made in turn to the law of the Universal Church.