The Louth St James Churchwardens’ Accounts: 1527-1570

Tudor Paperwork: accounts revealing the trials and tribulations of church officials during the Reformation period.


The Louth churchwarden's accounts are some of the county's most comprehensive surviving parish records. These continue in an almost unbroken sequence from the beginning of the sixteenth century, opening a panorama on the financial undertakings of a large and relatively prosperous parish church. The first published transcription, edited by Reginald Dudding, Rector of Saleby (1859-1937), covered the years 1500/1 to 1523/4 and recount the construction of the church's magnificent spire in considerable detail. The documents transcribed in this present publication date from 1527/8 to 1570/1 and comprise of two volumes now deposited in the Lincolnshire Archives. These, alongside the comprehensive parish registers commencing in 1538, illustrate the fiscal and social interactions between a local parish church and its parishioners. Importantly, although these texts are in hindsight historically significant, to the churchwardens of the period they were primarily a statement of the financial situation of the church; merely Tudor paperwork.