| Description | Before the cathedral chapter could elect a new archbishop, they needed royal permission. The Conge d'elire ('leave to choose'), sent by the monarch to the chapter, provided this assent. Conge d'elire letters have been accommodated elsewhere among the Dean and Chapter archive, and many medieval ones are missing.
With the exception of CDE 1, the small series of Conge d'Elire (DCc/CDE) covers the truncated period from the Restoration to the early 20th Century. But it takes in every archiepiscopal election during the period, with the exception of 1660 (William Juxon) and 1783 (John Moore).
The series does represent a majority of the surviving conge d'elire in the the Dean and Chapter archive. A handful of medieval and early modern examples survive among the Chartae Antiquae: those facilitating the archiepiscopal elections of 1232 and 1233 (DCc/Ch Ant S369 and S371), 1333 (S393), 1486 (S400) and 1501(S403). The conge d'elire series also contains examples of a closely related document, the letter identifying the monarch's choice for archbishop - which the chapter was duly expected to 'elect': the letter recommendatory. There are further examples of letters recommendatory, and other documents generated by the election process among the series called Sede Vacante (DCc/SV1). Royal mandates to enthrone may be found in the Sede Vacante Scrapbook II.
Here the king concedes his licentiam eligendi ('licence to elect'). The French phrase conge d'elire may represent the pre-Reformation colloquial term, but doesn't seem to survive in any records. Conge d'elire appears in fact in endorsements (not in the royal text) on the post-Reformation licences, developing from conge d'eslire, conge deslier [sic].
The election of archbishops generated a large amount of documentation apart from the conge d'elire and the letter recommendatory. For the post Restoration period, most of this is kept in the series known as Sede Vacante (DCc/SV1). |