The letting of pews was virtually a universal practice in the churches of nineteenth-century Britain. Although letting and private ownership of seats were well known before the 1700s and have continued in the present century, the renting of fixed seats for use during divine service reached its height in the Victorian period. Worshippers paid anything from one shilling to thirty shillings or more to reserve a seat for one person for a year. It thus became a considerable expense to accommodate a large family. By its ubiquity it is clear that the practice was accepted by church-goers as a facet of ecclesiastical life and was accepted by church authorities as a necessary feature of congregational management. But the fact that the system was generally introduced and operated at the discretion of individual congregations or their owners and patrons, with little or no interference from denominational authorities, has meant that comparatively meagre attention has been paid to how it worked in practice and to what its effects were on congregational life.

Ecclesiastical rogues, misfits and outcasts often possess some magnetic or magical quality. The lives and activities of these men and women may provide comic relief for scholars bored by research into spirituality, administrative reform or questions involving the relationship of Church and State. On the other hand, they may exemplify some novelty or pioneering effort; as a consequence, their insights might have been blackened by more cautious contemporaries who resorted to mockery or accusations of heresy. Some of these people may be prophets who had the courage to point the boney finger at scandal or abuse, whom officialdom was quick to brand as deviants. Finally, they may be people caught in the ecclesiastical maelstrom of change. Unable to adapt, they lash out against the structure. These streams converge in the life of the Revd Richard O'Halloran (i 856-1925). During his stormy career, he publicly attacked the alleged misuse of power by archbishops and bishops. Always proclaiming his loyalty to Rome, O'Halloran threatened schism several times. He also believed that the religious orders throughout England were involved in a grand conspiracy to destroy the rights of the secular clergy. Fr O'Halloran's experiences with the Benedictine monks in the London suburb of Ealing confirmed his suspicions.

Some may wonder why Acton is a suitable subject for a Butterfield Lecture. People who knew Butterfield's writing will not wonder. He was fascinated by Acton's mind. He did not quite like Acton's mind. Yet something in Acton was so powerful to Butterfield that it needed arguing with all the time. In some ways you can say that Butterfield spent a lot of his historical life arguing with Acton, even though he was born only just before Acton died. Sir Geoffrey Elton said in his first Butterfield Memorial Lecture that he, Elton, much regretted Butterfield's obsession with Acton. He said that Acton was an ‘unproductive monument’ who really deserves ‘honourable oblivion'. ‘I could wish’, he told you here two years ago, ‘that after 1931 Butterfield had forgotten about Acton. He wasted much time, effort and subtlety, in that doomed enterprise to make something of a bogus enigma.’

The earliest extant Canterbury register is an artifact of the scribes and notaries, clerici and magistri working within the household of Archbishop John Pecham (1279-92). Of the numerous members of Pecham's familia, John of Bologna, trained in the Italian notarial arts and the cursus, was of great influence in this regard. He accompanied the new scholar-archbishop who left Rome in June 1279 to take up the most important and exacting ecclesiastical office in England. After Pecham's day, as C. R. Cheney has amply demonstrated, the use of notaries public in English episcopal chanceries was commonplace: the example of the archbishop's employment of notaries, no doubt encouraged and guided by John of Bologna, must be seen as a prime cause of this. Appropriately, John's Summa Notarie, a manual for fledgling notaries in England — ‘where they are unacquainted with the notarial art’ — was dedicated to Pecham. The conceptualisation, composition and even custody of Pecham's register must be seen within this framework. The subsequent rationalisation and retention of Canterbury records of all kinds including registers, though not exclusively attributable to John of Bologna and Pecham's notaries, was probably strongly influenced by them. For this reason, all that can be learned about Pecham's register and record-keeping among his staff is of significance — certainly to historians of what Robert Brentano has called ‘the written Church’.