The surviving acta collected here throw light on the office of archdeacon and their role in ecclesiastical and temporal affairs This is the standard work on the subject of archdeacons as prepared by the Canterbury & York Society, which has published over a hundred volumes concerned with the records of the English church in the middle ages. This volume on archdeacons augments knowledge revealed by the great series of bishops' registers, unique to England among all the churches of Western Europe, which reflect in remarkable detail the administration of their dioceses.