ABSTRACT
The function of formal election records being to make an election appear the bona-fide act of a cathedral chapter, the few sets which remain offer no indications whatsoever of external influences at work during the proceedings. Casual evidence, for example, illumines the variety of personal and political influences at play in the Curia in the Canterbury election of August-December 1228. In an election to Durham in 1240 he appealed to the Pope against the election of certain scholars and religious whom he thought might be chosen by the convent. In 1251, on the election of M. Laurence of S. Martin to Rochester, he makes a conventional surmise, that the monks elected a curialis because they feared that if they chose another the king would oppose the election. Walter Mauclerc seems to have acted on his own initiative in his election to Carlisle: certainly the Crown did not approve, and appealed against it, withholding the royal consent for more than two months.
