Thomas Beckington (c.1390–1465), Bishop of Bath and Wells, was hugely influential in Church affairs and government during the reign of Henry VI. He had become the king's secretary by 1438 and played an important role in an embassy appointed to negotiate peace with France in 1443. His intimacy with the king undoubtedly aided his compiling of the vast array of documents and letters - many from Beckington himself - presented in this two-volume work. It was edited for the Rolls Series in 1872 by George Williams (1814–78), a Church of England clergyman and Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, who, like Beckington, had close links to Eton College. The collection as a whole, presented in the original Latin, illuminates the foreign, diplomatic and domestic affairs of fifteenth-century England. Volume 1 contains a chronological table of all the material included, as well as an extensive introduction.
