WORK to put online the registers of 21 Archbishops of York, spanning more than four centuries from the 13th to the 17th centuries, has been boosted with a £175,000 grant from the United States.

The records, which are held at the Borthwick Institute for Archives at the University of York, detail activity across northern England from 1225 to 1646, and offer a unique insight into ecclesiastical, political, and cultural history over this period. They contain millions of references to people and places, covering a large range of topics, from architecture, almsgiving, sin, buildings, and transport, to church furnishings, weapons, and war.

The grant, from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, based in the United States, will support the first year of a five-year project to digitise the registers' 20,000 pages.

The university's Academic Co- ordinator for Arts and Humanities, Professor Mark Ormrod, said: "The registers are a vital source for understanding the historic role of the Church in the political, social, confessional, and cultural life of the UK. They provide rare testimony on questions of continuity and change between the medieval and the early modern periods, and will be an invaluable online tool for scholars and the wider public to conduct historical research."