Bishops Transcripts

[Megan Roberts]

I am nearing completion of a book to be published and the editor has challenged me on how bishops transcripts should be written - should it be singular possessive or plural possessive or something else.

I have a look on the National Archives site to which formulation they used and found one page where they have three versions:

Bishops Transcripts
bishop’s transcripts
Bishops’ transcripts

Anyone have any thoughts??

[Squaredancer]

To be grammatically correct: as they're the transcripts belonging to a number of bishops, it should be Bishops' transcripts
Bishop's transcripts means a number of transcripts belonging to one bishop.

[Megan Roberts]

Thank you Square Dancer.

[Pam Downes]

Squaredancer is correct.

I was going to say that if you're referring to the BTs for one particular place surely it should be Bishop's transcripts, but then realised that over the period of several hundred years that place would have had more than one Bishop so Bishops' transcripts would still be correct.
It would only be Bishop's transcripts if you were referring to one particular bishop, regardless of whether you were referring to one place or more.

Interesting question, and now there's no excuse for any of us to get it wrong.