John Lakenheath reorganized the archives of the Benedictine abbey of Bury St Edmunds in the 1370s, a key tool in his administrative work on its estates that was still in disorder after it was sacked by the townspeople in 1327. This culminated in the ‘Lakenheath Registry’ (London, British Library, Harley MS 743), an indexed directory of the Bury charters created in 1379–81. His preface to this book explaining its mode of operation, here edited and translated, provides a glimpse into the mind of a medieval archivist. The book led to personal disaster: he was beheaded by a mob during the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381.