It was the original intention of this study to describe a group of Englishmen who founded and then gathered round the English hospices of S Thomas and S Chrysogonus (later S Edmund) in Rome. The dates 1362 to 1420 were chosen because the first was the year when S Thomas's was founded and the second when the papacy under Martin V returned to Rome at the end of the Great Schism, in effect refounding the papal curia, and so making considerable changes in Rome itself. The scope of the study soon had to enlarge, however, to include the whole resident English community in Rome in the period, involving members of the papal curia not concerned in the hospices, because from 1376 they constituted an important element in the English group in the city.

There is no history of an English expatriate community in this period, though there were similar English groups in other places, for instance Bruges and Danzig. There are excellent studies of the Germans in Rome, for example by C. W. Maas for the whole group in the later Middle Ages and by C. Schuchard specifically for the Germans in the papal curia from 1378–1447. But though the English founded what proved to be a significant centre in the hospice of S Thomas, which has an excellent archive, its early history has not been considered in depth by recent historians.