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Catalogue description Court of Common Pleas: Essoin Rolls
| Reference: | CP 21 |
|---|---|
| Title: | Court of Common Pleas: Essoin Rolls |
| Description: |
The main body of essoin rolls of the Court of Common Pleas, which contain notes of the allowable excuses made by litigants for non-attendance in court. The essoiners casting the essoins on behalf of litigants gradually became fictitious, and the development of the process can be followed through the names given in these rolls. Many of the rolls are damaged and have been put together from fragments, a number of which remain to be identified, and there are some gaps in the series, the longest running from 1702 to 1743. The number of essoins declined steadily from about 1350, and the fall was rapid in the eighteenth century, the rolls coming to cover a number of terms each. They ceased to be made up about 1797. The King's Bench essoin rolls (KB 121) long included a number of Common Pleas essoin rolls of the second half of the fourteenth century, but they were correctly identified in 1954 and transferred here. Digital images of some of the records in this series are available through the Anglo-American Legal Tradition website. Please note that The National Archives is not responsible for this website or its content. |
| Date: | 1226-1798 |
| Arrangement: |
Entries of essoins were enrolled in sections of the earliest plea rolls separate from the entries recording pleas, but from the reign of John there are some rolls made up entirely of essoins, and that arrangement became an almost invariable rule during the reign of Henry III. The names of the chief justices or other justices for whom the rolls were made are written on them. Some of the rolls are otherwise undated, making satisfactory arrangement of the series very difficult. When Jonathan Hewlett examined and listed the rolls in 1830 several items were either found or placed by him at the end of the regular series of Henry VIII rolls. Since 1954 many more have been certainly identified and reunited with their parent rolls, or at least identified as belonging to the reign of Henry VI, and placed at the end of the rolls for that reign (CP 21/7/121-123). Undated rolls are now listed at the end of the sequence of rolls for the chief justice for whom they were made, except that in the case of chief justice Thirning they are at the beginning (CP 21/5/1-6). The arrangement of the undated rolls is arbitrary, in the term order Michaelmas, Hilary, Easter and Trinity, regardless of what was the first term in the regnal year of a particular monarch. The dates given for a few rolls (eg CP 21/4/6) are taken from mid nineteenth century editorial tickets rather than a surviving heading or internal evidence; in other cases the date may be taken from a docket added long after the roll was written (eg CP 21/4/42). Many rolls are missing or still unidentified. The reference CP 21/24 has been allocated as a sorting reference for essoin roll material dating from the reigns of Edward I, Edward II, Edward III and Richard II, but at present there are no documents orderable under that reference. This and all other unsorted material will be added as and when it is identified. Material may also be found to fill the long gap in the series between 1702 and 1743. |
| Separated material: |
Most of the essoin rolls made before 1272, as well as essoins included in separate sections of many plea rolls down to the reign of Henry III are in KB 26 |
| Held by: | The National Archives, Kew |
| Legal status: | Public Record(s) |
| Language: | English and Latin |
| Creator: |
Court of Common Pleas, 1194-1875 |
| Physical description: | 1520 roll(s) |
| Restrictions on use: | Unidentified rolls unavailable except by special arrangement |
| Custodial history: | The rolls from 1399 onwards were kept in the Common Pleas treasury under Westminster Hall until 1822, many suffering damage to their filing thongs which resulted in individual rotuli becoming separated from their parent rolls. |
| Publication note: |
For futher details about the rolls, a detailed study of their complex archival history, and detailed descriptions of several sample rolls covering the whole period of their life, see Lists and Indexes Supplementary Series, I: Various Common Law Records (1970), pp 71-85. |
| Administrative / biographical background: |
The essoin rolls were compiled by an official known as the clerk of the essoins. The office is clearly identifiable by 1452, when the surname of the current holder began to be written on the tails of his membranes, but probably existed much earlier. The office of clerk of the essoins continued until it was abolished in 1838. The last roll, CP 21/23/5, for 1796-97, contains headings but no proceedings, and the use of essoins seems to have ceased at about that date. |
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