Catalogue description BUNDLE 5: MARSHALSEA ROLLS

Rolls, kept by the constables or earls marshal of the army, or by their lieutenants, on which were recorded the names of all those who appeared in obedience to writs of military summons, the numbers of knights, sergeants or others with them, and their horses and equipment. Relatively few of those which were created have survived. They were originally drawn up for the Exchequer, and some of them are still documented to be originally among Exchequer records, either of the King's Remembrancer or of the Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer (C 47/5/1; C 47/5/7-9). Apart from one item from the reign of King John (C 47/5/11, mm 1-2) and one from that of Henry III (C 47/5/1), they all date from the reigns of Edward I and II.

The earliest document, C 47/5/11, a damaged roll of summonses for John's expedition to Poitou in 1214, is succinct, simply recording the names of those summoned, with a brief note against each of them of the amount of service they were required bring, with some notes to record where those summoned did not come and the reason why. The next, C 47/1/5, probably a muster roll of the force gathered at Chester in August 1245 before an expedition along the coast of North Wales, is similar but gives more detail. Both are valuable chiefly for recording the reduced quotas by which military tenants were being allowed to fulfil their service to the crown during the thirteenth century. The next, C 47/5/2, relates to the 1277 Welsh campaign, and the following three, C 47/5/3-5, to that of 1282. The remainder belong to the wars against the Scots in the last years of Edward I and the reign of his son.

A number of the rolls have been printed in Parliamentary Writs, ed F Palgrave, Record Commission, 2 vols in 4 (1827-34), as indicated in the list. C 47/5/11 is printed in Pipe Roll Society NS 37, (1964 for 1961), pp 101-103. C 47/5/1, of 1245, is printed in I J Sanders, Feudal Military Service in England (1956), pp 130-135.