Catalogue description Special Collections: Hundred Rolls and Eyre Veredicta

Search within or browse this series to find specific records of interest.

Date range

Details of SC 5
Reference: SC 5
Title: Special Collections: Hundred Rolls and Eyre Veredicta
Description:

Surviving original returns to government enquiries of 1255, into royal rights, including forests; of 1274-1275, into liberties and the misdeeds of officials; and of 1279-1280, into liberties and land-holding. Also included are extract rolls of material compiled from the original returns of 1274-1275 between 1290 and 1294. The series also includes a number of veredicta of presenting juries in eyres, which were mistaken for hundred rolls because of their similar nature. The records have long been popularly known as the Hundred Rolls, because most of the returns were made by hundreds, the principal subdivision of the county.

Most of the rolls appear to be originals.
Date: 39 Henry III - 5 Edward III
Arrangement:

The arrangement dates from the late 19th century. Before SC 5/8/1 the arrangement is by counties (with Hampshire under Southampton), and within each county section the Tower Series rolls come first, followed by the Chapter House Series for the same county. Next come the four extract hundred rolls, followed by fragments of rolls.
Related material:

Eyre records are in JUST 1
Separated material:

Hundred Rolls held elsewhere include: Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stoneleigh MSS, for a copy of a Warwickshire return, Nottingham University Manuscripts Department, Middleton MSS, for a variant version of E 164/15 University of London Library, Fuller Collection, for part of a roll for the hundred of Gallow, Norfolk, Bodleian Library, Huntingdon Rolls, for a variant version of the Huntingdonshire return.

Some of the original rolls or copies of the returns to the enquiry of 1279-1280 are elsewhere. For Kineton and Stoneleigh hundreds in Warwickshire see E 164/15

For the borough of Witney in Oxfordshire see SC 11/13
Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Physical description: 366 roll(s)
Custodial history: Those rolls that stayed at the Tower of London after 1322 became the Tower Series, and were kept in the Tower of London record office; those which were returned to Westminster and kept in the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey became the Chapter House Series, and included the returns to the 1274-1275 enquiry and the few belonging to 1255. They were combined in this series in the late nineteenth century at the Public Record Office.
Publication note:

Hundred rolls known in 1818 were published in record type in Rotuli Hundredorum, Record Commission (1812, 1818). A translation of the surviving Yorkshire extracts is in Yorkshire Hundred and Quo Warranto Rolls, Yorkshire Archaeological Society, vol CLI (1996). A translation of the rolls for Stamford in Lincolnshire has appeared in D Roffe, Stamford in the Thirteenth Century: Two Inquisitions from the Reign of Edward I (1994).
Unpublished finding aids:

Hundred rolls discovered since 1818 are currently being edited by the Sheffield Hundred Rolls Project at the University of Sheffield. See also Special Collections: Hundred Rolls and Eyre Veredicta (formerly introductory note to SC 5). Veredicta from SC 5 are included in Records of the General Eyre (PRO Handbooks 20, 1982).

Administrative / biographical background:

The enquiry of 1255 into royal rights represented one of a series of measures taken by the crown in an attempt to augment its revenues. Commissioners were appointed on 22 June 1255 for all counties except Cheshire, Cornwall, Durham, Middlesex and Rutland, but original returns or copies survive only for parts of Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Shropshire, Somerset, Staffordshire, Wiltshire and Worcestershire. Of the 37 articles of enquiry, 29 deal with a wide range of royal rights, such as royal manors, suit to courts, purprestures, wardships and marriages, the Jews and free warren, and the remaining eight concern royal forests and forest officials.

A commission to enquire into subtracted rights and liberties in the royal demesne in eleven counties, mainly in the south, in the reign of Henry III was issued on 28 January 1274. Returns survive for only Somerset and Hampshire. It was followed with a much more extensive and comprehensive investigation into encroachments on royal rights and official misconduct by sheriffs and bailiffs. The commissioners were appointed on 11 October 1274, and they completed their work by 25 March 1275. They asked a set of 50 questions, similar to the articles of the eyre. Their returns were soon nicknamed the 'ragman' rolls, because of the appearance given to them by the presence of many small seal tags hanging from them with the seals of the jurors attached. By 1280 extracts were being made from the rolls, and by that date some of the original rolls were already missing. The extracts were possibly created to make the information in them easier to use in eyres, where crown attorneys conducted investigations into franchises by using writs of quo warranto against many liberty holders; their campaign went on from 1278 until 1294, when it was abandoned. The original or the extract (and for some counties both) survive for every county in England except Cheshire, Cumberland, Lancashire, Middlesex and Westmorland.

The enquiry of 1279-1280 was in some respects similar to that of 1274-1275, but it was more thorough in its scope, and included questions about landholding and services owed for them which were not included in the earlier enquiry, as well as about franchises. The surviving original returns and information in other documents cover Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Oxfordshire, Middlesex, Norfolk, Leicestershire, Rutland, Warwickshire, Shropshire and Suffolk. The commissioners were appointed on 12 March 1279, and returns were made as late as 7 April 1280.

The Hundred Rolls were used in the eyres of 1278-1289 in which quo warranto proceedings were held. Later they were included in the array of records carried out by Bishop Stapledon in 1320-1322 at the Tower of London.

Have you found an error with this catalogue description?

Help with your research