Catalogue description RESUMED LANDS.

Since the accounts cover only a limited time span, they are arranged in alphabetical order of counties.

In the words of the historian of the Crown lands in the middle ages, the parliamentary resumptions of 1450-1456 were possible only because of the 'political inanity and bankruptcy of Henry VI's personal rule'. Under the rule of the adult king, from 1437, his landed patrimony became distributed almost entirely among his immediate entourage, especially to the members of his household, either by outright alienation or on long leases on favourable terms. By 1449 the Commons saw resumption as a panacea for all the nation's grievances: heavy taxation, the abuses of purveyance as practised by the king's household; and as a punishment for all those held responsible for lack of governance at home and the disasters in France. In pragmatic terms resumption would allow the king to 'live of his own', the costs of his household being supported by the revenues arising from prudent management of his lands.

The first of three acts of resumption was passed, with some amendment before it received the king's assent, in May 1450. The resumption was to take effect from 6 November 1449, the day on which parliament had been assembled, and was to cover all the royal grants of Henry VI's reign from its beginnings in 1 September 1422 to the date of dissolution of the parliament, which occurred about 8 June 1450. 186 provisos of exemption were appended to the act. Acts of parliament were customarily sent into all the king's courts; but no copy of this act reached the Exchequer until October of the same year; and it was not until the spring of 1451 that the Exchequer began to send out its own writs to the sheriffs ordering local enquiries about the holders of Crown lands and revenues. Although many of the lands resumed as a result of the act were in practice granted out at considerably higher farms on short leases, the sheriffs were to account for the issues of those lands for the period in which they remained in the king's hands.

The act of 1450 was of only limited effect. A new petition was therefore presented towards the end of 1450, based on the earlier petition but with some significant alterations. Not all of its proposals were accepted by the king, and a revised bill received his assent only in March 1451. On 2 August 1451 writs issued out of Chancery under the great seal required the sheriffs and escheators throughout England to hold inquisitions under their joint supervision pursuant to the act. Similar instructions were issued into the county palatine of Lancaster, the Cinque Ports, Calais, and Ireland. All lands, tenements, annuities, privileges, franchises and offices, other than those excepted through the provisos added to the act, were to be taken into their hands with effect from March 1451, and extents made and returned into the Exchequer later the same year. This time the escheators, not the sheriffs, were to be held accountable for the issues of the resumed grants. This second act supplemented and ran concurrently with the first: under the terms of the Exchequer writs the sheriffs held inquisitions and made returns for issues falling within the scope of the first act between 6 November 1449 and 25 March 1451, and they and their successors were held accountable for these. The escheators and their successors rendered accounts from 25 March 1451 under the terms of the new act. A third act passed in 1455-1456. Inquisitions in consequence were again taken by sheriffs and escheators jointly under writs of great seal dated 10 July 1456; accounts for the issues were to be made by the sheriffs.

Accounts and related documents and the acts of 1450-1456

The accounts in E 101 are those arising from the acts of 1450 and 1451, by which the sheriffs, under the act of 1450, and the escheators, under the act of 1451, accounted for the issues of resumed lands and revenues whilst in the king's hands under the terms of those acts. The act of 1451 included the resumption of various liberties and privileges, and many ' annuities taken both on land and other sources of revenue. The escheators' particulars thus include annuities, and comparison with the patent rolls suggests that by no means all were subsequently regranted. Stray particulars are in E 199 (sheriffs) and E 136 (escheators). The escheators accounts (E 136) include inter alia entries for lands seized under the act of 1451. Enrolled accounts of sheriffs under the act of 1450 are in the sheriffs' accounts of, seizures, E 379/175; and of the escheators under the act of 1451 in the escheators' enrolled accounts, E 357/41. Writs to the sheriffs consequent to the act of 1450 were issued from the Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer's side of the exchequer and are dispersed in E 383, with strays in E 199. Enrolled accounts of the sheriffs under the act of 1455-1456 are in E 379/177; individual particulars are in E 199, and continue into the reign of Edward IV. Records relating to the passage of the acts are in C 49, SC 8, and E 163.