Catalogue description BUNDLE 1: FEUDAL SERVICE

Writs and returns of persons holding land by military service who ought to have taken knighthood, inquisitions as to scutage due from various fees, etc.

The earliest relates to the distraint of knighthood made in 1256 on those holding 15 librates of land by knight service; the later ones relate to the period between 1278 and 1377, and similarly relate mostly to later royal attempts to distrain for knighthood. In the reign of Edward I there were distraints in 1278, 1285, 1292, 1297 and 1300. Under Edward II there were frequent distraints, in 1312, 1316, 1322, 1324 and 1325-6 (C 47/1/7-12), and under Edward III they were held in 1334 (twice), 1344, 1356 and 1366 (C 47/1/13-16, 19). One held during the first year of Richard II brings the series to an end (C 47/1/17).

The returns are usually endorsed on the writs, but sometimes when a lot of information is given they are on panels sewn to the writs. A few of the returns take the form of inquisitions. One item does not fit with the rest, a return to a summons to the marriage of the king's daughter Eleanor in 1293 (C 47/1/4). There are a few small early items in the mixed file in C 47/1/18, to which newly-identified material was added in 1931, 1972 and 1975.

Some similar documents on distraint of knighthood are in:

E 198

See C Johnson, ‘The system of accounts in the Wardrobe of Edward I’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th Series, vi (1923), 52-53