A charter roll is an administrative record created by a medieval chancery that recorded all the charters issued by that office.

Origins

In medieval

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, King

John John is a common English name and surname: * John (given name) * John (surname) John may also refer to: New Testament Works * Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John * First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John * Secon ...

in 1199 established a fixed rate of fees for the sealing of charters and letters patent. It was to keep track of these fees that the first Charter Roll was started (as a fee book) in 1199, under the Chancellorship of Hubert Walter. The Roll thereby also kept track of all charters that had been issued by the government – the letters patent being swiftly hived off into the

patent rolls The patent rolls (Latin: ''Rotuli litterarum patentium'') are a series of administrative records compiled in the English, British and United Kingdom Chancery, running from 1201 to the present day. Description The patent rolls comprise a register ...

. Instead of keeping the records in a register or book form, they were written on sheets of

parchment Parchment is a writing material made from specially prepared untanned skins of animals—primarily sheep, calves, and goats. It has been used as a writing medium for over two millennia. Vellum is a finer quality parchment made from the skins o ...

stitched together into long rolls to form a roll for each year.

Minority hiatus

During the minority of

Henry III of England Henry III (1 October 1207 – 16 November 1272), also known as Henry of Winchester, was King of England, Lord of Ireland, and Duke of Aquitaine from 1216 until his death in 1272. The son of King John and Isabella of Angoulême, Henry a ...

, no perpetual grants could be made by the Crown, so that the Charter Rolls were in abeyance until 1227.

Publication

The Charter Rolls for the years 1199 to 1216 were published as abbreviated Latin texts (in a near- facsimile of the manuscripts, employing a special "

record type Record type is a family of typefaces designed to allow medieval manuscripts (specifically those from England) to be published as near- facsimiles of the originals. The typefaces include many special characters intended to replicate the various ...

" typeface) by the

Record Commission The Record Commissions were a series of six Royal Commissions of Great Britain and (from 1801) the United Kingdom which sat between 1800 and 1837 to inquire into the custody and public accessibility of the state archives. The Commissioners' work ...

in 1837, in a large

folio The term "folio" (), has three interconnected but distinct meanings in the world of books and printing: first, it is a term for a common method of arranging sheets of paper into book form, folding the sheet only once, and a term for a book ma ...

volume entitled ''Rotuli Chartarum in Turri Londinensi asservati'', edited by T. D. Hardy. Calendars (summaries) of the rolls from 1226 to 1516 were published in six volumes by the

Public Record Office The Public Record Office (abbreviated as PRO, pronounced as three letters and referred to as ''the'' PRO), Chancery Lane in the City of London, was the guardian of the national archives of the United Kingdom from 1838 until 2003, when it was ...

between 1903 and 1927. Historians use the acronym ''Cal. charter R.'' for those published in calendar form.

Citations

References

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External links