The form of the rolls

The fine rolls had always acted as a financial record. Since their inception perhaps in the 1170s they had played a pivotal role in the administration of royal revenue, documenting promises of money or renders in kind to the king for all manner of concessions that lay in his gift. Equally, it was through the fine rolls that the Exchequer, based at Westminster, charged with levying and receiving sums due to the king, was kept informed about such promises. At various intervals throughout the year, parchment membranes bearing extracts from the current fine roll were drafted by Chancery clerks and delivered into the Exchequer. On the fine rolls these points of delivery are marked by the note ‘Hinc mittendum est ad scaccarium’, ‘From here it is to be sent to the Exchequer’. This signified that all material believed to be of import to the Exchequer in collecting debts and managing its accounting procedures had been sent there up to this time, and that what followed on the fine roll would be entered on subsequent membranes of extracts to be dispatched at a later date. Most commonly only one membrane would be sent at one time and would contain an individual batch of extracts, but it seems that in 1226–27 the first batch sent to the Exchequer was spread over two membranes, the end of membrane 8 – the second to be compiled – corresponding with the first ‘Hinc mittendum est ad scaccarium’ on the fine roll. Once all extracts for the year of account had been assembled in the Exchequer they were united to form what became known as the ‘rotulus originalis’, the ‘originalia roll’.

From the beginning of the reign of Henry III one originalia roll would be drawn up each year. Only two annual rolls – those for 1226–27 and 1232–33 – now survive for his first eighteen regnal years in the series E 371 at The National Archives, although a much less broken run survives from his twentieth year (1235–36). These survivors, moreover, belong to a series that can be traced back to the seventh year of the reign of Richard I (1195–96), of which only a handful remains.