The Final Concords or (briefly) Fines of which a further instalment” is here calendared, are often individually and in themselves uninteresting, but no series of documents is more valuable for tracing the descent of families and estates, the slow rearrangement of tenures which followed on the increase of population, the gradual dissemination of prosperity, and the increasing importance of the yeoman class.

The reasons for the levy of a Final Concord, and the steps in its preparation, have already6 been discussed in our publications, and need not be repeated. The present Calendar is a little fuller than the former, especially as regards the extent of the land at issue. The larger part has been prepared by Miss Grogan from the Feet of Fines levied during the reign of Edward I, which are preserved at the Public Record Office. To these the present editor has added those Final Concords for ‘Diverse Counties’ in the same reign which touched Bedfordshire; and he has also appended a few of earlier reigns, gleaned from various sources, in supplement of the former volume.The order of the Fines in the Calendar is their order on the files of the Public Record Office, that is; they are arranged by regnal years, but are not always in true sequence of date within those years. The order in which the contents of each Fine are calendared, is their order in the document itself, namely—

(1) the place where sat the Court before which the Fine was levied:

(2) the date, in its original and [modern] form:

(3) the names of the parties:

(4) the subject of the suit which was (conventionally) ended by the Fine:

(5) the nature of the plea, if specified:

(6) the party whose ‘right’ or title was being placed on record:

(7) the rent and/or services by which the subject would be held:

(8) the consideration (alleged to be) paid by the party whose title is thus recorded :

(9) [the case / file / and number in file, of the Foot of the Fine at the P.R.O., or a reference to some other source from which the Fine has been calendared.]

No conveyance of land could free it from the services which were incumbent on that land.