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1. The Development of the Fine Rolls

Following the recent publication of the first volume of the Calendar of the Fine Rolls of the Reign of Henry III, 1216–1224, the project researchers, Paul Dryburgh and Beth Hartland, explore the development in terms of the volume and range of material in the Fine Rolls and their role in English fiscal administration. This is an adaptation of the paper presented to the Thirteenth Century England conference held at Gregynog on 13 September 2007.

1.1. Introduction

⁋1The fine rolls, in essence, are the principal record of offers of money to the king for an enormous variety of concessions and favours to individuals and corporate bodies, both municipal and religious. They reveal what the king was expected and could be persuaded to grant and the benefits his subjects expected or hoped to be able to win from him. They are therefore crucial in understanding networks of patronage and debt and credit and the increasingly rapid changes to the law, the position of women, and the seigniorial landscape and economy in the thirteenth century.

⁋2 Each fine roll was compiled in Latin by a handful of scribes and a total of 64 rolls containing around 800 membranes, one for almost all of the fifty-six years of Henry III’s reign from 1216–72, survive in The National Archives at Kew in the series C 60. ¹ The earliest example is from 1199, the first year of John’s reign, making it co-terminus with the first charter roll, a running record of the king’s grants by charter, and slightly antedating the close and patent rolls, records of outgoing letters from the royal Chancery, all of which helped rationalise and regularise royal bureaucratic authority in England. Running to 23 membranes, however, this ‘first’ extant fine roll was a well-developed instrument of government. Originating perhaps in the mid-1170s, the fine rolls ² already played an important role in the administration of royal finance. At regular intervals, chancery clerks copied extracts from them which were deemed of interest in the collection of debts due to the king. Conveyed to the Exchequer, the resultant ‘Originalia’ rolls were used both to draft the ‘summonses’, the list of debts which the Exchequer sent twice a year to the sheriffs for them to collect and pay, and were copied into the ‘new offerings’ (nova oblata) sections for each county in the pipe roll. The fine rolls retained this basic function as a tool of record and financial management throughout much of the thirteenth century. But, in response to the demands placed upon royal government first by war and then by Magna Carta and the young king’s minority, they evolved in terms of content and function, becoming a more thoroughgoing record of the fiscal dimension of royal lordship throughout the country. It is to some of these developments that we will now turn.

1.2. The Fines

⁋1Although our focus here is the fine rolls of Henry III, it is obviously necessary to look back to John’s reign to trace the development of both the function and content of the records. Our knowledge of the fines under John is necessarily more impressionistic than our knowledge of the records under Henry, in that we have taken snapshots of four years in John’s reign (years 1, 6, 15 and 17–18), but this includes several of the more voluminous rolls and others that are important developmentally. ³ With this proviso taken care of, what are the important ways in which the material relating to fines evolved in the first third of the thirteenth century?

⁋1To start with the obvious, the most striking change between the reigns of John and his son is in the dramatic fall-off in the sum of money promised to the king. In 1 John the fine rolls record that John was promised a staggering £42, 399. Of the four years of John’s reign which we have examined this was by far the highest total, but it is easily explained by the numerous requests for confirmation of charters that John received in this year – Richardson suggests that there was a backlog as men, reluctant to get King Richard’s charters resealed with the king’s second seal, would have desired confirmation from the new king of their charters granted by his predecessors (Richard and Henry II). ⁴ Indeed, requests for confirmation of charters and new charters in 1 John accounted for 43% of the money promised in that year. The equivalent process under his son did not occur until the beginning of 1227 when Henry finally came into his full powers as king – but in that year the confirmation of old charters and the granting of new charters accounted for a hefty 50% of the fines made with the king. ⁵ Despite this parallel, the confirmation of charters under Henry III promised a relatively meagre £3, 920. And this seems to reflect a general distinction in the levels of money offered under the two kings: the average total for John’s reign (from the four years sampled) being £26, 393, whilst the average total for the first 18 years of Henry’s reign was £4, 269, more than £22, 000 less. How much of this money was actually realized by John’s Exchequer is to some extent immaterial. The point of large fines (and the largest promised in 1199–1200 for confirmation of a charter was £3, 466) was not so much to rake in the money as to have a financial Damocletian sword hanging above the heads of his most powerful barons. In a sense, irrespective of Magna Carta, Henry III did not need to charge as much for the same privileges as his Angevin forebears had because many of the debts they had accrued were still owing and thus still performing their function, as indeed such debts were to continue to do throughout the thirteenth century, Edward I famously threatening the calling in of ancient debts in 1297 in response to the earls’ refusal to serve overseas.

⁋2Second only to the discrepancy in the sums of money offered as fines between the two reigns is the difference in the quantity of renders in kind. In 6 John, for example, the king received offers of 150 palfreys, 15 horses, five destriers, 31 sparrow-hawks, two falcons and 100 iron arrow-heads, quite apart from a considerable quantity of foodstuffs and food-producing livestock. By contrast, Henry III’s best haul of palfreys was the 31 he was offered in the fourth year of the reign, along with four cartloads of lead. Whether the more conspicuous occurrence of goods as payment in John’s fine rolls reflects anything, such as a shortage of coin in circulation due to John’s hoarding of bullion, is another matter, and one which we do not propose to discuss here. We should, however, point out that in this paper the value of renders have not been included in the calculations derived from the fine rolls, so our figures are in fact a little depressed, but we believe still useful for the purposes of comparison.

⁋3It is clearly not possible for us to discuss the development of all the favours for which individuals made fine within the constraints of this fine of the month, so our remaining comments shall be limited to a few areas of major importance. Despite the historiographical rehabilitation of King John as the administrative monarch par excellence, his reputation as the imposer of arbitrary fines remains. And this is not without foundation. Fines to obtain the king’s goodwill were part of John’s ‘asset-stripping’ ⁶ in his later years, when his attempts to raise revenue from extraordinary taxation had failed. To take the year 1215-16 as our example, and limiting ourselves to those fines which specifically mention obtaining the king’s grace or goodwill, John charged £12, 806 to be admitted to his peace (65% of the total promised to the king on this roll). This was an aspect of John’s style of government that the minority government under Henry III, fighting a rearguard action against Prince Louis and the English rebels in 1216, clearly wished to distance themselves from. ⁷ Men were not going to be won over to the young king by imitating one of the more hated policies of his father. It is thus not surprising to find that there were no fines to have the king’s goodwill in the first four years of the reign, and only two such fines prior to the royal siege of Bedford castle and the rebellion of Hugh de Lacy in Ireland in 8 and 9 Henry III respectively, both of which only produced a handful of entries on the fine rolls. ⁸ The real distinction between the fines to regain the king’s goodwill under John and those under his son was that whereas most of the fines on John’s rolls (perhaps revealingly) do not tell us why the petitioners had fallen out of the king’s grace, we know why most of the men who fell foul of the King Henry did so. The sense is that in this period Henry’s goodwill was far less arbitrarily, as well as less frequently, withdrawn. Henry was also able to turn John’s, as well as his own, malevolentia into patronage by remitting large parts of such fines. In one instance Henry quit his claim to 5700 of the 6200 marks by which Hugh de Neville had been forced to make fine with John. Moving from the specific example of fines to get the king’s grace, the more general picture afforded by the Henrician fine rolls as a whole is that Henry was more willing to offer terms for the payments of debts, as well as to consider pardoning parts of such debts, than his father had been, and this is something we will return to later.

⁋4Certain subjects retained constant importance under both John and Henry III – those related to seisin of lands and wardship of heirs – and fluctuations in numbers of such fines may be due to nothing more than demographics. What we can say is that for the first eighteen years of Henry’s reign, there was a general adherence to the levels of relief stipulated in Magna Carta. We have found no instances when knights were charged more than 100s. for a whole knight’s fee; nor an earl fining more than £100 for a whole barony, for example. But there are instances from the first eighteen years of Henry’s reign when Magna Carta was perhaps not so closely adhered to. We refer to fines made by widows not to be compelled to marry again, or to marry whom they wished. Michael Ray, in his ‘Fine of the Month’ from December 2006 – The lady is not for turning: Margaret de Redvers’ fine not to be compelled to marry – has shown that there were twelve such offers made in the Henrician fine rolls between 1216 and 1234. Michael’s suggestion is that Margaret de Redvers, who made fine by 300 marks in September 1229 to remain single, made it of her own free will because it was not as clear in 1229, as it is to us today, that Magna Carta was there to stay. ⁹ Certainly the sums of money by which she and the other widows made their fines do not compare to some of the more princely sums charged by John – and a fine of £2, 493 (the highest offer in the four years of John’s reign examined) does seem to speak more of coercion to fine than a fine of 300m (the highest offer made to Henry in this period). If correct, it may be important for us to calculate when the permanency of Magna Carta had been accepted, especially if, as we hope, we get funds to continue editing the rolls and to apply ourselves to answer questions about Henry’s observance of the Charters throughout his reign.

⁋5Fines relating to legal affairs are another area that becomes increasingly important as Henry’s reign progresses. Although we cannot provide statistics to prove this here, we suspect that the most striking development in terms of the subject matter of fines on the rolls in the longer term is the proportion of the vellum that came to be occupied with legal matters. We are all familiar with the fact that access to the royal courts improved in this period and that more and more cases were being transferred from seigniorial to royal courts. Clause 34 of Magna Carta attempted to stem this flow by stipulating that ‘The writ called praecipe shall not, in future, be issued to anyone in respect of any holding whereby a free man may lose his court’. The evidence of the fine rolls is that there were very few attempts to purchase a writ of praecipe: only one such writ was purchased in both 2 and 3 Henry III, and another five in 5 and 8 Henry III, the most being 16 purchased in 6 Henry III. ¹⁰ But writs of praecipe were not the only way to transfer cases between courts. Pollock and Maitland tell us that ‘The number of writs which were issued as of course for the purpose of enabling those who thought themselves wronged to bring their cases before the law courts, increased rapidly during the reign of Henry III’. ¹¹ The Henrician fine rolls bear this out.

⁋1 If we examine the evidence for the purchase of legal writs throughout the first eighteen years of the reign we see a peak in regnal years two to four (or 1217 to 1220). Part of the explanation for this concentration must lie with the general eyres of 1218–19 – as with the confirmation of charters under John, we can again expect that there was a backlog of business to be attended to – after all there had been no eyre for a decade. This suggestion is supported by an examination of the types of writ that were purchased in 1218–19.

⁋1 Of 314 writs, 103 (or 33%) were writs of pone, that is writs to transfer cases to higher royal courts; and of these 103 writs of pone, 84 (or 82%) specified that the transferred cases were to be heard before the itinerant justices when they came into the localities. This explanation needs to be corroborated by comparing the fines for writs against the surviving eyre rolls, and comparing the number of writs of pone purchased against the dates of later eyres to see if there is a continued correlation, but in the meantime it seems a plausible working scenario. Of course, as Pollock and Maitland suggested, pones were not the only writs used for the transfer of cases to higher courts. ¹² And this is what we have found in the fine rolls for the period from 1234-48, which increasingly become lists of purchases of writs of the form ‘X gives Y marks to have a certain writ concerning county Z moved to Westminster’.

2.1. Non-fine material

⁋1Following their inception, the fine rolls fundamentally constituted lists of money promised to the king, testament both to the potential financial resources of the country and the thrall in which John held all levels of society through manipulation of his feudal lordship. In his first regnal year a whopping 88% of 528 entries on the fine roll were of the type ‘X gives Y to the king for Z’. Even though this fell back to 60% in 1213–14, by his final year it had reached 80% again. These figures and the value of the fines stand in increasingly striking contrast to those for his son’s reign. While initially Henry’s fine rolls follow the trend – the roll for 1218–19, the third regnal year, for example, containing 70% fines, the reasons for which we have just outlined – as we move deeper into the reign the proportions of fine and non-fine material are gradually reversed, as the graph demonstrates.

⁋2 From Henry’s seventh regnal year (1222–23) to his eighteenth (1233–34) in only three years does the percentage of fine material exceed 30%, and this can be explained by the rash of fines for Henry to confirm charters in 1227 and by fines to avoid sending military service to Brittany in 1230 and against Richard Marshal in 1233. In short, the fine rolls gradually evolved from a simple but effective statement of expected revenue for the king’s favour into a record of financial administration. As the volume of business with which the Chancery was expected to deal increased, the fine rolls assumed the mantle of recording more business of direct relevance to the Exchequer – matters of account, the administration of debt and taxation, and the management of the king’s territorial and property rights.

⁋3The most significant bureaucratic innovation was the more systematic entry of writs authorising sheriffs or other officials to take action, sometimes as the result of a fine, sometimes not. This came not from Magna Carta or experimentation during Henry’s minority; writs first appeared in number in the roll for 1213–14, making this very much a product of John’s reign. Generally, it encouraged the preservation of a greater wealth of information and specifically it geared the fine rolls to providing better record of the disposal of lands in the king’s hands and of his feudal privileges.

⁋4 Land, of course, was a precious commodity and, on average, over a third of non-fine material on Henry’s fine rolls deals with transfer of seisin of, seizure of, and entrustment of land to third parties whether in wardship or custody. They are saturated with entries where ‘X has made fine with the king’ either for relief or to have seisin of his or her inheritance, usually after a promise that relief would be paid. As opposed to John’s early fine rolls, these are often filled out with orders to the relevant sheriff first to take security for payment and then to deliver seisin, such as that to the sheriff of Kent, dated 13 October 1222, for livery of ten librates of rent in Cobham to William de Quatremares upon security of 25s. for his relief. ¹³ Later in the reign, many writs record the performance of homage and the promise of relief without explicit mention of a fine before ordering the same processes to be carried out. Ultimately, this expansion in content provided both Chancery and Exchequer, once relevant material had been copied onto the originalia rolls, not only with record of the money promised but also, in some cases, the names of those who stood pledge for those making fine, to whom the Exchequer could then direct itself, and any terms granted for payment of the fine and/or relief, on which it could act. This would, of course, aid collection of debts and revenues. That the genesis of this policy coincides with John’s perceived extension of his personal authority and the period in which his government attracted greater criticism might therefore engender little surprise.

⁋5Conversely, hundreds of entries in Henry’s first eighteen regnal years order the seizure of lands, goods and chattels into the king’s hand after the death of a tenant-in-chief or instances of rebellion. As the reign progressed, such writs evolved into those of diem clausit extremum, ordering inquiries into the extent of lands of deceased individuals to be taken. Intriguingly, as in the case of Richard Marshal in 1233, isolated writs reveal the dimensions of rebellion and outline the government’s perspective, Richard being accused of defying a summons to come to peace and then seizing two marchers’ castles on a destructive rampage. ¹⁴ Other writs detail the orders for sheriffs to commit his and his associates’ lands to named keepers. ¹⁵

⁋6It was critical from the king’s perspective that escheated lands and property were committed to individuals who would keep them safely and profitably. Commitments of lands and, as one might expect, of vacant episcopal sees and religious houses become a feature of Henry’s fine rolls, often comprising around 10% of non-fine material annually. Most often, as in the case of those appointed to keep Marshal’s lands, they were instructed to administer them to the king’s advantage during his pleasure. The accompanying writ to the sheriff to supply them with seisin and custody of the corn and chattels found in those lands also ordered him to record exactly what he had seized and committed, vital information when it came to the account.

⁋7Custody of lands and property in the king’s hand was, predictably, one of the most lucrative yet controversial plums in his gift; and fines for wardship of lands and heirs could be astronomical even after Magna Carta. During the king’s minority, moreover, lands escheated during the civil war and several royal manors were granted to individuals at farm. This rewarded supporters but drained resources away from the centre, and the fine roll for 1221-2, Henry’s sixth regnal year, records a general resumption of the king’s demesne lands, previously farmed out to others, into his hand, re-establishing the crown’s grip on demesne. The sheriffs were ordered to resume and keep these lands, as with Ralph de Tany’s manor at Newport in Essex, together with their issues which they were permitted to sell, allowance being given for their value at the Exchequer, and to act in such a way that sufficient answer could be made for them at the Exchequer. Most importantly, inquiries were to be made into the land’s value and what improvements might be made to the king’s advantage before being returned to the king. ¹⁶

⁋8The fine rolls became one of the most accepted places of record for the administration of the royal demesne. Writs of this kind would naturally be of import to the Exchequer in assessing the charge upon sheriffs in their account. The management of demesne became one of the great hot potatoes of the early part of Henry’s reign, but the fine rolls retained this position despite repeated changes of tack by successive administrations. When, in the late-1220s it was decided tht some demesne manors should be farmed out to their tenants, it was on the fine rolls that such grants were recorded, as these introduced new financial arrangements for their management. Between 1224 and 1234 there are seventeen fines recorded by the king’s tenants to hold their manor at farm, thirty-two commissions of royal lands at farm to tenants for a term of years or at his pleasure, and forty-five grants in fee farm to tenants or, indeed, certain individuals, like the royal justice Robert of Lexington, who acquired Bere Regis in Dorset for life. ¹⁷ The tenants of Basingstoke in Hampshire, for example, were granted the king’s manor by his charter in fee farm in February 1228. ¹⁸ They were to render £72 12s. numero per annum for this, which took care of the ancient farm, the blanch that the sheriff was accustomed to take, and the increment previously assessed on the manor, thereby removing shrieval interference in the financial management of the manor. This potentially simplified matters when it came to the account and gave the Exchequer information as to the changes to the charge upon the sheriff.

⁋9A final point to make with regard to demesne is that its taxation was also largely administered via the fine rolls. Sums due from royal lands in 1223 are recorded, county by county, community by community, on the dorse of the fine roll, supplying information not found in the Pipe Roll. ¹⁹ Arrangements for assessment in 1230 dictate the time and place of assembly for the named assessors and the manner of the assessment, so that [quote] ‘the king might commend their diligence and so that the king has all money from the same tallage on the morrow of the Close of Easter at the Exchequer …’, ²⁰ thereby giving the Exchequer the information it needed to handle the proceeds of the tax.

⁋10The administration of many forms of taxation took place on the fine rolls. In the autumn of 1231, for instance, writs were entered, warranting sheriffs to levy scutage for the ultimately disastrous Welsh campaign. Both the rate and the expected day of delivery, six weeks hence, were given. ²¹ Conspicuously, too, on the reverse of the membrane detailing the 1230 tallage assessment is an order to Walter Mauclerk, Treasurer, to despatch exchequer writs to all sheriffs for an inquiry into the assessment of the monies owed to Jean de Brienne, King of Jerusalem, when he was in England. The sheriffs were to summon the assessors and collectors to Westminster and distrain all who they could establish by inquisition to have been debtors. Meanwhile, Mauclerk was to examine the exchequer rolls to ascertain what was owed of this levy, and of carucage, and by whom, in preparation for his account. ²² The fine rolls, then, could work for both foreign and domestic potentates when it came to managing and processing debts due at the Exchequer.

⁋11Such an order direct to the keeper of the Exchequer, though, also leads into the most voluminous categories of non-fine material on the fine rolls – business related to the everyday functioning of the Exchequer and its systems of account. An increasing number of warrants authorising action to be taken on accounts was recorded on the fine rolls. On 12 November 1229, for example, the barons were ordered to receive the account of the keeper of the bishopric of Durham notwithstanding that his predecessor had not yet accounted. Three weeks later, they received notice to hear the account of Richard de Gray for the king’s manor of Devizes in Wiltshire and for money he had received in the wardrobe to buy oxen to till the king’s land at Rowde, with instructions on what he should be allowed were he in debt to the king. ²³

⁋12The related processing of personal and corporate debt – whether from fines, reliefs, taxes or debt to the Jews – is perhaps an even more significant category, for which some striking statistics can be marshalled: from 1218–19 to 1223–24, for example, there is a threefold increase in grants of attermination of debt on the fine rolls, and between 1220–21 and 1223–24 a more than threefold increase in the respite and postponement of debt, numbers which climb still further as the reign progresses, where they are joined by several pardons of debt. This is testament, indeed, to the resumption of a measure of normal political life and the re-oiling of the levers of patronage and finance achieved under the minority government. Remittance of debt, or the ability to repay by instalment were signal favours and could be the result of intense negotiations. It is revealing how many of the larger offers were attermined, pardoned or respited within a short period after their enrolment, an important consideration when trying to pinpoint the role fines actually played in royal finance. John de Lacy, constable of Chester, for example, fined on 11 February 1234, by 1000 marks, to have custody of the land and heir of Nigel de Mowbray, only to have an almost immediate and more favourable replacement of those terms without a further offer. ²⁴

⁋13On the other hand, this policy tied debtors to the crown and could keep them and their successors indebted for generations. Writs for the delivery of lands and chattels to heirs or executors are often tempered by the demand to ensure debts are answered for first. The archbishop of Canterbury was ordered, on 6 September 1231, to release chattels to the executors of William of Eynsford, they having answered for any debts he owed. ²⁵ Since the Exchequer needed first and foremost to know which debts it should collect and to whom respite should be granted, it became inevitable that these respites and orders concerning debts were enrolled on the fine rolls rather than other Chancery rolls. Many, of course, were direct commands to the exchequer barons, informing them of the new terms or the pardon, and requiring their enrolment and enacting. A good number, however, were indirect instructions to sheriffs, for such grants would naturally impact on what they were to account for in any particular year and upon what summons might be issued. The most numerous of these are straightforward, informing the sheriffs of the grant and commanding them first to take security and then deliver any livestock or chattels which had been distrained from the debtor. He would then be expected to answer for the security at the Exchequer.

⁋14Finally, the fine rolls include judicial matters unrelated to the voluminous purchases of writs discussed above. Short lists of amercements imposed either in the eyre or at one of the possessory assizes of mort d’ancester or novel disseisin, which proliferated during Henry’s reign, creep onto the fine rolls as the reign progresses. Even a list of the money expected from the sheriff of Lincolnshire, culled from the chattels of men executed following an assize to deliver the gaol of Lincoln, appears in 1232. ²⁶ While it was essential for the Exchequer to know from whom debts were owed to the king for all manner of offences, their appearance is sporadic. The sums involved, too, amount only to a few shillings from a small number of offenders, as with three people upon whom a total of two marks was charged for disseisin and false claim before Hugh of Bath in November 1229. ²⁷ Most eyre or assize estreats reached the Exchequer directly: on 25 September 1231, the fine rolls record an order to the sheriff of Yorkshire to deliver a roll of amercements taken before Stephen of Seagrave in his county to be delivered into the Exchequer on the morrow of All Souls, perhaps with his account. This order is, however, accompanied by a warning that, should he fail, this money would be taken from his county farm, a writ which might act as warrant for the Exchequer barons. ²⁸ Perhaps, though, because their commission came from the Chancery, certain justices thought it politic to return the estreats there, the fine rolls and originalia rolls being recognised as a conduit into the Exchequer record.

⁋15So, in conclusion, for many matters with specific import to the collection of the king’s debts, the administratrion of his demense, or the administration of taxation, therefore, the fine rolls were increasingly considered the proper place of record. The reign of Henry III witnessed large-scale developments in the content of the rolls, only some of which we have been able to cover. Nonetheless, such changes attest to the innovative practices current in Chancery as it tried to accommodate an ever-growing body of business.