Approaching Pipe Rolls

ISBN-13: 9781032313351 / Angielski / Twarda / 2023 / 102 str.

Richard Cassidy

Opis

This is the first study specifically concerned with thirteenth-century pipe rolls and shows how pipe rolls were compiled, what they contain, and how to read them.

These records of English government finance were produced annually. They list debts owed to the government, by the sheriffs of each county, by manors and boroughs, and by individuals for taxes, fines and judicial penalties. They also list the payments made, sometimes in cash to the treasury, sometimes for building works, fees for royal employees and relatives, the provision of castles, and much more. The rolls are an essential source for administrative history, and provide detailed information for family and local historians. All the rolls are now readily available, either in print or online, but they are at first sight difficult to understand.

This book shows how the rolls evolved in the course of the century and serves as a guide for beginners, armed with some basic Latin, who want to explore these records. As well as explaining the conventions of dates, numbers, abbreviations, monetary units and so on, it illustrates the material to be found in pipe rolls by a detailed examination of a single roll.

Exploring the annual records of debts owed and payments made to the medieval English central government, this book explains how the pipe rolls of the thirteenth century worked and how to find information in them.

Spis treści

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1. Pipe rolls for beginners

What is a pipe roll?

How to begin

Language

Abbreviations

Headings

Numbers

Money

Dates

Chapter 2. The rolls system and background

Historical background

The rolls system

Chancellor’s rolls

Pipe rolls on parchment

Pipe rolls in print

Pipe rolls online

Dialogue of the Exchequer

Literature about pipe rolls

Chapter 3. Pipe roll contents

Debts and payments

The sheriff’s account

Farm, increment and profit

Manors and boroughs

Amercements

Fines and offerings

Taxes

Introducing the foreign accounts

What’s in the foreign accounts?

What’s not in the pipe rolls?

Chapter 4. An example: the 1259 pipe roll

The example, and where to find it

A county account: Northamptonshire

Details of the county account

The roll and revenue

County farm and profit

Fines in 1259

Profits of justice

Pipe roll timetable

Pipe rolls and receipt rolls

Pipe roll and memoranda roll accounts

The pipe roll and current events

The pipe roll and local and family history

Chapter 5. Pipe rolls in the thirteenth century

Too much information

Reducing new entries

Reducing old entries

Pipe rolls and other rolls

Appendix 1. Transcription examples

Oxfordshire account, 1237 pipe roll

Oxfordshire account, 1293 pipe roll

Appendix 2. Glossary

References

O autorze

Richard Cassidy has a PhD in medieval history from King’s College, London. He is the author of numerous articles on government finance and administration in England and Ireland in the thirteenth century. His edition of the 1259 pipe roll is to be published in 2024.