I was asked if I could help spread the word about this project. Do explore
the website the images of the rolls are amazing to say the least
Details of the Henry III Fine Rolls Project:
The fine rolls of King Henry III (1216-72) are an important source for the
study of politics and society in thirteenth-century England. Funded by the
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and jointly run by King’s
College London, Canterbury Christ Church University and The National
Archives, the project democratises the rolls by making them freely available
for the very first time in book form and online, and most importantly,
accessible in English as well as the original Latin!
Consisting of long parchment rolls, which can measure over ten metres when
fully extended, and an elegant, if highly abbreviated, Latin text, the fine
rolls record offers of cash to the king for a whole series of concessions
and favours. Subjects were induced to make a fine if they had committed a
transgression, such as poor Henry Huse who was caught in the royal forest
with his dogs, and had to pay the large sum of £5. They would also make
fines to obtain the king’s preferment. On one occasion, the Queen’s steward,
Mathias Bezill, offered 10m. (just over £6) to have the sheriff of
Gloucester removed from office. On a more routine basis, fines were also
payable to establish markets and fairs. The fine rolls also shed light on
the daily workings of England’s medieval government. Because material was
systematically copied from the fine rolls and sent to the Exchequer –
essentially to check that all of the money offered was being collected – the
rolls record information that was of specific interest to the Exchequer
barons, namely, the appointment of new local officials, taxation levies and
debt repayment. For all of these reasons the fine rolls are a crucial source
for the study of royal patronage, genealogy, justice and commercial
development.
Jointly run by the department of history and Centre for Computing in the
Humanities at King’s College London, the history department of Canterbury
Christ Church and The National Archives, where the rolls are stored, the
Henry III Fine Rolls Project has made the fine rolls fully accessible for
the very first time. Through the Project’s website (
www.finerollshenry3.org.uk) everyone can access high resolution digital
scans of the fine rolls that were drawn up for each year of Henry III’s
fifty-six-year reign. The website also offers a fully searchable translation
of the rolls, currently down to 1234. This facility makes use of the latest
Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), pioneered by CCH, and enables users to
search the rolls by name, place and date, to extract references in a
fraction of the time that it would take to do by hand. The translation of
the fine rolls is also being printed by Boydell and Brewer. To help users –
professional and amateur historians alike –understand the historical value
of fine rolls, members of the project team have been contributing ‘Fines of
the Month’ since the Project’s inception in 2005. These short analytical
articles bring out the human interest of the rolls and have become a
valuable resource in their own right. The Project team is always looking for
contributions to this feature and for general feedback about the website, so
have a look and get in touch.
Dr Benjamin L Wild
--
Peter Kurilecz CRM CA
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Richmond, Va
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