A Calendar of The Feet of Fines For Bedfordshire: Part I.

Summary

A Calendar of the Feet of Fines which have been preserved for the years 1 to 25 Henry III. (1216-1217 to 1240-1241) had been prepared for the Society by Miss Grogan before the outbreak of war. In order to complete the series, the Editor has added a Calendar of the extant Fines for the reigns of Richard I. and John (1192-1193 to 1216), made from the printed collections of Hunter, and of the Pipe Roll Society; these appear as numbers I to 184 below, and have not been englished before.

When the Calendar was needed for the press, it was found that the original documents had been removed from the Record Office for greater safety from air-raids; it has therefore not been possible to check it by their help. While it would have been inexcusable in ordinary times to print such records unchecked, the Editor feels that this course is pardonable under the present stress, and is preferable to withholding these valuable records any longer. Such corrections as may be found to be wanted, together with genealogical and topographical notes, are planned for issue as the last section of Volume vi, when the original documents become once more open to study.

A Fine or Final Concord is a document which recorded the end or settlement of an action at law, brought generally either for real property, or for a less tangible right of some sort; it embodied the decision of the judges, whether Justices in Eyre or Justices of the Common Bench or of the King’s Bench. In early times, the action thus settled was usually a genuine suit; but very soon the advantages of a title to property thus given by a Court of Law, were found to be so great, that a fictitious or friendly suit was often brought for the purpose of securing a Fine, and of thus placing the title to the property almost beyond dispute.