Introduction

Summary

The value of the records preserved by the English Chancery as sources from which many aspects of medieval history may be studied has long been recognized. Ever since the time when Prynne began to disinter them from the cobwebs and filth in which they were then lying, they have yielded new treasures to each successive generation of historians and antiquaries. Yet, although the work of searching these records has been going on for nearly three centuries, their store of information is far from exhausted.

That this is so must be attributed largely to the fact that the amount of material which the records contain is so vast that even after a lifetime of study one could hope to be familiar with only a comparatively small proportion of the existing documents. Now, however, much of the practical difficulty of consulting these records has been removed by the publication of calendars of several important series of rolls, which give in concise English form the substance of each document. The calendars are, of course, not free from errors in translation, and from time to time, also, they omit details which would be of some interest. But, as a rule, they are sufficiently reliable to be used confidently without recourse to the originals, and thus the possibilities of discovering what the chancery records contain, and of examining them from new points of view, have been enormously increased.

It was natural that the first persons to make full use of the calendars should have been the constitutional and administrative historians, but these records are often hardly less important to the student of ecclesiastical history.