A third series of records preserved by the Chancery officials is the ROLLS OF PARLIAMENT, including the petitions, pleas, and other parliamentary proceedings.  None of these are extant before 1278, and the series for the succeeding century is often interrupted.  Many of them are printed in the first two folios (vol. i., Edward I. and II.; vol. ii., Edward III.) of Rotuli Parliamentorum (1767-1777).  A copious index volume was issued in 1832.  A specimen of what may still be looked for is to be found in Professor Maitland’s edition of one of the earliest rolls of parliament in Memoranda de Parliamento (1305) (Rolls series, 1893) with an admirable introduction.  For the reigns of Edward I. and II. the deficiencies of the published rolls are supplemented by SIR F. PALGRAVE’S Parliamentary Writs and Writs of Military Service (vol. i., 1827, Edward I.; vol. ii., 1834, Edward II., fol., Rec.  Corn.) with alphabetical digests and indices.

Formal grants under the great seal called Charters, characterised by a “salutation” clause, the names of attesting witnesses, and, under Henry III. after 1227, by the final formula data per manum nostram apud, etc., and implying normally the presence of the king, are contained in the CHARTER ROLLS, extant from the reign of John onwards.  They are roughly analysed in the Calendarium Rotulorum Chartarum (1803, Rec.  Com.); and the Rotuli Chartarum (fol., 1837, Rec.  Corn.) contains the rolls in extenso up to 1216, Vol. i., 1226-1257, of an English Calendar of Charter Rolls, printing some of the documents in full, was published in 1903.

The documents formerly known as ESCHEAT ROLLS, or INQUISITIONES POST MORTEM, are concerned with the inquiries made by the Crown on the death of every landholder as to the extent and character of his holding.  Some of the information contained in these inquests was made accessible in the Calendarium Inquisitionum sive Eschaetarum (vol. i., Henry III., Edward I. and II., 1806; vol. ii., Edward III., 1808, fol., Rec.  Corn.).  The errors and omissions of these volumes were partially remedied for the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I. by C. ROBERTS’S Calendarium Genealogicum (2 vols. 8vo, 1865).  A scholarly guide to all this class of documents has been begun in the new Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem and other Analogous Documents, of which vol. i. (Henry III.) was issued in 1904.  The first volume of a separate list of the analogous inquisitions Ad pod damnum is also announced.

Of the FINE ROLLS containing the records of fines[1] made with the Crown for licence to alienate, exemption from service, wardships, pardons, etc., those of Henry III. have been made accessible in C. ROBERTS’S Excerpta e Rotulis Finium, 1216-1272 (1835-36, 8vo).  Other rolls such as the LIBERATE ROLLS have not yet been published for the reigns here treated.