Records of Some Sessions of the Peace in Lincolnshire, 1360-1375

Rolls of proceedings before justices of the peace in the fourteenth century were found by Professor B.H. Putnam at the beginning of the twentieth century in the Public Record Office, now the National Archives, preserved in a class of documents known then as Assize Rolls. The preservation of this material among the archives of central government is explained by a study of the migration of the court of King’s Bench, which, during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, went on tour at frequent but irregular intervals. On their return to Westminster they would naturally take with them these records, which thus remained among other the other rolls of the central courts. Of the five Lincolnshire peace rolls published in this volume, three – the Holland roll, the later Lindsey roll and the later Kesteven roll – were compiled in preparation for the visit of the King’s bench to Lincoln in 1375. The earlier Kesteven roll is not, strictly speaking, a roll at all, but a collection of strips of parchment of varying size which afford an excellent example of the type of raw material from which the other rolls were compiled. The early Lindsey roll is a particularly neat and methodical record of indictments for trespass made in 1360-61 with the fines by which they were terminated. The group taken as a whole constitutes an invaluable source of information as to the activities of the justices of the peace in Lincolnshire during the latter part of the reign of Edward III.
Adapted from the Preface and the Introduction.