Every court roll has at its commencement the name of the manor written either above or on the margin. The opening words read thus: ‘Visus franciplegii cum curia.’ After this is the name of the lord of the manor, the date of the day and month, followed by the King’s name and the number of years since he ascended the throne.
Esson., on the margin, is the abbreviation for essonium, an excuse—namely, the jurymen who pleaded absence from the court. Following this are the names of the twelve jurymen present, and then the work begins.
In the older rolls the presentment of offences are the principal items; latterly only the tenants and their leases employed the attention of the court at its annual sitting.
The first thing to consider was usually the assize—licensing, so to speak, of bread and ale. By this means fraud and adulteration were held in check. The right of brewing ale was a privilege not to be infringed without penalty; the fine imposed was at the rate of 1d. for each illegal brewing; the offenders are generally women.
Any damage to crops or fences, highways needing repair, quarrels ending in bloodshed, neglect by which animals were permitted to stray and become seized by the hayward or pinder—all such offences are found chronicled in the court roll. Last of all is the sum total received in fines, signed by the names of the two officers appointed to superintend the assize.
A court roll is always written throughout in one handwriting, without any private marks or signatures. From the writing, they are generally the work of a professional scribe or clerk who must have had a regular education—first as a Latin scholar, secondly as an accountant, and thirdly probably learnt to write before he learnt Latin. Mistakes or erasures are seldom to be detected; therefore the rolls must have been carefully copied at leisure from rough notes made at the time; moreover, the spelling of the surnames is fairly constant, which would not be if written from dictation.
Up to the Reformation period the court rolls were cherished as being valuable records, providing standards for future reference; hence we find, until then, a fairly perfect sequence of these yearly rolls, after which a break occurs, and only a casual roll here and there is preserved. No guide to court rolls would be complete unless the oldest form of the Arabic numerals is given and explained.
xiith century. xiiith century. xivth century. xvth century.
The Roman numerals are the oldest method of writing figures in Europe, but gradually the so-called Arabic figures (really of Indian origin) were introduced, superseding the former style. To Gerbert, otherwise known as Pope Silvester II. (he died in 1003), is attributed their introduction from the East to the West; anyway, from the twelfth century, the Arabic numerals rapidly came into use. The 0 was not invented before the twelfth century. A curious resemblance is traceable between the figures of the alternate centuries. Our present style of figures has grown out of the older ones, but is bolder in outline and curve. The figure 5 has passed through most variation, while 6, 8 and 9 have scarcely altered at all.