The Chancellor formerly acted as the pri vate secretary of the sovereign. To the records of the Chan cery, therefore, belong the series of enrolled royal letters, the Patent and Close rolls, both of which began in the reign of King John. The formal difference between these two series is implied in their names : the letters patent were sent open, with the Great Seal attached, while the letters close were sent folded. On the patent rolls were entered grants of lands, offices and privileges, whether to private persons or public bodies, creations of peerages, licences for the election of bishops and restitutions of temporalities, presenta tions to ecclesiastical benefices, charters of incorporation to towns, pardons, etc. The earlier rolls also contain the records of diplom acy which were afterwards to find their place among the State papers, such as the powers and credentials granted to ambassadors, correspondence relating to negotiations with foreign States, and treaties. The contents of the letters close, which were addressed to individuals and are generally of a more personal nature than the letters patent, are of a varied description, "such," to quote Sir Thomas Hardy, a former deputy-keeper, "as orders for the observance of treaties and truces, concerning aids, subsidies, tal lages, restitutions of possessions, assignments of dower, and accept ances of homage; for the repairing, fortifying, and provisioning of castles; writs and mandates respecting the coin of the realm, the affairs of the royal household, and the payment of salaries and stipends; commitments, pardons, and deliveries of State prison ers, etc."; while "on the back of the rolls are summonses to and prorogations of parliaments, great councils, and convocations ; writs of summons for the performance of military and naval services; copies of letters to foreign princes and states; procla mations; prohibitions ; orders for regulating the coinage of the kingdom, and the sale of wine and other necessaries ; for receiving knighthood, providing ships, raising and arraying forces, and furnishing provisions, for paying knights, citizens and burgesses for attendance in parliament; liveries and seizin of lands; enrol ments of private deeds, of awards of arbitrators and of various other documents." It will thus be seen that the close rolls of which there are more than 20,000 are of immense importance for social as well as for political history. Besides these two great series, both of which are continued in the 20th century, there are the Charter robs (i John to 8 Henry VIII.) containing grants and confirmations of a more formal type than those enrolled on the Patent rolls ; the Fine rolls (John to 23 Charles I.) recording moneys paid to the king for various grants, privileges and exemptions; and the Parliament Rolls ( I Edward III. to 49 Victoria) containing entries of the transactions in parliament, and various smaller series of a special character.
Of unenrolled Chancery documents may be mentioned the war rants which formed part of the process of issuing letters under the Great Seal, the inquisitions containing details of the holdings of deceased tenants-in-chief and, appertaining to the court in its judicial aspect, the Chancery proceedings, comprising bills and answers, affidavits and depositions, decrees and orders.
The Exchequer records, of which the oldest and most famous is Domesday Book (q.v.) may be most conveniently described according to the ancient divisions of the court, of which the prin cipal were the Upper Exchequer or Exchequer of Audit and the Lower Exchequer or Exchequer of Receipts. The former was subdivided into the Treasurer's Remembrancer's Office and the King's Remembrancer's Office. To the first belong the Pipe rolls (q.v.), containing the first audit of the accounts of the sheriffs, the Foreign rolls on which were entered the preliminary audit of accounts other than the sheriffs', the Originalia rolls, containing extracts from Chancery rolls communicated to the Exchequer for information, and the Memoranda rolls, containing copies of corre spondence and miscellaneous notes. The principal records of the
King's Remembrancer's Office consist of vouchers and audited receipts of expenditure. There are also judicial records belonging to this department, comprising bills, answers, depositions, etc., as in the Chancery. The records of the Lower Exchequer consist of the Receipt and Issue rolls, in which, respectively, are entered the payments made to and by the Exchequer. A special subordi nate court heard suits in which Jews were involved, and there is a separate series of plea rolls appertaining thereto; and after the Reformation, to meet the greatly increased business of the Ex chequer resulting from the transference of Church lands to the Crown, new divisions were created. From that period date the records of the First Fruits and Tenths Office, including the Valor Ecclesiasticus, a survey of all the ecclesiastical benefices in Eng land and Wales made in 1535, and also those of the court of Aug mentations, which administered the property of the suppressed religious houses and the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall and was merged in the Exchequer in the reign of Queen Mary: its records consist of the muniments of the monasteries, documents relating to their seizure and subsequent administration, and judicial proceedings.
The earliest common law records are the Curia Regis rolls (5 Richard I. to 56 Henry III.), which con tain pleas heard in the courts both of King's Bench and of Com mon Pleas. From the beginning of the reign of Edward I. the records of the two courts are separate, the most important of those belonging to the King's Bench being the Coram Rege rolls, the Judgment rolls, containing suits between private persons, the Crown rolls, recording crown business, and the Assize rolls, con taining the proceedings before justices in eyre, of assize, of oyer and terminer, etc. The early plea rolls of the Court of Common Pleas are called De Banco rolls ; from 24 Henry VII. they were known as Common rolls, and in 25 Elizabeth a new series of Recovery rolls was commenced, in which, besides deeds and other instruments, were entered the recoveries forming part of the com plicated legal process of fine and recovery by which, down to
the transfer of land was effected. The Feet of Fines, which date from the reign of Richard I. and are arranged under counties, form another group of Common Pleas records.
As has already been noticed, many documents which are essentially State papers are to be found on the earlier I Chancery rolls, and there is a series of Ancient Correspondence, running from the reign of Richard I. to that of Henry VII. and filling 61 volumes, which comes under that category. But the great series which was preserved in the State Paper Office estab lished in 1578, and absorbed by the Public Record Office nearly three centuries later, begins with Henry VIII. From the time of Edward VI. they were divided into two classes, domestic and foreign, according to whether they appertained to the internal or the external affairs of the kingdom ; and to them were sub sequently added the State Papers Colonial. While, however, in the arrangement of documents adopted by the Record Office, the two former series have been kept separate from the subsequent records of the Home and Foreign Offices founded in 1782, the State Papers Colonial have been amalgamated with those of the Colonial Office. There are also separate series relating to Scot land and Ireland, and there are special calendars of papers relat ing to Border affairs from 156o to 1603 and to the reign of Mary Queen of Scots and the subsequent regency (1547-88), and of Irish State Papers from 1509 to 167o. From the last-mentioned date onwards the papers of both countries are described in the Calendars of State Papers Domestic.