Yorkshire Hundred and Quo Warranto Rolls 1274-1294

edited by Barbara English (1996)

At midsummer 1274 Edward I returned to England from crusade, and ordered a major investigation of matters that concerned the crown, in particular encroachments upon his rights and the misconduct of local government officers. The enquiries were made hundered by hundered, and wapentake by wapentake (the local government divisions of the south and the north). Subsequently the king sent justices into English shires, who required claimants to prove by what authority they held delegated royal powers: they were summoned by the writ quo warranto (by what warrant).

The two sets of records became known as the “hundred rolls” and the “quo warranto rolls.” The only edition of these rolls was published at the beginning of the nineteenth century and contains a number of errors and omissions. For this edition , the surviving manuscripts in the National Archives have been collated, edited and translated; the text provides a valuable source for many aspects of late thirteenth-century Yorkshire society, in particular the government of the shire. The present edition is the first published translation for any English county.