RE: Plea Rolls in the National Archives

Thank you for that quick answer, Chris. I didn't know about the
Plantagent-Harrison MSS - that's very useful.

Yes, I've always wondered about the many references to unpublished PRO
records in the VCH parish histories, especially in the manorial history
sections. I once read an interesting (and amusing) article about the
young ladies who wrote the parish histories in the VCH for
Buckinghamshire back in the first decade of the 20th century (it was in
Records of Bucks, I think). They were all young history graduates from
Oxford and for each parish allocated to them they were given bundles of
extracts from the main sources for manorial history, and a few other
sources (the returns to the Board of Agriculture in 1904, for example),
and were expected to produce the parish article a short period later.
They never even had the opportunity to visit the parishes. Though they
did a pretty good job, by the lights of the contemporary obsession with
manorial, landowning and ecclesiastical history.

But I've often thought that the production of those bundles of extracts
must have involved the creation of something very close to a calendar of
many of the major medieval record categories at the PRO and wondered why
nothing was ever made of it (except the VCH, of course).

kenneth jacob...

I have been trawling through various plea rolls for some 30 years,
abstracting much information. They are one of the most important
sources of genealogical information in earlier periods. Plantagenet
Harrison's understood this, and his volumes are useful, but he was only
scratching the surface. I had the same problem getting to see them at
the NA, but it is not that long ago that they acquired half of these
volumes from the late Philip Blake, who owned them in Folkestone, where
I saw them (his 15 odd volumes).
The reason I asked about plea rolls is that I trawl through them, and
trawl you must. The entries on the left hand column give the county,
and presumably one is interested in one county or the other.
I am looking for people who can assist me as far as the names in whom I
am interested are concerned, and whom I can assist, reciprocally,
something incidentally I have done for a number of people over a good
many years.
The bigger issue is does one want to set up a group who will transcribe
or abstract complete rolls. I transcribed an early 14th century roll as
far as Kent entries are concerned. Can't remember which one. The List
and Index Society covered two or more rolls of 1327-1328.
Food for thought.
Kenneth Jacob

RE: Plea Rolls in the National Archives - CP40