Conveyances, commencing in 1560, and arrangements were being made with Mr. Tallack to calendar them, when his untimely death put an end to the expectations of the Society in this and other matters.

These enrolments were made in accordance with an Act of Parliament of 27 Hen. VIII., which was a supplement to the Statute of Uses, passed in the same session. By 27 Hen. VIII., cap. 16, it was enacted "that from the last day of July, 1536, no manors, lands, or tenements shall pass from one to another by reason of any bargain and sale thereof, except the same bargain and sale be made by writing indented, inrolled in one of the King's Courts of Record at Westminster, or else within the county where the lands lie, before the Custos Rotulorum and two Justices of the Peace, and the Clerk of the Peace of the same county, or two of them at the least, whereof the Clerk of the Peace to be one; the inrollment to be made within six months after the date of the writing in parchment, to the intent that every party that hath to do therewith, may resort and see the effect and tenor of every such writing so inrolled." This Act was unpopular from the first, because it gave publicity to the doings of great families.

Sims, in his Manual, doubts whether there are any records with the majority of the Clerks of the Peace of more ancient date than the commencement of the eighteenth century, but states that the county records of Middlesex, which are the earliest in existence, commence in 1547. Mr. John Cordy Jeaffreson has informed me that Middlesex possesses no enrolments of deeds.

Since Sims wrote, the old documents relating to the county of Essex were accidentally discovered in the Shirehall, at Chelmsford, and among them were forty

1 Extended to the Counties Palatine (Lancashire and Cheshire) and the Bishoprick of Durham by 5 Eliz., c. 26.

one membranes of enrolments of conveyances, from 23 Hen. VIII. to 21 James I., numbering ninety-one conveyances in all, which have all been calendared and published by the Historical Manuscripts Commission, 10th Report, Appendix, part iv. The same Commission, in its 7th Report, makes mention of the Somersetshire Records, among which there are said to be thirty similar rolls, extending over a period from 28 Hen. VIII. to 1731. The North Riding of Yorkshire has a series from the 30 Hen. VIII. to 5 William and Mary, of which there is a calendar in the Ninth Report, Appendix, part i.;1 it also possesses a Record Society, which, I believe, is making a calendar of all its records. The West Riding has no enrolments of conveyances. Probably several other counties have some, which will be accessible to the public in course of time.

To return to our Norfolk records. In the spring of 1895, when the Norwich Municipal Records were being arranged in the admirable Muniment Room provided for them in the Castle Museum, a question arose whether the County Records might not also be deposited there. It appeared, however, that there were technical objections to this course, owing to the Castle being now outside the jurisdiction of the Custos Rotulorum of the county. A press, similar to those in the City Muniment Room, was therefore provided in the Shirehall, and it was decided that before the records were deposited there, they should (in addition to the classification made in 1891) be thoroughly cleaned, a lengthy and laborious process. Mr. Hudson, who was asked to superintend this work, requested me to undertake it in his stead. At the same time, at the request of the Committee of the Archæological Society, and with the consent of the Joint

1 The series is continued in books down to 1875, but as Yorkshire is a register county, this is an exceptional case.

Committee of the County Council, I undertook to make a calendar of the above-mentioned enrolments.

The original arrangement of the rolls, I believe, was in periods corresponding with the official lives of the Clerks of the Peace, and there were until they passed through my hands some ten files of rolls. But owing to their inconvenient size some of them have been now divided into two parts; for instance, one consisted of 177 narrow rolls, and when placed one upon another they made a pile which was higher than it was broad, a most inconvenient form. Another of thirty-nine rolls I found with three taken from the commencement, and three from the end to make two other small files; these are now arranged consecutively. There are now eleven files of from one roll in the smallest to ninety-three in the largest.

The rolls are in excellent condition, there being only one or two which I had any difficulty in deciphering. I must make exception of the latest file, which consists of enrolments during the first half of the eighteenth century; this file appears to have been eaten by mice. I do not see any trace of damp, but every roll is destroyed in the same degree. However, the greater part is left, and there is so much repetition, that what is missing can be pretty well supplied from what remains, so that the loss is by no means irreparable; beyond that the file has an untidy look, little harm has been done.

As to the completeness of the series, I can only say definitely that it is not perfect, but how imperfect it is very difficult to judge. Readers can form their own opinion from what I have to say on each separate file. I have conclusive evidence that five rolls or membranes are missing, but that is probably below the full number, yet I should not be surprised if that number were less

than ten, though, on the other hand, it might exceed twenty. This refers to the existing files or bundles. There may, of course, be others now lost which preceded or followed them. There are preserved 455 rolls, each membrane being numbered at the foot as such and such a roll. I have retained the old nomenclature, calling the bundles of membranes files, and the separate membranes rolls. The majority of the rolls are in English, but several are in Latin.

I will now proceed to say a few words on each file, taking the first two at the same time.

Files 1 and 2 comprising the reign of Elizabeth, and containing 113 rolls (sixty and fifty-three respectively), were fastened together in one unwieldy file, so I divided them where I thought there was a break in the sequence, a change occurring in the Clerk of the Peace, and a large gap in the dates. There is an indorsement to the effect that at some time or other this first part had constituted a file by itself.

The earliest enrolment was made on the 10th January, 156, the indenture itself was executed a few months previously, viz., on the 1st September, 1560. The two files extend over the whole reign, the last entry being on the 23rd March, 1603, that is the day before the Queen's death.

I have mentioned a gap in the dates, it turned out to be a snare owing to the abominable misplacing of the membranes by someone, who long since enfiled them, paying little or no attention to their proper order and numbering them afterwards. This was not the first file brought to me, and, judging by my experience of the others, the arrangement of which is fairly correct, with an occasional slip, I thought I might trust the figures on this, the more so as they followed each other in regular sequence, and when I discovered my mistake I had gone too far to correct it.

I regret that I did not re-arrange these rolls in the first instance, but as any one who refers to the Calendar can tell at once by looking at the date of any two conveyances which is the earlier of the two, I trust that the order is not of primary consequence. It was trouble enough to hunt through the rolls for one containing the continuation of an indenture and apparently missing. I invariably found it, and there is not an imperfect enrolment on this file.

Another eccentricity of this file is that it begins again at roll 25, where eleven rolls occur inscribed only on the face containing duplicates of the entries on rolls 1 and 8 to 14, and seemingly roll 14 ought to be roll 2. I think the second series is really the original one; it is in quite a different, and, I should say, older hand.

File 3 continues the series, and, I believe, without an interruption. There is in this file a fine series of thirty-four enrolments relating to the sale of the tithes in Old Buckenham to various purchasers, giving schedules of the lands from which the tithes were derived; and, did any one care to take the necessary trouble, I think a fairly perfect map of the parish might be made from the information given, showing all the fields, roads, lanes, &c., with their names as they existed in 1614.

Files 4 and 5 were one file of 177 rolls. The membranes are of a uniform size, and much narrower than any others I have met with. The earlier rolls vary considerably in the length and breadth of the membranes. File 4 slightly overlaps with file 3, so it is hard to believe that anything is missing between the two. When I first had the whole in my hands it finished at roll 169, which had a blank back, and appeared to be quite perfect, but roll 170 came to light in the cleaning, torn, and illegible in places; moreover, it finishes at the beginning

1 See Blomefield, vol. i., p. 390.