62 ENFORCEMENT OF THE STATUTES OF LABOURERS 



the jury of indictment, and then by the presentments and 

 summoning of the indicted efc; * sometimes the amount 

 of the penalty is entered over the name of the convicted.'' 

 but normally the estreat roll is altogether separate. The 

 chaotic condition of some of the existing rolls looks as if 

 the clerk took merely rough notes during the session, 

 and was then responsible for getting the roll into proper 

 shape from memory: in one case a justice admits that he 

 has the estreats but confesses that they are not yet prop- 

 erly arraiata? There is plenty of evidence that the clerk 

 did not always do his work well : e. g., the justices are 

 distrained to correct mistakes in the estreats ; '♦ the es- 

 treats are returned to the justices because they seemed to 

 the court of the exchequer esse insuijicientes et iion debiia 

 forma scriptos vel arraiatos ;^ there is, on at least one 

 occasion, a discrepancy between the date stated in court 

 by the justices and that written in the estreat roll by the 

 clerk ;^ on another occasion the court questions whether 

 the estreats brought into the exchequer by the clerk 

 (apparently) are in truth the estreats of the justices.'' 

 The clerk was evidently used as a messenger, and 

 appears before the barons to prove that he had 

 delivered the estreats to the collectors." One clerk 

 is shown to have had the estreats in his posses- 

 sion and to have carelessly lost them;^ others are 



' S. 2 of this chapter, and app., 173-175. It is not meant that this 

 logical order is always adopted by the clerk. 



'App., 181-183. 



■Mem. L. T. R.,26, Mich. Presentaciones, Dediedato, Southampton. 



'■Ibid., 35, Mich.,Breu. Ret., rot. i, Holland; a reference to the clause 

 of Rubeus Liber, also quoted in a case given in app., 365. 



•Mem. L. T. R., 32, Hill., Recorda, rot. id; Northants. 



''Ibid., 33, Mich., Recorda, rot. 16, Lincoln. 



■App., 365. * App., 290. ''App., 285, 



