CHAPTER II 



CENTRAL courts: COURT OF KING's BENCH AND COURT OF 

 COMMON PLEAS, I349-I377 



It has already been shown that actions on the statutes 

 of labourers, brought in the first instance before the justices 

 of labourers, were occasionally removed to a higher court, 

 that of the king and council, of the chancellor, or of the 

 king's bench ; ^ it remains necessary to ascertain the extent 

 of the original jurisdiction over the statutes exercised by 

 both the court of king's bench and the court of common 

 pleas. 



(i) The treatment of the sources. — The choice of the 

 most effective method of dealing with the great mass of 

 material in existence has been a difficult one.^ On the one 



*Pt. I, ch. ii, s. 7 and app., 239-241. 



*The exigencies of this portion of my subject have led me here as in 

 pt. ii, ch. i, to depart from my plan of describing the sources in the ap- 

 pendix, and, instead, to discuss them in the text and in the footnotes. 

 The brief summary of official records given in this note will be followed 

 by further analysis in the remaining sections of this chapter. 



Court of common pleas. 



De Banco Rolls. Classified by regnal year and law term, and so 

 listed in List of Plea Rolls; they are unindexed and there is no guide 

 to their contents except the name of the county on the margin of each 

 action. Normally there is one roll for each term, consisting of from 

 about 400 to 600 membranes, each membrane being about three feet 

 long and about nine inches wide, closely written on both sides. 



Court of king's bench. 



Coram Rege Rolls. The same description applies, except that the 

 number of membranes in each roll is considerably less than in the De 

 Banco rolls, varying between 200 and 300. 



Ancient Indictments. For an account of these, see app., 143. The 

 series is made up largely of Coram Rege indictments. 



Coroners' Rolls. See List of Plea Rolls, Select Cases from Coroners' 

 166 



