ACCOUNT OF SOURCES 5 * 



A word must be said in explanation of the method chosen 

 for grouping the documents. The three great departments 

 responsible for the enrollment and the custody of the records 

 of the central government are chancery, the exchequer and the 

 courts of law. For purposes of investigation it proved con- 

 venient to consider separately the chief enactments of parlia- 

 ment and council, to distinguish the judicial from the admin- 

 istrative side of chancery, and to regard the courts as being 

 of two types, local courts under crown-appointed justices, and 

 upper courts, including the king's bench, common pleas, chan- 

 cery and the council. To these must be added a third type— 

 the old local courts already mentioned, communal, seignorial 

 and municipal — some of their rolls being also in the Public 

 Record Office. 



The resulting classification — A. Parliament and council; B. 

 Chancery on the administrative side; C. Local courts under 

 crown-appointed justices ; D. Exchequer ; E. Old local courts ; 

 F. Upper courts; — is roughly analogous (except for A.) to the 

 main divisions of my administrative study. The correspond- 

 ence is not exact, the chief difficulty being the part played 

 by the council, which has to be treated under every depart- 

 ment. There are also frequent cross-classifications ; e. g., par- 

 dons for outlawry mark one step in the judicial system and 

 yet are necessarily recorded on the Patent Rolls. On the whole, 

 however, it is believed that the groups of documents as ar- 

 ranged will serve to illustrate with some clearness the various 

 phases of the administrative process, and it is hoped that they 

 will be studied in connection with the corresponding sections 

 of my text. 



