II. DOCUMENTS, EXTRACTS FROM DOCUMENTS, 

 LISTS AND TABLES ■ 



A. Parliament and Council 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 



Parliamentary and other Petitions (Chancery and Exchequer). 

 These inckule ahnost all the extant petitions of the 

 period to king, council, parliament, and chancellor 

 in his executive capacity. Cf. Scargill-Bird, op. cit., 

 284-285, and Maitland, Records of the Parliament of 

 130^, introduction, xxvi. 



Index of Ancient Petitions of the Chancery and the Ex- 

 chequer, Lists and Indexes, no. i. 



Merely a list of names of the petitioners, with no 

 indication of the contents of the petitions ; in many 

 cases the latter are undated, and are, therefore, unin- 

 telligible. About a tenth are printed in Rotuli Par- 

 liamentornm. 



Throughout my account of administrative methods 

 it has been emphasized that traces of the activity of 

 the council in relation to the statutes of labourers 

 are everywhere apparent ; this fact thus confirms the 

 truth of Mr. Baldwin's theory that before the era of 

 the keeping of formal council records, its doings can 

 be followed by a study of the records of other 

 branches of government. It seems probable, there- 

 fore, that an exhaustive examination of these petitions 

 with a given subject in view, like the statutes of 

 labourers, and in connection with other available 

 6* 



