Edward III: Introduction

Edward III, 1327-1377

The records of parliament underwent some very significant changes during the long reign of Edward III (1327-1377). At the beginning of the reign there was still little sense of continuity either in the production or in the archiving of rolls of parliament; by the 1340s, and certainly by the end of the reign, the parliament rolls had taken on the basic format that continued to be observed for the rest of the Middle Ages.

The records of the parliaments for the first ten years of the reign of Edward III are incomplete. Out of the nineteen assemblies that were held between January 1327 and March 1337 (one more was summoned but not held, April 1331), records survive for only eleven. The records of the six parliaments held between November 1330 and January 1333 are contained in a single composite roll (C 65/2). For four of the eleven parliaments, more than one record exists. The parliament of January-February 1327, which was summoned in the name of Edward II, is included among the parliaments of Edward III.

The rolls of the parliaments held after 1337 survive in much more complete series, though with notable omissions in the periods 1337-1339 and 1357-1361. At the end of Edward III's reign, chroniclers paid particularly close attention to the business of the 'Good Parliament' of 1376, and their accounts of its business help us to understand the extent, and the limitations, of the official rolls.

The Introductions to individual parliaments provide a brief guide to what is known about each parliament and the political context in which it was held. The Introductions also provide a guide to the records that are known to survive.

The first two volumes of RP contain transcripts of many hundreds of private petitions not enrolled on the parliament rolls. Most of them can be dated to the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Many of the 256 petitions which are printed in RP , II, pp.378-419, as Petitiones de annis incertis Edwardi III can instead be shown to belong either to the latter years of the reign of Edward II or to the early years of Edward III. Since the editor responsible for the parliaments of Edward II was also responsible for the parliaments of the first ten years of the reign of Edward III, the Appendix of Unedited Petitions provided for the reign of Edward II also covers the period 1327-1337, with cross-references to this Appendix supplied in the Introductions to individual parliaments when necessary. For the period 1337-1377, summaries of these published petitions, and of other published and unpublished related documents, are provided in the Appendices to individual parliaments.

Note that for the Edward III parliaments file numbers beginning with 'ii' refer to material from RP volume II. Files beginning with 'ix' refer to material first published in R. & S.