Introduction

The collection of Public Records Office (National Archives) documents classified as ‘SC 8’ include 347 manuscript bundles (or ‘files’), containing in total 17,621 petitions addressed variously to king, council and parliament. Collectively known as ‘Ancient Petitions’, they represent the medieval legal process of petitioning for grace, favour and restitution that became a primary feature of English royal and parliamentary legal processes from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries.

The earliest petitions survive from Henry III’s reign. It was during the reign of Edward I, however, when the practice of petitioning really came into prominence, initiated by an apparent shift in government policy in the 1270s which allowed the king more involvement in local affairs whilst giving the king’s subjects greater access to royal favour or judgement (Dodd 2007: 19). The policy allowed aggrieved parties to hire a properly trained clerk to produce a petition, addressed directly to the king, to his parliament or his advisors, in order to have restitution for a grievance or have inquiry made into a particular case. English monarchs carried on the practice to greater and lesser extents through the whole of the late-medieval period.

Private vs. ‘public’ petitions

So-called ‘private’ petitions from individuals, local groups, communities and religious houses were often used when the courts of the county, hundred, borough or vill were thought to be insufficient for achieving satisfaction. Most of the petitions extracted here are ‘private’ in nature. Almost all were also ‘un-enrolled’, in that they were not recorded in any systematic way on the records of the rolls of parliament.

During the early years of Edward I’s reign, such so-called ‘private’ petitions began to be left off the parliamentary rolls, whilst enrolment was reserved solely for petitions concerning ‘public’ business. The distinction between them is often far from clear. In general, ‘private’ petitions resulted in a ruling that only affected the petitioner or petitioners, rather than resulting in general legislation (Dodd 2007: 2, 127, 157). The petitions transcribed and edited here may be considered ‘private’.

During Edward II’s reign one begins to see petitions addressed directly to the commons rather than the king or council. By the fifteenth century, many private petitions – often addressed to the commons – were again being enrolled directly in parliamentary records, and many of these were subsequently printed in the Rotuli Parliamentorum (Strachey et al. 1783).