The Map has been drawn to show diagrammatically the probable distribution of the vills in the various Hundreds of Beds, and Bucks, during the reign of Richard I; in order to enable the reader to find their position, an index has been supplied to the map. The County boundaries are shown by a thick black line; the Hundred boundaries by conventional signs of line dot and dash. These boundaries are necessarily approximations, as being based on the present parish boundaries. The Manors of Ancient Demesne appear to have been extra-hundredal at this period; they are shown as islands in the Hundred, and are marked A.D.; the two royal Burghs, also extra-hundredal, are marked R.B. To the modern parishes and old manors on our Rolls, some, not mentioned on our Rolls, have been added, in order to increase the usefulness of the map.

The Hundred is believed to be the oldest unit of administration in England. With the centralisation of government, the system became obsolescent about the middle of the xixth century, and it is to be regretted that the old areas were not revived for the Sanitary and Rural Districts established under a later theory of decentralisation. The organisation of the two Shires under Hundreds is evidently dissimilar.

In Bucks., though some of the eighteen Hundreds are very small, none is styled a Half Hundred. In the xijth and xiijth centuries each Hundred remained distinct, but in the Feudal Aid Rolls of 1302/3 Cotteslowe and Mursley Hundreds are united in one return, and all the eighteen are arranged in the groups of three under which they are actually set out in the Feudal Aid Rolls of 1316. At the disappearance of the Hundred system, the only recognised Hundreds684 were those shown in the third column of the following table, the last three (Desborough, Burnham, and Stoke) still retaining their separate identity, and together forming the three Chiltern Hundreds of which the Steward is a Royal officer, and is therefore unable to sit in Parliament.

In Beds, three smaller areas are termed Half Hundreds, shown in the table by (|).

In the course of a search through early Rolls of the King's Court, it appeared that there were filed with Roll 85 of Michs. Term 1224, besides an initial fragment of indeterminate date, three membranes which were clearly out of place as being records of judicial proceedings in the country and not at Westminster. On two of these were numerous entries of proceedings taken at Dunstable before the great Justice, Martin de Pateshulle, which related chiefly to the arbitrary actions of Falk de Breauté at Luton; their date and subject seemed to call for some study.

Coming up from Wallingford, the King slept at Brill, and reached Northampton for a Great Council with his Barons on Sunday, 16 June, 1224. On the previous Monday, Justices in Eyre were to sit at Dunstable to take cases of novel disseisin ; those named in the Commission were Thos. de Heydon, Hen. de Braybroc, Robt. de Lexinton, and Warin fitz Joel; apparently Martin de Pateshulle and Thos. de Muleton were added to their number later. Falk was convicted before them of numerous disseisins; his brother William, whether at Falk's bidding or on his own account, planned to seize and imprison the Justices; but they, being warned in time, “retired with speed wherever their flight led them” on the 16th; and only Hen. de Braibroc of Potton, who was captured on the 17th (apparently on his way to the King at Northampton), was thrown into prison at Bedford Castle. The political circumstances which led up to Falk's defiance, and the subsequent events of the siege of Bedford, are familiar, and are well set out by Miss Norgate; but the following diary may be found useful.

On 15 September Martin de Pateshulle “and those whom he shall associate with himself” were commissioned to take at Dunstable on 1 October the assise between the Prior of Bicester and Robt. de Courtenay which forms no. 10 on our Roll; this gives the commencing date for the session. The Roll is not headed “Pleas and Assises” in the ordinary form of an Eyre, but “An Inquisition holden …. at Dunstable,” which points to something unusual in the procedure.

Since the article which forms pp. 23-34 was printed, the writer noticed a surprising entry on the Close Roll of 1248, by which the Escheators in Hunts, and Cambs. are ordered “that, with regard to the revenue of Simon de sancto Licio in Huntindon’ from the third penny of the County, which the King caused to be taken into his own hand by reason that in these days there is no Earl of Huntindon’, they cause him again to have (rehabere) full seisin, provided that according to justice he answer for it in the King's Court to his summons.” This seems to be the only case as yet noticed of the allowance of the third penny of the County to one who had no claims on an Earldom. The nearest comparable case seems to be that of Hugh de Courtenay; he was a distant kinsman of the last of the family de Reviers, Earls of Devon, and succeeded to their estates about 1293; he claimed the third penny of Devon from the Sheriff, and it was allowed at the Exchequer till about 1325/6, when the Treasurer disallowed it on the ground that Hugh was not the Earl; Hugh protested, and finally was created Earl of Devon with full grant of the third penny, and was acquitted of the claims made by the Exchequer for what he had irregularly received in the last 8J years. A serious search of the Pipe Rolls of the period has not been possible, but no payment to Simon de St. Liz of the third penny appears in the Rolls for 1248, 1249, 1250; it might have been paid in some other way. Both in these three years and earlier is an allowance for ‘lands granted’ (terrae datae) “to the heirs of the Earl of Huntendon 40li in Brampton and Alemundebiri” (Brampton and Alconbury co. Hunts., royal lands at Domesday).

It seemed worth while to attempt to trace this highly favoured recipient, but as the eldest son of the family seems always to have been called Simon, the separation of successive generations is merely inferential.

It appears from a case reported by Bracton under 1220, that William Marshal duly received the manor of Luton with his wife, but that it was escheated in 1216 in consequence of his opposition to King John. At the conclusion of peace Falk (whether willingly or not) restored it to William, who re-granted it to him (on lease or farm) by charter. The transaction becomes thus somewhat clearer.

In another place Bracton reports an action for novel disseisin by Will, de Stanes against Falk for 2 carucates and a mill in Luton, under the year 1224. Falk does not appear, “and Robert de Lexinton and his fellows, who were Justices at Dunstaple to take that assise and before whom it was summoned, recall (recordantur) that that assise stood over for hearing because” etc. ; this seems to confirm the suggestion that the Rolls had been lost; if they had been accessible, the phrasing would probably have been different. A note to this case by Bracton's editor, Prof. Maitland, shows that he had detected the Inquisition by Martin de Pateshull which is dealt with on pp. 51-60 above, but that he regarded it (erroneously, as we think) as the record of the original Eyre of Martin de Pateshull and his fellows.—[G.H.F.].

A single sheet or ‘ membrane ’ of an early Pipe Roll is generally formed of two skins of parchment, sewn together to form a membrane about 16 inches in width, and something like 3 to 5 feet in length. All the membranes which were passed at one session of the Exchequer are stitched together at the head to form a File, and constitute the Pipe Roll of the regnal year concerned.

On the Pipe Rolls, or, to use their more formal title, the Great Rolls of the Exchequer, are recorded the accounts which were presented at Michaelmas to the Exchequer by Sheriffs or other responsible Accountants, of all moneys due or received on behalf of the Crown from the Shires, from Honours, and such like; these moneys issued from the Royal Demesnes and other estates in royal hands, from the profits of Justice, and similar sources. For easier administration, two smaller Shires were often coupled under one Sheriff; Bucks, and Beds, were so coupled from (at latest) a date soon after the Conquest till 1574.

The following account, intended simply to make the Calendar more intelligible to the members of the two Societies which have joined in its publication, must be taken as strictly applicable only to the period of Richard the First, and in detail only to the two Shires concerned.

When the Sheriff presents his account for audit, the chief persons whom he must satisfy, the principal Barons of the Exchequer, are:—(i) the Chief Justiciar, vice-gerent of the realm in the absence of the King abroad, and head of the great judicial system devised by the first two Henries; (ii) the Chancellor, keeper of the King’s seal and general secretary of the State, whose clerks do the secretarial work of the King; (iii) the Treasurer, keeper of the King’s Treasure at Winchester, and now the chief financial officer, with his colleagues, the Chamberlains.

The details of procedure at the audit have been fully described by others, and need not be repeated here. The chief authority is the Dialogus de Scaccario, written between 1176 and 1179 by Richard fitz Nigel, Bishop of London 1189 to 1198, and himself Treasurer for about 40 years; this is readily accessible in ‘ Select Charters ’ and in the authoritative Oxford edition.