Introduction: 1199 and All That

Throughout Western Europe, writing of many different kinds became increasingly important for the business of government during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The more routinely that past governments have used the written word, the more advanced they have been thought to be – and the more advanced, the stronger. The development of bureaucratic kingship in England has been a major theme of English historiography, closely linked with what R. R. Davies identified as its ‘informing principle’ – ‘the belief that strong centralized government is a prerequisite of civilized life and human progress’. For English historians of this cast of mind – members of what Tim Reuter called ‘the “Sir Humphrey” school of medieval history’ – the first regnal year of King John (r. 1199–1216), which ran from John's coronation on Ascension day 1199 (27 May) to the eve of Ascension 1200 (17 May), has long enjoyed iconic status. The systematic recording of outgoing documents is widely taken to be a significant indicator of bureaucratic administration, and to all appearances it was in 1199 that the king's secretariat – from about this time sometimes called the ‘chancery’ (L. cancellaria) – began to keep registers in the form of parchment rolls of some of the types of documents which clerks attached to the royal household had long been writing on the kings’ behalf. For V. H. Galbraith, the year 1199 marked ‘the beginning of the deliberate archive-making by the State’, and meant that ‘the sovereign Chancery … could direct and control the administration better than ever before’. The earliest extant roll of charters (solemn grants, often in perpetuity) dates from 1199 (1 John). The earliest extant rolls of letters close (executive writs ordering action to be taken, sent folded and closed with a small blob of wax) date from 1200 (2 John). The earliest extant roll of letters patent (open letters with, like charters, the king's seal hanging from them) dates from 1201 (3 John).

For centuries, the chancery rolls functioned as a principal record of English government: the charter rolls until 1517, the close rolls until 1903, the patent rolls to the present day – a bureaucratic continuity of more than 800 years.