Historians have long been aware of the deficiencies of the printed text of the folio edition of the Statutes of the Realm covering the statutes prior to the 1350s, and of the need to explore sources beyond the statute roll when considering early legislation. In their paper on these statutes, H.G. Richardson and G.O. Sayles encouraged the production of a new scholarly edition, while at the same time seeking to explain why the picture was so confused. Specifically, they demonstrated how the first collections of statutes were put together for utilitarian reasons by courts, royal administrators and lawyers from whatever was to hand. Finding this unsatisfactory, the chancery began to compile the Great Roll from various sources as a record ‘specially devised for statutes’. For the rest of the fourteenth century, and in the early fifteenth, the text of this roll appears to have been taken from engrossed sheets used for proclamations in the localities. Statute rolls continued to be produced by the chancery until at least 1468, if not 1489, and they have been printed accurately enough by the editors of Statutes of the Realm. The text of these rolls was usually written in the sophisticated insular variety of French that had taken particularly strong root in the English common law, traditionally called Anglo-Norman, but also now the ‘French of England’ (in this article, the term ‘French’ will be used for simplicity, if not complete accuracy).