No records throw more light on the early history of places, families, customs, and institutions than proceedings in a court of law. For this reason one cannot lay a surer foundation for local history than by the printing of local pleas; notably of such pleas as are not likely to be printed elsewhere, owing precisely to that local, and therefore restricted, interest which gives them their greatest value as county history. We are fortunate in that one of the earliest known Eyre Rolls, records the pleas taken at Bedford in the fourth year of King John.

In the earlier legal system of post-conquest England, petty cases were tried and settled at the Courts which were held on nearly every Manor. More serious cases were taken at the Court of the Hundred or at the Shire (County) Court. From these, the case, if involving a plea of the Crown or of the Realm, could be taken before the Curia Regis (King’s Court), and heard by the King in Council, either at Westminster or on his frequent journeys through the realm. Irregularities in the conduct of the local courts, and increasing amount of legal business, led that great lawreformer, Henry the Second, to institute Justices in Eyre (in Itinere, or on Journey), who should traverse the kingdom on circuit. It is the record of their visit to Bedford in Michaelmas Term, 1202, from which we print now the entries relating to Bedfordshire.

The Justices on this Eyre were Simon de Pateshull, Eustace de Falconberg, Richard Malebisse, Henry de Northampton, and Alexander de Pointon. They seem to have begun their work at Lincoln1 in June, and to have sat at Leicester, Coventry, and Northampton,2 before reaching Bedford; here they first sat three weeks after Michaelmas (Oct. 20).

The editor would have liked to print those cases in the Roll which had been carried forward from the other counties, but they would have borne too heavily on the exchequer of the B.H.R.S. He will, however, be happy to lend the photographs, from which he largely worked, to anyone who will undertake to print the pleas for these counties; their positions in the roll are shown in the Index.