IN his masterly introduction to Select Pleas of the Crown, Professor Maitland, with his usual skill, discusses the evolution of the Curia Regis and the relation of the central to the itinerant courts. An appendix to this introduction is devoted to “arly fines”; and the conclusion arrived at, as to the date when regular fines began, is that “the evidence seems to point to the year 1178 or thereabouts, just, that is, to the time when King Henry was remodelling the Curia Regis; thenceforward we have traces of a fairly continuous series of fines” (p. xxvii.). More definitely still, in his latest work, he traces the existence of fines “from the year 1179.”

The earlier document I here print from the valuable cartulary of Evesham (Vesp. B. xxiv., fo. 71, etc.) is, I contend, a true fine, and is fortunately dated with exactitude (20th July):–