In 1800 George III appointed a Commission to consider The State of the Public Records of this Kingdom, and the Necessity of providing for the better Arrangement, Preservation, and more convenient Use of the same’. These records were ‘in many Offices unarranged, undescribed, and unascertained’, and were also exposed to the dangers of ‘Erasure, Alteration, and Embezzlement’ and destruction by damp or fire.

In 1812 this Commission printed and published a transcript of the Hundred Rolls of 1274, containing the evidence obtained by an Inquisition set up by Edward I in that year. The reasons for the inquisition are given in the introduction to the published volume as follows:

‘During the turbulent Reign of King Henry the 3rd, the revenues of the Crown had been considerably diminished by Tenants in Capite alienating without Licence; and by Ecclesiastics, as well as Laymen, withholding from the Crown under various Pretexts its just Rights, and usurping the Right of holding Courts and other Jura Regalia. Numerous Exactions and Oppressions of the People had also been committed in this Reign, by the Nobility and Gentry claiming the Rights of free Chace, free Warren, and Fishery, and demanding unreasonable Tolls in Fairs and Markets; and again, by Sheriffs, Escheators, and other Officers and Ministers of the Crown, under Colour of Law.’

A second inquisition of 1279, with slightly different terms of reference, was printed in 1818. The 1274 Inquisition deals with the whole county; what survives of the 1279 Inquisition deals in considerably more detail with the Hundreds of Stodden (with Bucklow) and Willey in the north-west comer of the county.

The texts were printed in ‘record type’, which reproduces the original Latin manuscript, with special type for the conventional abbreviations. Today very few general readers can translate such a text, and so the English version below has been produced for the use of present-day local historians. The volumes and the pages relating to Bedfordshire are:

In the translation, some freedom has been allowed when the meaning is quite clear, but when this is in any doubt, the original Latin has been followed as closely as possible.