VOLUME 41

This is a calendar in English of the coroners’ rolls for c.1265-1317 and 1378-1380, held respectively in The National Archives and Gonville and Caius College Cambridge (open in new windows).

The introduction explains coroners’ duties (which could be varied) and court procedure before focusing on the work of the Bedfordshire coroners. Included are lists of the medieval coroners for Bedfordshire (1230-1478), Bedford (1240-1456), Dunstable (1228-1411) and the Bedfordshire liberties of the Abbot of St. Albans (1287-1326) and Eton College (1451).

The rolls contain cases of murder, assaults and thefts and tragic accidents such as that of five-year-old Joan in 1274 who ‘went through Riseley to beg for bread, came to a bridge called Fordebrugge and, as she tried to cross it, fell into the water and drowned.’

Aside from crime, the rolls reveal the conditions of daily life at the poorer level of society, agriculture and the countryside.

As new.