The Project

A fine in the reign of King of England Henry III (1216–1272) was an agreement to pay the king a sum of money for a specified concession. The rolls on which the fines were recorded provide the earliest systematic evidence of what people and institutions across society wanted from the king and he was prepared to give. They open a large window onto the politics, government, economy and society of England in the hinge period between the establishment of Magna Carta at the start of Henry’s reign and the parliamentary state which was emerging at its end.

There is a fine roll for each of Henry III's fifty-six regnal years. Recording offers of money to the king for a multiplicity of concessions and favours, they are of the first importance for the study of political, governmental, legal, social, and economic history.

The Henry III Fine Rolls Project, which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council between April 2005 and December 2011, makes the rolls available to a wide audience in a summarised and translated form on its website. The Fine Rolls of Henry III from 1216 down to 1248 are published in both print and electronic form, including access to digital facsimiles of the rolls.

The Project has been funded in two phases by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The first phase was from April 2005 to March 2008. The second was from April 2008 to December 2011. The project combines the History Department of King’s College London, KCL’s Department of Digital Humanities (DDH) (formerly the Centre for Computing in the Humanities), the History Department of Canterbury Christ Church University (CCCU) and The National Archives (TNA) where the rolls are kept. The project was conceived by Louise Wilkinson (CCCU). The Principal Investigator was David Carpenter (KCL). The Co-investigators were David Crook (TNA), Louise Wilkinson (CCCU), and Harold Short, Director of CCH, who headed the team doing the technical research. The research fellows were Paul Dryburgh and Beth Hartland. The technical team included Paul Spence, Paul Caton, Arianna Ciula, Tamara Lopez and José Miguel Vieira. The National Archives Team included Sean Cunningham, Adrian Jobson, Aidan Lawes and Jess Nelson. The Project was supported by two Advisory Groups: an International Advisory Group and a Knowledge Transfer Advisory Group.

Resources on CKAN

The Henry III Fine Rolls CKAN Dataset makes available two major data resources:

• The set of rolls in TEI-XML format;
• The ontology of entities (persons, places and subjects) out of which the indexes and search available on the project site are generated.