First published in English Historical Review,Volume 121, Number 494, December 2006 , pp. 1451-1453(3)

THE Parliament Rolls of Medieval England ( PROME ) provides for the first time a complete edition of the principal record of the medieval assemblies, from the first surviving roll in 1290 to the last parliament of Henry VII in 1504 . PROME supersedes the six-volume Rotuli Parliamentorum , published in 1767 — 77 under the general editorship of the Reverend John Strachey. The new edition incorporates material edited subsequently, not least by Maitland and by Richardson and Sayles. Other sections are transcribed for the fi rst time: for instance, the rediscovered twelfth and final membrane of the roll for the parliament of October 1318 . Unlike the old edition, PROME includes notes of interlineations, erasures, lacunae, and other scribal features. It also describes the condition of each roll. Translations for all parts of the rolls — those parts in English as well as those in Latin and in Anglo-Norman French — are provided in a parallel-text format. Footnotes provide cross-references to original documents (principally the texts of the original bills, petitions, and proviso clauses). References are also supplied for direct quotations and for the chapter numbers of statutes. PROME therefore provides a complete and authoritative text of the rolls. The translations should ensure that the parliament rolls become more widely used as a historical source, and are read in their entirety rather than in excerpted collections.

PROME is available on CD-ROM, via the internet, and in print. Moving between the computerised texts and the printed text is not as easy as it could have been. The computerised texts use two forms of reference to navigate a parliament roll: the membrane number of the individual roll, and the volume and page reference of Rotuli Parliamentorum . Consequently, it is not possible to locate from a volume and page reference of the new printed edition the same text in the computerised versions. The editors propose that in all three versions references are given instead to the parliament and then to the item number as it appears on the roll. The drawback of this approach is that in the computerised versions there is no way of moving within a parliament roll to a particular item number. The best way to do this seems to be to click on the icon marked 'Show All' and then to scroll down the text until the item is located. Moreover, item numbers do not work in all cases: not all entries on the rolls are itemised; a large number of provisos presents a particular problem. Thus the act of resumption of 1486 is a roll of 30 membranes which takes up 96 pages in the printed version, but has no numbering; in this case, reference would be better made to the membrane number. Another drawback of this referencing system is that comments within the introductory sections cannot be cited precisely in the computerised versions.

Nevertheless the two computerised versions are likely to be used more widely than the printed version. The printed text is expensive and can only be bought as a complete set. The computerised versions of PROME include a collection of high-definition images taken from the rolls, which are not available in the printed text. Any corrections made to the text will necessarily be added only to the internet version. Finally, there is no index, so the printed volumes cannot be searched. The computerised versions provide a word search. This search is fast and can be limited to a particular reign. Variant spellings, however, present a problem. There is an option of a wildcard search using an asterisk, but the asterisk can only be placed at the end of the word. For example, if we are looking for a man called ' Thomas Bromell ' and limit our search to the reign of Henry VII, we can find him — being attainted for felony — on the roll of 1487 if we search for ' Thomas Bromel* ' ; but we find nothing if we search for ' Thomas Brom* l ' . The drawback is apparent if we search instead for ' Thomas Brome* ' . This reveals that the same man also secured a proviso in 1486 , where his name was spelt ' Bromehil ' . It would be easy to miss an individual's multiple entries on this basis. Variants of Bromell's name, however, can be found in the index to the old Rotuli Parliamentorum . This index was published in 1832 , more than 50 years after the texts had been published. A similar index to PROME would make the new edition even more useful than it is already. As well as the texts, PROME provides a range of editorial comment and supplementary material. There is an introduction for every parliament from 1275 (whether or not a roll survives). Each introduction contextualises the sessions and addresses their membership and business. Up-to-date pieces of scholarship, they reflect the strengths and limitations of existing work. The History of Parliament project on the sessions of 1422 to 1504 , for example, will necessarily transform our knowledge of the composition of Parliament in these years. Another important project which relates closely to PROME is the continuing work on the ' Ancient Petitions ' . PROME provides for many parliaments appendices which transcribe or calendar complementary material, often petitions to Parliament. Those seeking to make space on the bookshelves should not, however, remove the Rotuli Parliamentorum . The old edition contains the transcriptions of parliamentary petitions which were not entered on the rolls. These parliamentary petitions were then in the nineteenth century re-distributed into the vast class of ' Ancient Petitions ' (SC8), which is presently being catalogued. As the introduction to PROME notes, the documents transcribed in Rotuli Parliamentorum therefore give an insight into the state of the parliamentary archive in the eighteenth century. Wherever possible, PROME connects these transcriptions to the original documents and, where appropriate, re-dates them; it does not, however, re-edit them beyond Edward I's reign. So to make the most out of PROME , a copy of the older edition needs to be to hand.

PROME also has a general introduction, which surveys the development of the rolls in the light of their relationship with other sources for parliamentary history. This may adopt too schematic a chronology in distinguishing between an evolutionary phase up to 1340 and a settled phase thereafter. Private petitions, which had been excluded from the rolls after 1332 , returned to the rolls in growing numbers in the fi fteenth century; by 1504 every successful bill and petition seems to have been enrolled. From 1340 the common petitions had their own section on the parliament rolls; but what it meant to be entered in that section changed considerably in the second half of the fi fteenth century. Conversely, the amount of non-legislative business on the rolls dwindled to next to nothing. There is perhaps a wider argument that could be made on the basis of PROME about the emergence of the supreme legislature out of the omnicompetent king's council of the early fourteenth century. Sustained consideration should perhaps have been given to the relationship between the parliament rolls and the other offi cial records of business in medieval parliaments — principally the statute rolls, but also the statute books and the first printed texts. Perhaps some comment about the uses to which the rolls were put and the conditions in which they were kept would have been welcome too. Quibbles apart, PROME is a major contribution to the history of Parliament, to medieval English history, and to the study of the English constitution. Everyone involved in the project deserves to be congratulated: the general editor Chris Given-Wilson and his co-editors — Paul Brand, Anne Curry, Rosemary Horrox, Geoffrey Martin, Mark Ormrod, and Seymour Phillips — and their research assistants, and the institutions which supported the project, principally the Leverhulme Trust.

P .R. CAVILL, Merton College, Oxford