Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/112

 104 PROCEEDINGS IN PARLIAMENT January 10 November for the enrolment of the petition praying Elizabeth ^ to put the sentence into execution. This request, we now leam, was expanded by the Speaker on 2 December, when the lord chancellor promised on behalf of the royal commissioners ' that theire saide peticion and all theire Actes and proceadinges touching the saide cause should be entred of Recorde in the Rolle of the same parliament according as they desired ' .^ There seems little doubt that this is the roll now at Hatfield House, which might therefore be described as a parliament roll. Its text is based largely upon the Lords' Journal of 1586, and it is en- grossed in a contemporary chancery hand. Regarded as a record of the proceedings in the parliament chamber, the roll reverts to the character of the old rotvlus parliamenti, for during Henry VIII's reign the nature of the parUament roll had been altered by the omission of all proceed- ings other than the enactments. Thus from 25 Henry VIII until the close of Elizabeth's reign, no proceedings are recorded except on the roll of 14 Elizabeth, although they recur on two rolls, 1 and 3 Charles I, engrossed during the clerkship of Henry Elsyng.^ The repository for a parliament roll was the Rolls Chapel. One of several difficulties in presuming that the Hatfield roll was ever there — that is, the omission of the usual official endorsement of the year — ^is removed by a comment in 1593 in an anonymous journal of the house of commons that the clerk had been remiss in this very particular.* It is, however, possible that the roll remained with the clerk of the parliaments, who had custody of the original parchment rolls of the acts, the journals, and other manuscripts. The absence of acts from the Hatfield roll gives it an affinity to the Lords' Journals which it does not bear to the normal parliament rolls, since their entries of ' Lards' Journals, ii. 121 : D'Ewes, Journals, p. 398 a, whose version I cite when referring to the Commons' Journal. * Infra, p. 113. ' Cf. Statutes of the Realm, voL i, app. E, p. Ixvi, and app. F, pp. Ixxvi-lxxviii, where the roll of 1572 is not mentioned. The entries in question are at the end of this roll and consist of the order concerning Lord Cromwell's claim for privilege, and a memorandum of the introduction of three writs. amending Sir Fr: Englefeeldes bill [vide Statutes of the Realm, iv. ii. 849] it was found that the printed booke doth misrecite the statut or the act intituled To avoyd fraudu- lent assurances made by Traytors. it is recyted to be 29 [? 16] Febmarij 29. Eliz. where the Parliament role is 15. [? 29] Octobns. 28. Eliz. ... it appeared the order of the Parliament is the Clarke of the Parliament should certify a copie of the Parliament role into the Chauncery that thither men might resorte to see the role, but the private gaine of the Clarke causeth that he deteyneth the copying and certifjringe of the actes a longe tyme after many Parliamentes to the end men shall come to him for the aearche. Also it appeared that the yeare and day is not now indorsed uppon the back of the role as heretofore it hath bene used, which thinge was mislyked in the Clarke. . . .' The endorsements now upon all these rolls at the Record Office were probably made as a result of this committee. Thus if the Hatfield roll was ever at the Rolls Chapel, it had probably come into Burghley's possession prior to 1593.
 * Cotton, Titus F. ii, fo. 77 b : 'In conference . . . with the Lordes . . . about