Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/503

1922 of charters, &c., but these will be found, as a rule, to be documents which were, in the modern phrase, 'put in' by the parties as evidence on the hearing of their case. Of course, it might, and did, happen that a suit entered upon the Plea Roll terminated in an agreement which was entered on the 'Domesday' Roll, but they were different records entirely. The Plea Roll entries were more or less hastily written and highly abbreviated notes of the pleas, made, as they occurred, by the clerk in court. The 'Domesday' Roll must have been written up at leisure, and the entries were fully and carefully made. We also find that upon the thirteenth-century Plea Rolls are entered a number of important iudicia, or 'dooms', made by the county, but these are of general application and usually relate to legal procedure at the 'county' and similar matters which might crop up at any court, and so it would be natural and convenient to enter them upon the rolls of pleas. Probably at the date when the Plea enrolments were begun, the advantages of also enrolling the documents, &c., publicly read on the 'doomsdays' and the contents of the 'Domesday' Bag (thus avoiding any risk of the loss of the original documents or of the bag containing them, or of forgery) would become obvious as providing a written record to which future appeals could be made. A system which depended upon memory was too uncertain for the orderly and judicial minds then engaged in developing a system of jurisprudence. The solemnity of the circumstances, the ceremonious public reading of documents, or making of oral admissions, were felt to require the establishment of an equally solemn written record which should bear unimpeachable testimony for the future. In this way we believe it was that the roll which took the name of the 'Domesday' Roll of Chester was started.

It is clear that the documents which were read at the 'doomsday' meetings could not then and there be enrolled, and no doubt the 'Domesday' Bag continued to be used as a temporary place of deposit for the documents until the clerk had time to enter them upon the roll, and also for other documents, such as fines, which had to be proclaimed at successive 'counties' and which it would therefore be convenient to keep in the bag. The original documents after enrolment were probably returned to the owners. Many of the charters contain in themselves a memorandum of the fact of enrolment, but it would be safer in case of dispute to point to the enrolment as evidence rather than to have to produce the original which might have been lost or the validity of which would have to be proved over again. In the case of oral admissions the memorandum entered upon the roll would be of the greatest importance as the only written record.