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 1921 THE DATING OF THE EARLY PIPE ROLLS 325 that Madox took it from the Pipe Roll of 10 Richard I 1 (i.e. Michaelmas 1198). This document is of interest for its own sake also. For it recites a conventio between Richard and a Jew, Benedict Pernaz of Talemunt, read and recorded on the roll at the exchequer, for which enrolment Richard paid half a mark. Simon de Pateshull, Henry de Winchenton, and Benedict de Talemunt were then acting as justices of the Jews, and they, with Geoffrey Fitz Piers and Philip, bishop of Durham, witnessed the transaction. 2 Richard * made fine ' (finem feci) with Benedict for all the claims he had against his wife's father, Hugh de Baious, for a hundred marks, on which, so long as the debt remained unpaid, Benedict was to receive ten marks a year from Richard as interest (de lucro), payable at the four quarters of the year. As the first instalment was to fall due at the Christmas next after the election of William de Sainte Mere Eglise to the see of London (i.e. 16 September 1198), we have further evidence that the date was 1198, as I contend, not 1199. As security for the debt, Richard mortgaged ' Wit ham ' to Benedict, and pledged his faith. 3 This record is also of importance as throwing light on the rate of interest then charged by the Jews. 4 It is a matter for regret that, after the roll of 1 Richard I (1189), the remaining rolls of his reign are still unpublished. For, in all likelihood, they will afford more original information than those of the closing years of his predecessor's reign. I may perhaps be permitted to illustrate this expectation by at least a single example. Until I drew attention to the fact, our historians for that period appear to have been unaware that a portion of the roll for the following year (2 Richard I) was published in facsimile so far back as 1865. 5 It is true that, in 1903, Sir James 1 Histoire, iii. 239-40 n. M. Meyer here desired to identify Richard de Samford (cf. p. 120, n. 2) who, when he saw, at the battle of Lincoln, that the French began to flee, picked up his wife and galloped off with her before him on the saddle. As it was the sheriff of Lincolnshire who was ordered (in September 1217) to restore to him his lands (ibid. p. 239 n.), we need not hesitate to recognize him in the Richard de Samford of a Lincolnshire fine of 10 Richard I (28 January 1 198/9) relating to the Bayeux fief (Massingberd, Lincolnshire Final Concords, p. 10). Hugh de Bayeux, who is mentioned in this fine and in the Formulare (pp. 77-8) document, was an important Lincolnshire baron, then recently deceased, and Richard de Samford's wife was a Maud de Bayeux. 2 ' Conventio autem haec facta fuit in Curia Regis apud Westm. coram Galfrido filio Petri et Philippo Dunelmensi episcopo et Simone de Pateshull et Henrico de Wichenton et Benedicto Iudaeo de Talemunt.' The three last ' tunc curam habuerunt Iudaeorum '. 3 ' Hanc conventionem affidavi.' See my Geoffrey de Mandeville, app. T (pp. 384-7), for the ' affidatio in manu '. See also another Lincolnshire fine (20 November 1208) in Foster, Lincolnshire Final Concords (ii. 333), where we have ' fidcliter tenendam affidaverunt '. 4 See, for this, Davis, England under the Normans and Angevins, pp. 272-4, where he cites my Ancient Charters (Pipe Roll Soc), pp. 82-4, for a similar mortgage (1183) to Jews of land, as a security for a debt of 100 marks. 5 Facsimiles of National Manuscripts, part i. M. Paul Meyer was acquainted with .it in 1901.