Page:The Public Records and The Constitution.djvu/16

 the same relation to the records which have followed it as that in which the Conqueror stands to the later sovereigns of England and their various offshoots. With the Conqueror begins a new dynasty, with Domesday Book a new system.

The indignation and the astonishment of the writer of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle when he tells how writs issued from a central authority to all the counties of England, and how the writs had to be returned to that central authority, constitute in themselves a momentous chapter of history. The words prove to us not only that no such inquisitions of an earlier date existed, but also that the very idea of them was utterly foreign to the English mind of the period. The system and the centralization, however, which were then introduced, were destined to give England the finest body of records that the world has ever seen.

You will have noticed the words of the writs 'how much the King ought to have in twelve months from each shire'. You see here the determination of the King and his Court or Council to have an annual account of the royal revenues; and accordingly the earliest records after Domesday are rolls which show the annual accounts of the Sheriffs, and which, like Domesday, were not retained in the respective shires, but were sent to the King or his proper officer. Each of these rolls was, in the earliest days, described by the simple and appropriate title of &apos;Magnus Rotulus&apos;, 'the Great Roll'. The first of them now known to be in existence belongs to the thirty-first year of the reign of Henry I—