Parchment and People

This volume derives from work in progress on two major projects which will further our understanding of the membership of medieval English parliaments and how their business was conducted. A team of researchers is currently engaged in writing biographies of the members of parliament of the fifteenth century, filling the gap in the published volumes of The History of Parliament; and editors and translators are nearing completion of a new edition of the Rotuli Parliamentorum, which will make the rolls more accessible to specialists and general readers alike. Scholars from both projects here provide insight into their findings in papers ranging chronologically from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. Besides the MPs themselves these pages are peopled with lords, clerks, lawyers and merchants, and are documented by petitions, chronicles, financial accounts and, of course, the rolls of parliament.