Pipe Rolls - History

History

Although the earliest Pipe roll dates from 1130, the 31st year of King Henry I's reign, it is clear that they were being produced by the Exchequer before then, as the 1130 roll is not an experiment. It shows no hesitancy in its use of accounts, or lack of continuity from previous years. An extract from an earlier Pipe roll, from the 25th regnal year of Henry I or 1124, has been found in a 14th century manuscript now in the Cotton Library at the British Museum. Exactly when the Pipe rolls began to be produced is debated amongst historians. Some hold that they date from Henry I's reign, whether early or late in the reign, but others feel that they were introduced by King William I (reigned 1066–1087). The precursors of the records probably date to the Anglo-Saxon period, as the historian Pauline Stafford argues that financial records must have been kept in some form during the reigns of Cnut (reigned 1016–1035), Æthelred II (reigned 978–1016), and Edgar the Peaceable (reigned 959–975). There is a reference to the king's "rolls" in a writ from 1110, which purports to be a grant from Henry I to the abbot of Westminster of ten shillings, but the writ may be a forgery, or parts of it may be genuine with some interpolations. As the writ only exists in a copy in a later cartulary, and the Abbey of Westminster is also known to have forged a number of other writs or charters, the writ is not a solid source for royal rolls being kept as early as 1110.

After the one surviving roll from Henry I's reign, no further Pipe rolls survived from his reign, nor are any preserved from the reign of his successor, King Stephen (reigned 1135–1154). But by the second year of King Henry II's reign, or 1155, they once more survive. It is unclear if Pipe rolls were actually created during Stephen's reign and they did not survive, or if the conditions during Stephen's reign precluded the creation of Pipe rolls. Continuously from the early years of King Henry II's reign, most Pipe rolls survive, with only a break in the last years of King John's reign (reigned 1199–1216).

The surviving Pipe roll from 1130 records an income of £24,500. This figure is dwarfed by the amount recorded on the Pipe roll that was actually owed to the king, which totals £68,850. The income that they record in the early years of Henry II is much smaller than that of the one surviving year for Henry I. Those early Pipe rolls of Henry I record an income about £10,000 to £15,000. By the end of Henry II's reign, royal income recorded in the Pipe rolls had risen to £20,000. The end of John's reign saw a recorded income of about £30,000, but Henry III's reign recorded only £8,000 in the early years, rising to £16,500 by 1225. Not only do the rolls from the early years of Henry II's reign show less income reaching the Exchequer than during Henry I's reign, those early rolls were haphazard and not as accurate and detailed as rolls dating from the later part of the reign. Nor are they as carefully produced as either the later rolls or the roll of 1130.

By the time of King John, the Pipe rolls were growing unwieldy, as too many fines and fees were being recorded, making the finding of information in the rolls difficult. Eventually, after some experimentation, by 1206 a system whereby the actual detailed receipts were recorded in a set of receipt rolls and only aggregates were entered in the Pipe rolls was settled on. A further reform in 1236 resulted in debts being recorded in separate Estreat rolls, and only the totals entered into the Pipe rolls. In 1284 the Statutes of Rhuddlan were issued, which further reformed the accounting systems, and further reduced the detail contained on the Pipe rolls. At this time, a large number of unrecoverable debts were also removed from the rolls, a process that had also been attempted in 1270. The attempt in 1270 had marked old debts with a "d" and stipulated that they were not to be re-entered into future Pipe rolls unless they were paid off. But this had not worked, and so in 1284 old debts were to be recorded on a separate roll. The statutes in 1284 also laid out a procedure where debtors whose documentation of payment of debt that hadn't been accepted in the past would have that documentation accepted, thus helping to clear out some of the backlogged debts on the books.

Yet more extraneous details were removed from the Pipe rolls under the Cowick Ordinance of June 1323, along with further ordinances in 1324 and 1326, all of which were done during the time that Walter de Stapledon held the office of Treasurer. Prior to this reform the rolls had become clogged with debts, and clauses 2 through 8 of the Cowick Ordinance attempted to return the rolls to an exposition of accounts. Another attempted reform at this time was the removal of customs receipts, as well as military accounts, from the rolls. New offices in the Exchequer were also created, in an attempt to speed up the auditing process and lessen the time it took to prepare the Pipe rolls and other financial records. The attempt to remove non-Exchequer accounts did completely remove those types of records from the Pipe rolls, and further reforms in 1368 created a set of foreign rolls, and all extraneous records in the Pipe rolls were transferred to those rolls.

In 1462, the exchequer was told to no longer summon for audit any farms or feefarms worth over 40 shillings per year, as these would be supervised by a newly appointed board of receivers or approvers.

The Pipe rolls series ended in 1834 when the office that was in charge of their creation, the Pipe Office, was abolished.