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1. Between Magna Carta and the Parliamentary State: The fine rolls of King Henry III 1216-1272 and the project A fine in the reign of King Henry III (1216-1272) was an agreement to pay the king a sum of money for a specified concession. The rolls on which the fines were recorded provide the earliest systematic evidence of what people and institutions across society wanted from the king and he was prepared to give. They open a large window onto the politics, government, economy and society of England in the hinge period between the establishment of Magna Carta at the start of Henry's reign and the parliamentary state which was emerging at its end. This Project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, makes the rolls freely available to a wide audience while at the same time, in the Fine of the Month feature, providing regular comment on their historical interest. Users of the website are also invited to follow and contribute to the Fine Rolls blog.

THE TREASURY The Winchester Pipe Rolls, the annual accounts of the bishop's extensive estates, and the bishop's money were once stored at the palace gatehouse. The bishops derived their wealth from vast landholdings, one of the richest estates of medieval England. The yearly income and expenditure on the estates was recorded in great detail in the Pipe Rolls, an astonishing surviving series of documents covering the years from 1208-9 until 1710-11.

The many thousands of surviving medieval manorial accounts (sometimes known as compotus rolls and in their enrolled form as Pipe Rolls) contain all the information necessary for the precise calculation of the yields of specified crops, on named demesne farms, in dated years. Each account enumerates the cash and stock received and expended on a single demesne farm managed by or on behalf of a manorial lord over the course of an agricultural year, usually from Michaelmas (29 September) to Michaelmas. Typically, each account records the amount of grain (both threshed and as yet un-threshed) received from the previous year's harvest and the quantity of seed sown in preparation for the next harvest (see 'Woodhay 1254-5 grange account'). The information is hand-written on parchment in abbreviated Latin using Roman numerals and the form of the entries is usually formulaic so that with a little practice they are not difficult to interpret. The following extract recording the amounts of barley (Ordeum) received and expended in 1378-9 on the Battle Abbey manor of Alciston in East Sussex (East Sussex Record Office, SAS/G44/34) is an example of one of the more enigmatic types of entry that can be encountered.

Throughout the siege, attacks were made on the walls, but each one was repulsed. The Genoese troops, led by commander Guglielmo Embriaco, had previously dismantled the ships in which the Genoeses came to the Holy Land; Embriaco, using the ship's wood, made some siege towers. These were rolled up to the walls on the night of July 14 much to the surprise and concern of the garrison. On the morning of July 15, Godfrey's tower reached his section of the walls near the northeast corner gate, and according to the Gesta two Flemish knights from Tournai named Lethalde and Engelbert were the first to cross into the city, followed by Godfrey, his brother Eustace, Tancred, and their men. Raymond's tower was at first stopped by a ditch, but as the other crusaders had already entered, the Muslim guarding the gate surrende