The Irish Parliament Rolls of the Fifteenth Century

Abstract

T HE recent appearance of the fourth volume in the Irish Record Office series of the Early Statutes of Ireland completes the publication of the so-called statute rolls to the end of the reign of Edward IV.' We may have to wait some years for the appearance of its successor, but in the meantime Dr. D. B. Quinn has brought together all the accessible information, and a good part of the material, relating to the projected and actual legislation of the Irish parliament during the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII.2 While therefore the student of Irish parliamentary history has yet to expect the integral publication of the rolls of Richard III and his successors and, we may add, a collection of parliamentary documents from other sources which the Irish Manuscripts Commission have in hand, he has already at his command by far the greater part of the fifteenth-century material he can ever hope to see in print. It is not then an inappropriate moment at which to assess the contribution this material may make to the history of Ireland and, in particular, to the history of the Irish parliament. In the first place a few words may not be amiss on the title given to the 'statute rolls' from which, with but inconsiderable exceptions, the text of the series from the year 1427 is taken. These rolls are more properly to be described as the rolls of parliament without any qualification. They were known as such not only to contemporaries but certainly as recently as the seventeenth century. Contemporary usage is made clear in a passage in the roll of 27 Henry VI which contains the protestation of the commons when they presented John Chever as their speaker: since it is there stated that the protestation was