Charter Roll

The Charter Roll is the administrative record created by the medieval office of the chancery that recorded all the charters issued by that office. In the medieval Kingdom of England, the first Charter Roll was started in 1199 under the Chancellorship of Hubert Walter. This was during the reign of King John of England, and the Roll was started in order to keep track of charters that had been issued by the government. Instead of keeping the records in a register or book form, they were written on sheets of parchment stitched together into long rolls to form a roll for each year.

The Charter Rolls for the years 1199 to 1216 were published as abbreviated Latin texts (in a near-facsimile of the manuscripts, employing a special "record type" typeface) by the Record Commission in 1837, in a large folio volume entitled Rotuli Chartarum in Turri Londinensi asservati, edited by T.D. Hardy. Calendars (summaries) of the rolls from 1226 to 1516 were published in six volumes by the Public Record Office between 1903 and 1927.