The Period of Constitution Making
of the English secretarial department we owe this mag-
nificent set of Chancery enrolments which furnishes
from the beginning of the thirteenth century an unbroken
record of administration such as is to be found in no other
country in Europe. The Anglo-Norman and Angevin
Chancery was leading Europe, for Anglo-Norman and
Angevin kings were leading Europe in nearly everything
which related to centralisation and governmental com-
petence. It was the time of the English kings' greatest
power.1
Till the end of Henry II.'s reign the Chancery was
clearly a part of the royal household, still travelled with
the king. But with the exaltation of the Chancellor's
office in the years following there were longer and longer
absences of the Chancellor and his staff from the travelling
household; with its increased size and functions the Chan-
cery was inevitably becoming more stationary and less
personal to the king; it was becoming an organised office
of state, it was "going out of court." In the thirteenth
century this process was favoured by the barons in their
rivalry with the king, for they could more easily control
a department thus separated from personal contact with
him. But Henry III. felt this situation and resented it,
and on this point there arose a long strife between king
close rolls also comprise truces, treaties, diplomatic correspondence, and
documents concerning the revenue, judicature, and other branches of the
English government. Royal charters and letters patent, though they often
resemble each other as to their contents, are distinguished from each other
as regards their form. The charters are addressed 'to the archbishops,
bishops, abbots, priors, earls, barons/ etc., and are executed in the pres-
ence of various witnesses; whereas letters patent are addressed 'to all to
whom these presents shall come,' and are usually witnessed by the king
himself. . . . Letters patent were so called because they were delivered
open, with the great seal pendant at the bottom; but in this respect they
do not differ from charters. Letters close . . . were mainly royal man-
dates addressed to one individual or more; therefore they were closed and
sealed up on the outside "—Gross. Sources and Literature of English His-
tory, pp. 463, 464. The letters close are of the most value to the historian.
They contain the greatest variety of information, telling directly much
about government, especially royal policy with respect to local government
(see below, pp. 325, 326), and more or less indirectly about economic,
social, and other phases of the people's life.
1 See above, pp. 263, 264, 268.