World History

12.

Writ Summoning Four Knights of the Shire.

1227. (Latin text in Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, II, 212, 213. Translation by the editor.)

The king to the sheriff of Cumberland, greeting. We command you that in your full county court you say to the knights and good men of your bailiwick that they elect from among themselves four of the more lawful and discreet knights, who are to be before us at Westminster, three weeks after the feast of St. Michael, for the whole county, for the purpose of there showing the complaint, if they have any, against you in regard to the articles contained in the charter of liberties granted to them; and you yourself are then to be there to show reason for the demand which you make against them. . . . And you are to have there the summoners and the names of the knights . . . and this writ, Witness the king at Northampton, the thirteenth day of August, the eleventh year, etc.

[There appear on the roll the names of thirty-five counties to which this writ was sent.]1

1 There were thirty-seven counties at this time. The names omitted on the roll were Westmoreland and Cornwall; yet Westmoreland was to have been represented at a meeting of eight counties called for this same business the year before. The omission of two names on the roll was probably due to a scribe’s carelessness.