Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.
This data draws, from London's only surviving medieval Sheriffs’ Court roll, on all court session dates, litigants’ surnames (sometimes with occupation or location of residence), litigants’ dispute types, and individual court roll entry types. It adds to the original data tagging of entries by case, so as that all entries pertaining to any one case may be collated and court process and procedure may be studied, and tagging of cases involving female litigants, so that female court usage may be studied. Only court roll entries for appointment of attorney have been excluded from data collection, as these were not explicitly part of the litigation process. The study of cases by writ-type, e.g. frequency of debt cases or debt cases involving women, also has potential socio-economic value. This data may prove of exceptional importance in the study of medieval women, due to the relative frequency with which female litigants, a typically under-represented group, are recorded as having appeared before the Sheriffs' Court.
Main Topics:
This data is a detailed index of entries and cases appearing on the City of London's only surviving medieval Sheriffs' Court roll; covering Trinity term, 1 July - 26 September, 1320. The Sheriffs' Court of London was the court of first resort for most medieval Londoners wishing to initiate a lawsuit in matters of trespass, debt, account, surety of peace ('de minis'), breach of contract and a variety of other principally 'civil' disputes. Although notably, property-ownership disputes, such as disseisin, were not heard in the Sheriffs' Court. The entries on the Sheriffs' Court roll pertain to cases at all stages of legal proceedings, from mesne process - the process of bringing a defendant before the court to join issue - to the pleading of cases before the court and ultimately to final process - whereby the judgments were executed. Original-document entries contain cursory to full details of the dispute (depending on the stage of legal proceedings), the litigants and sureties first and last names and, additionally, often persons occupation or location of residence. The data deposited here is a '.tab' file export of a MsAccess table, listing, for each court roll entry [excepting appointments of attorney]: a full document reference (including document membrane number); the date of the court session a which the entry was recorded; the surname/s of the plaintiff/s and defendant/s; the writ-type (indicating what kind of case it was, e.g. debt/trespass/contract/etc.); the entry type (e.g. order to arrest/essoin/pleaded case/judgment/etc); an indication of whether the case involved a female litigant; and, where applicable, further notes about entry. Each entry in the deposited data also contains a unique entry ID number and metadata field with a 'Case' number, allowing the collation of entries pertaining to each of the more than 500 individual lawsuits, or 'cases', recorded on the roll.
No sampling (total universe)
Transcription of existing materials
Compilation or synthesis of existing material
