This important volume brings together all the extant cartae baronum for the first time.

Due to the sheer level of detail within the returns, they are also a key source for those scholars who are interested in tracing the histories of individual honors and identifying comital, baronial and knightly landholders in twelfth-century England. They also laid the groundwork for a possible revision ofknightly quotas owing to the crown. The cartae were instrumental in their own day in confirming ligeance from rear tenants, and providing up-to-date lists of honorial knights from whom the king might collect such feudal incidents (wardships and reliefs as well as scutages and aids) as fell during a period of royal custody. The returns submitted by his tenants-in-chief are therefore indispensable records for the nature of tenurial lordship as it operated under King Henry II. Early in 1166, Henry II sent out orders via his sheriffs to all his tenants-in-chief, instructing them to send him returns (subsequently referred to as the cartae baronum) that listed the number of knights enfeoffed upon their estates in 1135 (when Henry I died) the number of knights they had enfeoffed since 1135 how many knights were charged on their demesne and the names of their knightly tenants.

Piperoll level 111