Catalogue description ALL COURTS: COMPOSITE RECORDS

The ancient series of court rolls of the medieval borough, those of the Portmanmote/Great Court, Petty Court, and Petty Court of Recognizances, came to an end in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. There followed an interval of apparent confusion, and the emergence of the series of Composite Enrolments and Composite Court Books listed below seems to mark a new stage in a prolonged period of experiment in record-keeping, of which not much earlier evidence has survived, apart from the General Court Register drawn up c.1435 and recording, inter alia, the admission of free burgesses from 1415 (B.L. Add. MS 30,158). Though the series of Court Books now begins only in 1486, Nathaniel Bacon's Annalls of Ipswiche' furnish evidence that he had access to other volumes for the period 1431-1486 which are no longer extant.