The patent rolls (Latin: Rotuli litterarum patentium) are a series of administrative records compiled in the English, British and United Kingdom Chancery, running from 1201 to the present day.
The patent rolls comprise a register of the letters patent issued by the Crown, and sealed "open" with the Great Seal pendent, expressing the sovereign's will on a wide range of matters of public interest, including – but not restricted to – grants of official positions, lands, commissions, privileges and pardons, issued both to individuals and to corporations. The rolls were started in the reign of King John, under the Chancellorship of Hubert Walter. The texts of letters patent were copied onto sheets of parchment, which were stitched together (head-to-tail) into long rolls to form a roll for each year.[1] As the volume of business grew, it became necessary to compile more than one roll for each year.
The most solemn grants of lands and privileges were issued, not as letters patent, but as charters, and were entered on the separate series of Charter Rolls. This series was discontinued in 1516, and all charters issued thereafter, mainly for grants of titles, were entered on the patent rolls.
The patent rolls run in an almost unbroken series from 1201 to the present day, with a small number of gaps, notably during the English Civil War and Interregnum (1641–1660). They are written almost exclusively in Latin in the early period. English was used occasionally in the 16th century, but only during the Commonwealth and after 1733 are all the entries in English.
The medieval rolls were originally stored in the Tower of London, which was the principal repository for Chancery archives. From the end of the 14th century, it became customary for the Master of the Rolls to house the more recent rolls, for convenience of access, in the Rolls Chapel, prior to their permanent transfer to the Tower. These transfers ceased at the end of the 15th century, and so the Rolls Chapel became the permanent place of deposit for all rolls from the reign of Richard III onwards.[2] The rolls from both sites were reunited at the newly built Public Record Office in the 1850s, and they are now held at the National Archives, Kew, London, where their class reference is C 66. As of 2016, there are 5,790 rolls in the series, dating from 1201 to 2012.[3]
Letters patent were also issued to grant monopolies over particular industries to individuals with new techniques, and these grants were likewise copied onto the patent rolls. The system became subject to abuse in the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I, and was eventually regulated by the Statute of Monopolies of 1624, the first statutory expression of English patent law. In 1853, responsibility for patents of invention was transferred to the newly established Patent Office, and they ceased to be registered on the patent rolls.
All the medieval and early modern rolls to 1625 have been published in some form, although editorial policies and formats have varied.
Commissions of gaol delivery and assize were entered on the backs of the rolls: these entries have generally not been included in the published editions.[5]
Hardy's 1835 edition of the rolls for 1201–1216 is available online in a non-searchable form.[6] The published texts and calendars from 1216 to 1452 have been made available online in a fully searchable form by the University of Iowa.[7]