Kent Records Society Notice

The Register of Daniel Rough. Transcribed and edited by K. M. Elisabeth Murray, M.A., B.Litt., F.R.Hist.S. Records Branch, 1944.

This notice must necessarily be brief, as Volume XVI of Kent Records, The Register of Daniel Rough, was not published in time for it to be reviewed at length in the present volume of Archaeologia Cantiana.

Daniel Rough was the Town Clerk of New Romney in the reign of Edward III, and his Register, which is preserved in the Library of St. Catharine's College, Cambridge, covers the period from 1353 to 1380. The entries in the Register range over a wide variety of topics and show the diversity of the business with which the 14th century Bailiff, Jurats and Barons of New Romney concerned themselves. In addition to the Register proper, the volume contains an Anglo-French version of the Custumal, instructions for auditing manorial accounts, and a collection of precedents for legal and other documents. Most of the entries are in Anglo-French or Latin, but the Editor has prefixed to each an adequate explanatory note in English.

The Records Branch were fortunate in obtaining the services of Miss K. E. M. Murray, the author of The Constitutional History of the Cinque Ports, as special editor of the volume. The editing could not have been in better hands. Her Introduction, which sets the matters recorded in the Register against the wider background of the history of the 14th century town and port to which they belong, is of particular interest.

It is hoped to include a fuller review of Rough's Register in volume LVII of Archaeologia Cantiana.