EPOCH Tutorials - Reading Resistance: A Practical Guide to Working with The National Archives Ancient Petitions Collection (SC 8)

Josh Coulthard | Edge Hill University

Intrigued by Issue 20's article on the politics of Plantagenet petitions? Read on for a practical guide to working with petitions in your own research.

Step 1 – Find a petition

Firstly, follow the link to the National Archives search bar or follow this link to the SC 8 catalogue.

The National Archives Discovery Search Bar (Josh Coulthard)

From here, you can search for any term that you believe might appear in the petition description. Some examples might include ‘wife’, ‘rebel’ or ‘York’. To see only results from SC 8, select Special Collections, Available for Download, and set the date range to around 1200 to 1600 or a smaller date range if you want something more specific. 

Image 2: Caption:

 Results for Lancashire in SC 8 (Josh Coulthard)

Once you have found one that piques your interest, check out its calendar description, which should provide most of the details you need.

Catalogue description for SC 8/8/362 (Josh Coulthard)

Step 2 - See if it has been transcribed already (if so, skip to step 4) 

In the publication note at the bottom of the page, check whether the petition has been published before and whether it is as a summary, full edition, or translation. Sometimes a petition will have already been transcribed, but this does not appear on TNA’s catalogue – for example, SC 8/80/3952 has been transcribed and published in Early Common Petitions, but this is not mentioned on TNA’s catalogue. Some other places to check for publication include, Sayles, Documents on the Affairs of Ireland before the King’s Bench, Petitions from Lincolnshire, and the Parliament Rolls (available both online and in print). 

Author transcribing petition by hand (Josh Coulthard)

Step 3 - Transcribe it 

Firstly, check what language your petition is in; the vast majority should be in Old French. However, some of the fifteenth-century petitions may be in Middle English. Mercifully, Old French has many fewer abbreviations than Latin, and petitions contain large, formulaic chunks. 

A handy guide to palaeography with a list of resources can be found here.

Step 4 – Translate it (if already translated, skip to step 5) 

Once you have transcribed your petition, you will need to translate it. If you have never studied Old French, then Einhorn’s Old French Handbook is a useful guide to learning the grammar of Old French. The Anglo-Norman Dictionary provides translations for many of the unique spellings found in Anglo-Norman. 

Anglo-Norman Dictionary results for lei (Josh Coulthard)

Step 5 – Check for secondary scholarship mentioning your petition (if none can be found – congratulations, you have found something new!)

With over 17,000 documents and a relatively small field of historiography, there is a good chance that your document has not previously been studied. Still, it is worth checking to see if anyone else has already referenced your petition (check out the further reading for places to start).

Ormrod, Women in Parliament in Later Medieval England (Palgrave MacMillan)

Step 6 – Check for references to cases which may be the same as your petitions’ in other documents 

For this step you will want to check the various calendars of English legal documents such as the Calendars of Patent Rolls, Inquests Post-Mortem and Close Rolls.

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Further Reading and Resources for Petitions 

• Links to various calendars of other documents

• Chris Given-Wilson, Paul Brand, Seymour Phillips, Mark Ormrod, Geoffrey Martin, Anne Curry and Rosemary Horrox eds., The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England 1275-1504 16 vols (Boydell and Brewer, 2005). 

• G.O. Sayles ed., Documents on the Affairs of Ireland Before the King’s Council (Stationary Office for the Irish Manuscripts Commission, 1979). 

• Gwilym Dodd and Alison K. McHardy eds., Petitions from Lincolnshire 1200-1500 (Lincoln Record Society/Boydell and Brewer, 2020).

• Gwilym Dodd, 'Writing Wrongs: The Drafting of Supplications to the Crown in Later Fourteenth-Century England', Medium Ævum 80 (2011), 217-246. 

• Philomena Connolly, 'Irish Material in the Class of Ancient Petitions (SC8) in the Public Record Office, London', Analecta Hibernica 34 (1987), 3-106.

• W. Mark Ormrod, Helen Killick and Phil Bradford eds. Early Common Petitions in the English Parliament, c.1290–c.1420, Camden Fifth Series, Series Vol. 52 (Cambridge University Press, 2017).

• William Rees, Calendar of Ancient Petitions Relating to Wales Thirteenth to Sixteenth Century (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1975). 

Josh Coulthard is a doctoral candidate at Edge Hill University. His research focuses on the political culture of the insular Plantagenet World between 1200 and 1400; he is especially interested in the intersection between political legitimacy and identity. He is also the co-convenor of the North West Medieval Studies Postgrad Reading Group.

Bluesky: @Joshcoulthard.bsky.social