Rolls Series

The Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages (Latin: Rerum Britannicarum medii aevi scriptores), widely known as the Rolls Series, is a major collection of British and Irish historical materials and primary sources published as 99 works in 253 volumes between 1858 and 1911. Almost all the great medieval English chronicles were included: most existing editions, published by scholars of the 17th and 18th centuries, were considered to be unsatisfactory. The scope was also extended to include legendary, folklore and hagiographical materials, and archival records and legal tracts. The series was government-funded, and takes its unofficial name from the fact that its volumes were published "by the authority of Her Majesty's Treasury, under the direction of the Master of the Rolls", who was the official custodian of the records of the Court of Chancery and other courts, and nominal head of the Public Record Office.

The publication of the series was undertaken by the British Government in accordance with a scheme submitted in 1857 by the Master of the Rolls, then Sir John Romilly. A previous undertaking of the same kind, the Monumenta Historica Britannica, had failed after the publication of the first volume (1036 folio pages, London, 1848). The principal editor, Henry Petrie had died, and its form was cumbrous. Representations were made by Joseph Stevenson, and the scheme of 1857 was the direct outcome of this appeal. Alongside Romilly and Stevenson, another key figure in shaping the direction of the project in its early years was Thomas Duffus Hardy, who served as Deputy Keeper of the Public Records from 1861 to 1878. The first two volumes were published in February 1858: they were the first volume of Stevenson's own edition of the Historia Ecclesie Abbendonensis, a 12th-century chronicle written at Abingdon Abbey (the second and final volume appeared a few months later); and F. C. Hingeston's edition of John Capgrave's fifteenth-century Historia de Illustribus Henricis. Hingeston's work was slapdash, and reviews were unfavourable.

...
Wikipedia