PRAESTITA

The records are mostly account rolls of varying sizes, sometimes with later annotations reflecting the accounting process. They generally note the sums which were provided as imprests, who provided them, for example the keeper of the Wardrobe or the Treasurer and Chamberlains of the Exchequer, to whom they were given, and more or less detail as to what they were spent on. On occasion the warrants for individual payments are mentioned, for example a 'by bill of' a named clerk. Some were for diplomatic missions by individuals so consisted of relatively small sums (for example E 101/325/7), others were to military paymasters and involved money to pay large numbers of soldiers, such as those serving in the Low Countries in 1597 (E 101/329/13). Most are memoranda rolls recording many small imprests issued in a given chronological period, for example E 101/328/1; E 101/326/2.

The earliest prestita rolls, for the reign of John, are all in print: E 101/325/1 and 21 were published by the Record Commissioners; E 101/325/2, together with a fragment of a roll for 14 John now in the royal library of Belgium in Brussles, by the Pipe Roll Society. There is a single roll of the reign of Henry III (E 101/325/3), two very small ones for Edward I (E 101/619/44, 61), but otherwise very few more before the later years of the reign of Edward II. From 1343 to 1360, the first phase of the Hundred Years' War, there is virutally a regular series of annual rolls. There are a few very large rolls covering a number of years each for the reign of Richard II, but after 1403 there are very few at all, although there is one large roll for the reign of James I.

Prests, or imprests, were advances from royal funds for which the recipient later, sometimes much later, had to account in the Exchequer or one of the household finacial offices, the Chamber and the Wardrobe. Sometimes they were advances against fees or wages due to the recipent, or wages he was due to pay others on behalf of the king. Sometimes some form of general guarantee was required from the recipient.