Many of the contributions to The Growth of Royal Government under Henry III grew out of papers presented at the Henry III Fine Rolls Project conference held at King's College London in 2012, with others solicited by the editors, David Crook and Louise J. Wilkinson, to round out the coverage of administrative developments in this important reign. Following a brief introduction, the first part of the book is headed “Records and Their Uses,” and begins with a contribution by David Carpenter, “Between Magna Carta and the Parliamentary State: The Fine Rolls of King III, 1216–72.” In this broad study, Carpenter first illustrates the huge increase in the size of the fine rolls during Henry's reign. Conversely, while there were far more fines under Henry III than was the case under his father, the average amount of those fines was much lower. Carpenter directly attributes this to the provisions and spirit of Magna Carta. The fine rolls also provide evidence of Henry's policy of distraining men to take up knighthood in the 1250s and are thus a highly valuable source for understanding the growing opposition to the crown.

In “The Form and Function of the Originalia Rolls,” Paul Dryborough explains that these rolls (National Archives [TNA] series E 371) consist of heavily abridged extracts from the fine rolls, and are Chancery rather than Exchequer documents. Essentially, this allowed review and correction of the fine rolls. Over time the originalia rolls also came to incorporate other material, particularly commissions to hold office, of continuing usefulness to historians.

Paul Brand and Tony K. Moore offer “The Fine Rolls of Henry III as a Source for the Legal Historian and “The Fine Rolls as Evidence for the Expansion of Royal Justice during the Reign of Henry III,” respectively. Brand touches on several uses for the fine rolls, most significantly in examining cases of redisseisin as established in the Provisions of Merton of 1236. Moore provides an analysis of the growing size of the plea rolls between 1194 and 1307, which expanded from a mere eight rotuli to 282 during this span. He further observes that after about 1250 most of the fines for legal writs either transferred cases from the local to the central courts or to initiated them there.

Beth Hartland, in “Administering the Irish Fines, 1199–1254: The English Chancery, the Dublin Exchequer and the Seeking of Favours,” explains why the medieval Irish Chancery never produced fine rolls, with fines instead being recorded on close and patent rolls, and how fines concerning Ireland were administered. Turning from Ireland to Scotland, Alice Taylor, using Haddington's transcripts, argues in “Auditing and Enrolment in Thirteenth-Century Scotland” that the auditing of Scottish accounts in the thirteenth century was not regularized either in terms of place or time, with different sheriffs accounting at different times at different places. Next, in “Imitation and Independence in Native Welsh Administrative Culture, c. 1180–1280,” Charles Insley notes that while there is certainly borrowing of English models by Welsh rulers in the thirteenth century, the introduction of the writ charter also offered new ways for these rulers to articulate their power. However, Welsh diplomatic also continued to contain native traditions with tools such as boundary clauses.

Nicholas Vincent's examination, “An Inventory of Gifts to King Henry III, 1234–5,” is based on TNA C 47/3/4/1, which contains gifts “both literally, and figuratively, beyond price” (135). These gifts from such exalted figures as Frederick II and the master of the Temple in Jerusalem, served both diplomatic and religious purposes. Moreover, Vincent demonstrates the conscious interplay between the king's itinerary and the cycle of gift giving.

The second section of the book is headed “Government in Action.” Nick Barrett takes up financial administration during the minority of Henry III in “Another Fine Mess: Evidence for the Resumption of Exchequer Authority in the Minority of Henry III.” Drawing extensively on excerpts from the fine rolls, Barrett demonstrates just how the Chancery and Exchequer worked in tandem to restore administrative efficiency in this difficult period.

Crook contributes “Roger of Wendover, Prior of Belvoir, and the Implementation of the Charter of the Forest, 1225–7,” in which he argues for a reconsideration of the date at which Wendover became prior, suggesting dates of c. 1215–26 for his period of office. The Charter of the Forest and the perambulations of the forest associated with it were matters of considerable concern to Wendover both as prior and chronicler.

Adrian Jobson, turns to a later part of the reign of Henry III in “Royal Government and Administration in Post-Evesham England, 1265–70.” Efforts to restore the Exchequer, law courts, and Chancery were undertaken almost immediately, with enrollments found in Chancery rolls within four days of the battle of Evesham. Restoring the legal system was a slower affair, and most difficult of all was restoring royal finances, as the process of auditing shrieval accounts and addressing old debt proved challenging.

In “The Church and the King: Canon Law and Kingship in England, 1257–61,” Philippa Hoskin argues that although the statutes developed in a series of church councils in these years failed to gain the endorsement of Pope Urban, they nonetheless illustrate how cooperation between the bishops and Montfordian barons arose in 1264.

Wilkinson, makes the case for “Women in English Local Government: Sheriffs, Castellans and Foresters.” Although few thirteenth-century noblewomen rose to the stature of Nicolaa de la Haye, sometime castellan and sheriff of Lincoln, Wilkinson demonstrates that many women at least controlled the transmission of offices such as sheriff, castellan, and forester to male relatives, generally husbands or sons, and not infrequently were asked to exercise these offices either jointly or on their own.

The volume concludes with an investigation of the origins of the office of escheator by Scott L. Waugh, who notes that feudal incidents were “renewable resources,” and thus particularly valuable to chronically cash-strapped king like Henry III. He traces the experimentation and slow and fitful transition from sheriffs to escheators, from the early days of the minority to the full emergence of the escheator as a fully formed office in the mid 1240s.