THE DUGDALE SOCIETY
The DUgdale Society, with the Master Of the Rolls as Presi- dent, is doing invaluable work in printing Warwickshire records. It has already published five _ volumes of the Stratford-on- Avon Corporation minutes as well as the Edgbaston parish regikters and other important documents. Its latest issue is Warwickshire Feet of Fines, Vol. I. (1195-1284), abstracted in the Record Office by Miss Ethel Stolus and edited by Mr. F. C. Wellstood, with an introduction and index by Mr. F. T. S. Houghton (Huniphrey Milford, 35s.). • A " fine " was a more or less fictitious suit instituted for the sake of placing the conveyance on record, and corresponded roughly to the modern system of land registration which exists in most countries except our own, where eompulsion is restricted to.Middlesex. A triple indenture was engrossed for each " fine" on a single parchment, which was then cut up. Each party retained one copy, and the third, written at right angles to the others on the " foot " of the " fine," was retained by the court. Thus these " feet of fines ." give details of -the landholders and their holdings which are of inestimable value to the historian and the genealogists. Nearly a thousand ..such documents, mostly for Warwickshire in. the thirteenth century, are abstracted and carefully indexed in this volume. The index of field-names is well worthy of study. It may be noted that Watling Street in the neighbourhood 'of-Mancetter was knoll! as " Merestrete," presumably with the sense of " boundary as in so-many-other eases. •
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