TheHundred Rolls are acensus ofEngland and parts of what is nowWales taken in the late thirteenth century. Often considered an attempt to produce a secondDomesday Book, they are named after thehundreds by which most returns were recorded.
The Rolls include a survey of royal privileges taken in 1255, and the better known surveys of liberties andland ownership, taken in 1274–5 and 1279–80, respectively. The two main enquiries were commissioned byEdward I of England to record the adult population forjudicial andtaxation purposes. They also specify the services due from tenants tolords under thefeudal system of the time.
Many of the Rolls have been lost and others have been damaged, but a minority survives and is stored at theNational Archives inKew. Where they survive, they are a major source for the period. Those known in the early nineteenth century were published by theRecord Commission in 1812–18, while more recent discoveries are being collated by theUniversity of Sheffield.