[2][3] The first surviving Close Roll was started in 1204 (in the reign of King John), under the Chancellorship of Hubert Walter, though the actual practice may reach back to 1200, or even before.
[4] Indeed, in the early 13th century perhaps the bulk of executive action ran via instructions from Chancery to local sheriffs, and was recorded in the Rolls.
[6] Over time, however, as new document series emerged, the scope of the Close Rolls narrowed; and after 1533 their contents consisted solely of copies of private deeds and awards of enclosure, and the like.
[13] The Close Rolls for the years 1204 to 1227 were published as abbreviated Latin texts (in a near-facsimile of the manuscripts, employing a special "record type" font) by the Record Commission, edited by T. D. Hardy, in 1833 and 1844, in two large folio volumes entitled Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum in Turri Londinensi asservati.
Those for the years 1227 to 1272 were published by the Public Record Office between 1902 and 1938, with extended Latin texts, in fourteen volumes entitled Close Rolls, of which eleven were edited by W. H.