Until 1483 the rolls recorded parliamentary proceedings (petitions, bills and answers, both public and private) which formed the basis of Acts of Parliament, but seldom the statutes themselves.
[2] Until 1850, a paper draft was brought into the House in which the bill started; after the committee stage there the bill was inscribed on a parchment roll and this parchment was then passed to the other House which could introduce amendments.
The original bill was never re-written and knives were used to scrape away the script from the top surface of the rolls, before new text was added.
[3] The rolls for 1272–1503 were first published in the eighteenth century, as Rotuli Parliamentorum; ut et Petitiones, et Placita in Parliamento (London, 1767–77), under the general editorship of John Strachey.
A modern CD-ROM edition has been supported by the Leverhulme Trust, as The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England.