Note 12 — PART II HISTORICAL STUDIES (continued 2)

I have also discovered, in MS., a 'fine' of some ten or twelve years earlier, most valuable for comparison with those which I have here discussed. We have there a similar charter of confirmation, in which the king describes the transaction as 'finem illum quem Abbas Willelmus de Hulmo fecit coram me',12 and the document confirmed, moreover, describes itself as a 'finis' between the Abbot of Holme and William and Henry de Neville, brothers.13 But the form is very different from that of the true fine, which is fully developed in our example of 1175. The Holme 'fine' may be safely assigned to March 1163-March 1166,14 and as it was 'made' at Westminster, it not improbably belongs to the series of proceedings there circ. March 8, 1163. It may fairly be presumed that if, at the date of this fine, the fully developed form existed it would have been duly employed at Westminster on this occasion. We may therefore safely assert, at least, that it came into use between the dates of these two transactions.