The project formally commenced on 1 October 2008 when Dr Guilhem Pépin took up his position as research assistant at the University of Oxford. Since that time, he has been involved in preparatory work, and has begun calendaring the remaining unpublished rolls of Edward II’s reign (1318 -1327).

On the 1 December 2008, Dr Simon Harris commenced his employment as a research assistant at the School of History, University of Liverpool. He has also been involved in preparatory work, particularly in relation to the indexes, calendaring formulas and the production of the website. He has also begun work on the calendaring of the remaining Gascon Rolls of Edward II’s reign.

The investigators, Dr Malcolm Vale and Mr Paul Booth, have undertaken such tasks as confirming of the membership of the several project committees, the production of a style book for the editing process, exploring the possibilities for a French edition of the texts, and assisting the research assistants with their calendaring technique.

The Centre for Computing in the Humanities at King’s College London is co-ordinating the technical research development on the project and has so far focused on developing editing tools for the project researchers to use. The editing framework is now at a mature stage and we have already started to plan the structure of the digital edition.

As the editorial work develops we will proceed with the mounting of the work of the researchers as well as the digital images of the Gascon Rolls themselves. However, it is intended that the website will develop and expand over the course of the project both with the refinement of existing details and facilities, and with the introduction of new facilities. To this end, it will be regularly updated.

The original rolls are held at The National Archives (TNA). TNA is being funded through the AHRC grant to scan the images, and scanning is underway.