Prior to Bracton, there was little use of stare decisis. This was because the rolls containing the court records were largely unavailable for scrutiny, even by judges sitting on the bench. Bracton's use of the rolls led to promulgation of recorded cases in the form of a gloss. This had been an important innovation based on the glossator's practice from the Continent. The availability of previous decisions, even if 20 or more years old proved to be of great interest to nearly all practitioners of the law. This led directly to the Year Books. A single unique decision did not make precedent. Custom began to be dictated when several cases of similar fact pattern were decided by different courts in the same way. This was the beginning of "stare decisis".