Catalogue description Palace Court: Plaint Books

Books briefly recording all actions or plaints brought to the Palace Court, under headings for the sitting days. The books show how many and what cases were brought to the court, including the large proportion which were not determined there or were subsequently removed to a superior court. Each entry is of a single line, noting the name of the person making the plaint, the person against whom it was made, the type of case (usually debt), and the sum involved.

The plaints seem to have been recorded as they were received, and until about 1800 each sitting day sequence of entries is followed by a 'pye' of the plaints upon which the writs or precepts of capias, issued by the prothonotary, were returned at the next session but one, two weeks later; that is, an index of the complainants at that session whose opponents returned the writs of capias. They include only a fraction of the number of those who brought plaints, and the later books in the series show, in an additional column, which writs were served and which were not; many were not. Many of the debts mentioned are of 99 shillings, to ensure that the sum fell under £5 and so could not be removed to a superior court by the defendant under a writ of habeas corpus, although much larger sums also regularly appear.

Some of the headings note that the pledges for prosecution of a suit were the (fictitious) John Doe and Richard Roe.

There are only four surviving volumes before 1703, but thereafter the series is apparently complete.

Most of the nineteenth-century volumes are unindexed.