C 2331617-1883Chancery: Patent Office and Patent Office: Docket Books of Warrants for the Great Seal
These docket books contain summaries of such warrants requiring the great seal as were allocated to the clerk of the letters patent in Chancery.
The officer's duty was to prepare for the great seal and docket certain civil appointments, Crown grants, charters, pensions, licences, monopolies, contracts, inventions (until 1852), royal pardons 'in usual form' and, until 1844, denizations.
By the nineteenth century patents for inventions predominate in the docket books, and even after 1852, when the great seal ceased to be required for them, extensions of previously granted patents were docketed until 1883. There is a gap in the records during the Interregnum.