Catalogue description Signet Office: Warrants for King's Bills, Series I

These warrants for king's bills consist mainly of brief directions, usually under the royal sign manual, countersigned by a secretary of state or, if the business was financial, the Treasury commissioners.

The series contains examples of warrants which went directly from the secretary of state to the clerks of the signet without the intervention of the law officers. These include:

• ecclesiastical presentations in the gift of the crown
• translations to English archbishoprics and bishoprics
• authorisations to prepare bills for the congé d'élire
• the royal assent to an election
• the restitution of temporalities
• the appointment of almsmen in royal foundations.

The remaining documents mostly comprise warrants for expenditure by such arms of government as the Navy and the Ordnance, warrants for pensions and warrants for allowances, such as were paid to representatives on diplomatic missions.

There are also a few warrants from the seventeenth century for denizations and appointments to minor office and a number of notifications of caveat from the same period.

In 1852 Signet Office