Catalogue description Chancery and Lord Chancellor's Office: Crown Office: Circuit Fiats

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Details of C 189
Reference: C 189
Title: Chancery and Lord Chancellor's Office: Crown Office: Circuit Fiats
Description:

This series is a collection of fiats (authorisations) signed by the lord chancellor as keeper of the great seal to secure commissions for assizes, and of royal warrants nominating judges to go on circuit.

The commissioners range from the lord chancellor himself to county magistrates, with serjeants-at-law and king's counsel prominent. The commission was to 'hear and determine' (oyer and terminer) indictments presented to the assizes, and to clear the gaol (gaol delivery).

The special circuit fiats relate to trials of urgent public concern such as those involving riots, and to the bringing forward of assizes in counties where the number of indictments was multiplying.
Date: 1689-1900
Arrangement:

The documents are arranged by assize term.
Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English and Latin
Physical description: 24 files and volumes
Custodial history: In 1839, while in the Crown Office in Chancery, the records were described as 'fiats from the Lord High Chancellor for the several circuit commissions from 1705 to the present time', included in '11 books containing the warrants appointing the serjeants and others to the several circuits'. In 1909 they were due for transfer from the Crown Office to the Public Record Office in twenty volumes from 1705 to 1900, but there seems to have been a delay in their move until 1912. Some special fiats were received in 1973.
Publication note:

For a detailed analysis, see J S Cockburn, A History of English Assizes 1558-1714 (Cambridge Studies in English Legal History, Cambridge, 1972).
Administrative / biographical background:

Two visitations a year by the assizes had been the rule since the fifteenth century, except for the North of England, which was visited once a year until the early nineteenth century.

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