Catalogue description Chancery and Lord Chancellor's Office: Clerk of the Presentations and successors: Petitions and Fiats for Presentations to Benefices

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Details of C 196
Reference: C 196
Title: Chancery and Lord Chancellor's Office: Clerk of the Presentations and successors: Petitions and Fiats for Presentations to Benefices
Description:

Petitions from potential incumbents for vacant livings in the lord chancellor's gift, together with the lord chancellor's signed fiat, details of fees owing to the secretary for ecclesiastical patronage at the Crown Office, and accounts of stamp duty.

Sometimes the annual value of the benefice is included. There are occasional notifications of dates fixed for institutions and inductions.

The petitions follow a set formula, stating that the benefice, in some cases schools or hospitals, 'being under value in the King's Books the presentation thereto belongs to your lordship in full right'. By the late nineteenth century they are printed. In general, they do not include personal information about the petitioner.
Date: 1763-1915
Related material:

Docket books of presentations are in C 247
Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Physical description: 140 bundle(s)
Unpublished finding aids:

An index to persons and places is available.

Administrative / biographical background:

Petitions to the lord chancellor for such benefices came to be prepared and written by the secretary of presentations who secured the approval or fiat of the lord chancellor and then sent them on to the clerk of the presentations, who was responsible for the issue of letters patent confirming all presentations and grants of benefices in the gift of the crown, except for bishoprics.

Such grants were recorded in the clerk's docket books and were enrolled on the patent rolls. The office of clerk of the presentations was abolished in 1833 and its duties passed to the secretary of presentations alone. In 1890 this post was abolished and the function passed to the Crown Office, which appointed its own secretary of presentations.

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