Catalogue description Chancery: Petty Bag Office: Parliament Pawns

This series consists of the enrolments of writs of summons of peers to Parliament and writs of election to the House of Commons.

The documents concern peers spiritual and temporal, judges and legal officers of the Crown, sheriffs of counties who returned knights, the returning officers of some boroughs, the wardens of the Cinque Ports, the chancellors of the Duchy of Lancaster and county palatine of Chester, the Welsh county sheriffs, and from 1678 the bishops of Durham.

Following the Act of Union with Scotland in 1707 the proclamations summoning the Scottish peers were added. Similarly, following the Act of Union with Ireland in 1801, there are writs of summons of Irish peers.

Until 1541, and again after 1874, the writs were enrolled on the dorse of the Close Rolls: C 54