Catalogue description Chancery: Petty Bag Office: Files, Tower and Rolls Chapel Series, Corpus Cum Causa

A complex series of files broadly concerned with litigation.

The documents include writs of attachment, which brought defendants to court upon the common law side of Chancery, and writs sub pena which summoned equity defendants.

There are too many writs of habeas corpus cum causa and various types of the writ certiorari, some of which were concerned with Chancery's role in the release of prisoners, arrested goods, pleas in local courts and sureties of the peace. Also, warrants for replevin and increasing numbers of recognizances

The corpus cum causa files, after the more routine writs were moved elsewhere in the mid-fifteenth century, present a fund of detailed material for the history of Chancery, its relations with other courts of equal or inferior jurisdiction, with the country at large and occasionally with that borderline where politics impinge on day to day administration.

Most of these records were formerly included in C 47 and C 202

Earlier writs of attachment are in C 252

Earlier recognizances may be found in C 259