Catalogue description Chancery and Supreme Court of Judicature: Patent Rolls

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Details of C 66
Reference: C 66
Title: Chancery and Supreme Court of Judicature: Patent Rolls
Description:

Letters patent were letters issued open or 'patent' expressing the sovereign's will on a variety of matters of public interest, sealed with the sovereign's great seal pendent. The patent rolls record the issue of letters patent from the reign of King John until the present day. There are gaps in the series where some rolls have been lost. For example, the rolls for 23 and 24 Henry III are known already to have been lost by 1381.

Entries on the rolls are of a very diverse nature, referring to the royal prerogative, revenue, the different branches of the judicature, treaties, truces, correspondence and negotiations with foreign princes and states, letters of protection, of credence and of safe-conduct, and the appointments and powers of ambassadors.

There are also grants and confirmations of liberties, offices, privileges, lands and wardships, both to public bodies and to private individuals; charters of incorporation; licences for the election of bishops and other ecclesiastics; restitutions of temporalities; presentations to livings; creations of nobility and baronetcy; special and general pardons; special liveries; licences and pardons for alienation; Crown leases; and licences in mortmain. After 1516 grants of the kind previously made by royal charters were made by letters patent.

Between 1645 and Charles II's accession in 1660 there are only six patent rolls. It is probable that the letters patent issued in the unrepresented years were never enrolled. Letters patent were much reduced in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as the kind of instruments produced thereby became obsolete or their administration passed to other bodies. The use of the great seal was much restricted, and often replaced by alternative devices.

From 1702 the contents of the rolls are mostly grants of offices and pensions, creations of nobility, and letters patent of inventions and denization. There are also some early commissions of bankruptcy. Letters of denization were entered on the patent rolls until 1844, when responsibility passed to the Home Office although a few appear subsequently.

Before, and after, the existence of the Court of Wards and Liveries, grants for the custody of the persons and estates of idiots and lunatics were enrolled on the patent rolls. Letters patent for inventions were also enrolled there until 1853. After that date they were administered by a separate Patent Office. The inventions had accounted for the bulk of letters patent, and their removal reduced the rolls to three to five per year instead of thirty.

Commissions of all kinds may be found on the dorse of the rolls, including commissions of array, of musters, of lords lieutenant of counties, of justices of the peace, of oyer and terminer, and of sewers, as well as special commissions of various kinds. The practice of enrolling the commissions of the peace, of oyer and terminer, of sewers and of gaol delivery was spasmodic from the 1530s, discontinued after 1564, and not resumed until 1594. They finally cease to appear about 1665. Proclamations are entered on the dorse of patent rolls until 1896; thereafter they appear on the last patent roll for each year.

Palmer's indexes, IND 1/17276- IND 1/ 17428, include calendars and miscellaneous references to selected patent rolls.

Digital images of some of the unpublished finding aids in series C 274 are available through the Anglo-American Legal Tradition website. Please note that The National Archives is not responsible for this website or its content.

Date: 1201-2012
Arrangement:

Patent rolls were made up by the regnal year. Within it, parts were created to make roughly uniform sized rolls. Often there is no chronological arrangement of parts, or of entries within parts.

From the thirteenth century, it became customary to save portions of rolls for particular subjects, such as confirmations, commissions or pardons. The rolls contain omissions, duplications, and examples of instruments enrolled in the wrong series. Marginalia may explain administrative problems and corrections. Frequently membranes are not numbered.

Related material:

Additional finding aid: ZBOX 1/115

Original calendars and indexes to the patent rolls, in the form of brief notes of enrolments, kept year by year, are in: C 274

Original letters patent are in: E 313

See also the Special Collections, Ancient Petitions, in: SC 8

Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English and Latin
Physical description: 5790 rolls and volumes
Access conditions: Open
Custodial history: Up to the end of the reign of Edward IV, the patent rolls were kept in the Tower of London, the principal repository for the records of Chancery. However, a second repository gradually came into use in the chapel of the house in Chancery Lane which formed the residence of the Master of the Rolls. By the late seventeenth century there was a rule that patent rolls should be delivered to the Rolls Chapel three years after they were made up, although deliveries were frequently late. The patent rolls from the reigns of John to Edward IV were delivered to the Public Record Office under a warrant of June 1856. Since then transmissions have been made irregularly.
Accruals: Series is accruing
Publication note:

A Latin transcript of the patent rolls for the reign of King John was published as Rotuli Litterarum Patentium in Turri Londonensi asservati, 1201-1216 (Record Commission, 1835). A Latin transcript of the patent rolls from 1216 to 1232 was published as Patent Rolls of the Reign of Henry III (2 vols, HMSO, 1901-3). An English calendar of the patent rolls from 1232 to 1582 was published as Calendar of the Patent Rolls (HMSO, 1906-). This series is continuing. Patent rolls for the reign of Henry VIII are among those records calendared in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII (HMSO, 1864-1932). For a detailed analysis of the engrossment of letters patent, see Sir Henry Maxwell-Lyte, Historical Notes on the Use of the Great Seal of England (HMSO, 1926).

Administrative / biographical background:

A complex procedure culminated in the making up (engrossment) of a letter patent, bearing largely on activities in the Signet Office and Privy Seal Office, the administrators of the sovereign's lesser seals below the great seal.

There were specific offices and officials of Chancery that from time to time engrossed letters patent. These included the Petty Bag Office, the clerk of the Crown in Chancery, the clerk of the Presentations, the clerk of the Custodies of Lunatics and Idiots, and the Six Clerks.

The enrolment of letters patent was under the jurisdiction of the master of the rolls, with three and later six clerks under him, with an office known as the Six Clerks Office. From the sixteenth century one was known as the Riding Clerk, because he accompanied the lord chancellor. His was the chief responsibility for enrolments.

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