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

A collection of fiats, authorizations from the lord chancellor, to the clerk of the Crown in Chancery to supply instruments for a variety of purposes.

Most, in three of the five bundles, are intended to empower judicial sessions and magistrates. One relates entirely to the county palatinate of Durham from 1690 to 1873, the second to City of London sessions at the Guildhall in the early 1890s, and the third to special commissions of oyer and terminer (hear and determine), to operate chiefly in London and Middlesex in cases of murder or slaving offences outside the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century.

The other two bundles include fiats for commissions for charitable abuses, 1684-1803, and letters from the Home Office to the lord chancellor requesting him to implement the royal wish to appoint new custodes rotulorum for counties in England or Wales, 1837-1893.

From 1909 Lord Chancellor's Office, Clerk of the Crown