Catalogue description Records of the Chancery as a legal registry and repository
Reference: | Division within C |
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Title: | Records of the Chancery as a legal registry and repository |
Description: |
Miscellaneous records deposited in, or acquired by, Chancery:
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Date: | c 1100-1857 |
Held by: | The National Archives, Kew |
Legal status: | Public Record(s) |
Language: | English |
Physical description: | 16 series |
Administrative / biographical background: |
Throughout its history, Chancery's function as a central legal office and as a place where official records might be consulted led to its use as a residual place of deposit for documents which, for one reason or another, were thought to be worthy of permanent preservation in a public office, and which had no other obvious departmental home. Some items, such as the Book of Common Prayer, were deposited in Chancery as a matter of policy; others, such as the Windsor Forest court rolls, seem to have found their way into Chancery by accident. Many documents inherited by Chancery have no obvious legal or administrative connection with the court, and it is unclear whether they were deposited in Chancery for safe-keeping, or deposited temporarily by litigants in the course of legal proceedings and never reclaimed. Their precise provenance is therefore uncertain or unknown, and they may owe their survival simply to the conservative instincts of the court and its staff rather than to any policy of preservation. |
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