Catalogue description Duchy of Lancaster: Warrants

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Details of DL 12
Reference: DL 12
Title: Duchy of Lancaster: Warrants
Description:

The records in this series are warrants for the issue of instruments under the seals of the Duchy of Lancaster and the County Palatine of Lancaster (otherwise in PL, Chancery Administrative Records division), dating from the reign of Henry VII to George IV.

The warrant is the authorization necessary as a first stage for the issue of any of the instruments under the Duchy or Palatinate seals. There were, however, different authorities, warrants and procedures for different instruments. The warrants in this series are concerned with the most formal of instruments, mainly letters patent granting offices, lands and other rights, issued under the Duchy seal or, if the office or lands etc related to Lancashire, the seal of the County Palatine. This being the case the authorization for these grants was royal and the warrants in this series are mainly external to the Duchy and are of three types: sign manual bills, signet warrants and privy seal warrants .

The earliest bundles in this series from the reign of Henry VII, therefore, contain signed bills as well as signet warrants. They also contain some warrants under the privy seal. The privy seals are recognizable by the six slits seen in the parchment, created due to the method by which the document was folded and sealed.

The warrants in this series are for the most part in mixed bundles in terms of the instruments they are authorizing. There are some subject orientated bundles, however.
Date: c1485-1910
Arrangement:

All of the bundles, except DL 12/1, 19 and 44, were in Division XII in the list in the Deputy Keeper's report of 1869 (see DKR, XXX, app 1, pp 5-6). Division XII was reordered to its present arrangement in the later nineteenth century .
Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal status: Not Public Record(s)
Language: English and Latin
Creator:

Duchy of Lancaster, 1399-

Duchy of Lancaster, Court of Duchy Chamber, 1470-1875
Physical description: 51 bundle(s)
Immediate source of acquisition:

Deposited with the main deposit of the Duchy of Lancaster material in 1868.
Administrative / biographical background:

Bills under the sign manual are recognizable by the signature of the monarch. For most of the fifteenth century signed bills were actually petitions by subjects. By the time of the survival of warrants in this series, however, the signed bill would have been prepared by the Duchy office on a warrant of the chancellor of the Duchy. The preamble on the top of the bill still takes the form of a petition, followed by the form of the grant itself, usually in Latin. There may be an explanatory clause by the chancellor for the monarch, in English, and the bill will be signed by the chancellor, the clerk of the council of the Duchy (or his deputy) and occasionally the attorney general of the Duchy.

Warrants by letters under the monarch's signet are found enrolled in the Duchy enrolments from the fifteenth century. During the reigns of Henry V and Henry VI the 'signet of the eagle' was used for Duchy warrants. The ordinance of 1444 stated that there should always be a signet warrant, but this was by-passed to some extent.

Under the Signet and Privy Seal Act of 1535 (27 Hen VIII, c 11) most formal instruments under the Duchy (and other) seals were to pass the signet and the privy seal. From this date privy seal warrants are more usual.

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