Catalogue description Records of the Petty Bag Office

The clerks of the Petty Bag are first mentioned in the Chancery ordinances of 1388, when it is clear that their office was already well established, with primacy amongst the second grade of clerks and a range of duties which were evidently thought too obvious to need description. Their name referred, apparently, to their practice of keeping the writs and returns on matters immediately concerning the Crown in a little bag (parva baga or petit bag) rather than in a hamper like the court's financial records.

The number of clerks of the Petty Bag in 1388 was not stated, but throughout their perceptible history there were three, with a modest body of under-clerks as well. The clerks were appointed by the master of the rolls until the early seventeenth century, when the right of appointment reverted to the Crown. Their ranks and staff seem not to have swollen in the fashion of many other Chancery offices, possibly because much of their business was on behalf of the Crown and was not therefore as susceptible to inflated and reduplicative fees as business subsidised by private litigants. In fact their business dwindled with the abolition of feudal tenures in 1660, although it rose again in subsequent years with the growth of work in connection with the registration of attorneys, and with patents for inventions.

In 1848, despite the transfer to the Petty Bag Office in 1835 of the remaining work of the cursitors, the number of clerks was reduced formally from three to one. This clerk, with two under-clerks, was transferred to the Supreme Court of Judicature in 1875, before the post was finally abolished in 1889.

The duties of the clerks of the Petty Bag were very varied, as their surviving records attest, and indeed they changed over the course of time; broadly speaking, they executed the administrative procedures on Crown business and on the common law side of Chancery, together with any other administrative business which fell to Chancery from time to time.

The clerks

• issued (until 1660, when they became obsolete) the various writs arising from feudal tenure (most commonly, the writ diem clausit extremum on the death of a tenant-in-chief) and processed the returns, copying them when relevant to the Exchequer for the levying of incidents;
• made out all writs of summons to Parliament and writs of congé d'élire for the electing of archbishops and bishops, with the subsequent royal assents, patents of assistance and restitution of temporalities, and patents for the appointment of collectors of customs, searchers, and tidewaiters;
• made out attachments of privilege, and drew up the declarations and pleadings for and against Chancery officers and other privileged persons, and also on traverses of escheats and lunacies;
• issued the main body of Chancery writs in administrative and common law matters;
• drew up all proceedings on writs of scire facias and on recognisances and bonds enrolled in Chancery;
• made out commissions to inquire into lands purchased by aliens, given to superstitious (i.e. religious) uses, or which were derelict by the sea, as well as all estates which escheated or were forfeited to the Crown;
• made out writs of certiorari for removing into Chancery acts of Parliament and other records (which were then filed in the Petty Bag Office for the information of the court);
• administered the oaths to solicitors and various officers of the Court of Chancery, and enrolled their admissions;
• enrolled surrenders of offices and (until 1835) the specifications of patent inventions.

At the time of the enactment of the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1873 the work of the Petty Bag Office had greatly diminished and its clerk, in 1874, candidly admitted that 'the Petty Bag Office, as it is, is of small usefulness to the public'.

Under the Great Seal (Offices) Act of 1874, the Treasury was given power, with the concurrence of the lord chancellor and the master of the rolls, to abolish the office of clerk of the Petty Bag. The act also transferred all the duties and powers of the clerk of the Petty Bag relating to any writs or letters patent passed under the great seal to the clerk of the crown in Chancery.

It was also provided that, upon the abolition of the office of clerk of the Petty Bag, all the duties and powers he had taken over from the cursitors of the court of Chancery in 1836 and all his duties and powers with respect to the admission of solicitors, the administering of oaths, the attendance with records, the sealing and issuing of documents or writs under the Chancery common seal, and other matters relating to the administration of justice, should be vested in any such officer of the Supreme Court of Judicature as was directed by rule of court.

The Supreme Court of Judicature (Officers) Act of 1879 finally provided for the abolition of the office of clerk of the Petty Bag on next vacancy. This took effect in 1889 when the residual work of the post passed to the Crown Office of the Central Office of the Supreme Court.