Catalogue description Exchequer: King's Remembrancer: Records of the Commissions on Fees, James I and Charles I

This series contains the core surviving archive of the last of James I's commissions on fees and of the several commissions on fees appointed under Charles I (1625-49). The House of Commons had concerned itself with fees imposed by officials since the reign of Elizabeth (1558-1603), in response to agitation against corruption and inefficiency. The commissions investigated fees taken by named officials holding named offices, the records of which are thus useful in providing a directory of the civil service of the day, including under-clerks who, since they received no fee from the Crown, may not be otherwise recorded. The commissions also provide crucial evidence of the mode of operation of particular courts and institutions, both of central and of local government.

The series includes not only the office records of the commissions, and of several sub-commissions, especially that for Devon, but also numerous returns, informations and pleadings concerning fees taken by royal officers for named processes at both central and local level, and some of the original records submitted in evidence by particular offices and institutions. Bodies for which records of the commissioners' investigations survive include the central courts of law; the clerks of assize and of the peace; revenue raising officers including sheriffs and the customs administration; Welsh courts; and prisons. There are returns from livery companies in London and Exeter; of borough courts and administration; of ecclesiastical courts and administration; and returns from individual parishes, particularly in London, concerning fees taken. These include detailed returns of burial fees for named individuals.

The activities of the commissioners, and the range of their investigations, were recorded in minute books, extant from 1627 to 1636. Some investigations into suspected abuse generated narrative records, including answers of the office hiolders to the allegations lodged against them, and depositions and statements of evidence. Partly in response to periodic royal interest, the commissioners generated reports and analyses of their searches into fees and into the reasons why particular fees had become established. The records also document the degeneration of the commissions from a campaign for administrative reform to a revenue raising device.

For an analysis based on some of these records, see G E Aylmer, 'Charles I's Commission on Fees, 1627-40', Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, xxxi (1958) See also J S Wilson, 'Sir Henry Spelman and the Royal Commission on Fees, 1622-40' in Studies Presented to Sir Hilary Jenkinson, ed J Conway Davies (Oxford, 1957) For a useful summary of the staffing and offices in courts and departments fee'd by the Crown, see G E Aylmer, The King's Servants: The Civil Service of Charles I (2nd ed, London, 1974)

An index of offices is available.