Catalogue description Court of King's Bench: Plea Side: Bille Files

Files consisting of custodial and privilege bills, latitats and declarations, begun between 1519 and 1521, probably in Easter term 1520, to hold documents relating to bill cases formerly kept in the Panella files (KB 146). These are also the files in which general orders about the courts sessions were kept. The documents are generally filed in a set order but without the sections becoming very self-contained. The first section contains habeas corpus writs with returns, probably removed from the Recorda series (KB 145); then the jury process and panels returned with 'non sunt inventi' endorsed, followed by those returned endorsed 'cepi corpora'; declared bills; and final process writs and returns. Two of these sections were removed to separate series of files in 1549 (KB 152, KB 153), and the much smaller Bille files which succeeded this series are in KB 151.

For a detailed account of King's Bench files generally, see C A F Meekings, Kings Bench files, in Legal Records and the Historian, ed J H Baker (1978).