Catalogue description Special Collections: Ancient Correspondence of the Chancery and the Exchequer

Correspondence, memoranda, petitions and other documents in a series created artificially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by the assembly of material from a variety of sources among the records of English royal government. The original archival provenance of many of the items in the series cannot now be determined.

The records are enormously diverse in format, purpose and content, covering the wide range of secular and ecclesiastical subjects which were of direct or indirect interest to the royal government. A few are of a private, rather than a public, nature.

The series includes eyre records which would otherwise be found in JUST 4.

The references to be found in the finding aids are identifiable in the volumes by the numbers on the reverse of the documents and not the folio numbers. Most of the history of the creation and sorting of the series is given in the introduction to the detailed calendar for SC 1/1-63, published asList of Ancient Correspondence of the Chancery and the Exchequer (Public Record Office Lists and Indexes, XV, revised reprint, 1968). An index of persons and places in the same documents is inIndex to Ancient Correspondence of the Chancery and the Exchequer (Public Record Office Supplementary Lists and Indexes XV, 1 and 2, 1969).

Copies of the List of Ancient Correspondence of the Chancery and the Exchequer and the Index to Ancient Correspondence of the Chancery and the Exchequer together with a similar calendar and index for SC 1/64 are available in the public areas. Please speak to staff at the Map and Large Document Room enquiry desk for the precise location.