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

Files begun about 1503 to hold the common bills formerly held on the Panella files (KB 146). These were normally used to make fictitious allegations of trespass to bring the defendant into the court's jurisdiction in Middlesex through the marshal's custody, for process to issue against him by writ of latitat and for the real grounds of the action to be stated in a declaration (KB 152). A decreasing number of the bills made genuine allegations, and are mostly found at the beginning or end of the file. By 1541 the standard fictitious allegation was the breaking of a close at Hendon. The growth of fictitious cases led to the situation when the precept to the defendant replaced the common bill itself as the initiator of an action, so the series disappeared soon after 1600. The latest file is for Michaelmas 1605.