Catalogue description Court of King' Bench: Plea Side, Chief Clerks' Office: Intitulamentum Brevium Rolls

The enormous growth of bill litigation in King's Bench in the mid sixteenth century led to a great increase in the size of the files carrying the bills and their related instruments. By Michaelmas 1552 a roll was being kept each term by the joint chief clerks called the Intitulamentum (or Intitulamenta; the ending is abbreviated) Brevium; the first has the fuller title 'Intitulamentum omnium et singulorum brevium'. It should be translated as 'record of writs', and it records the issue of writs on the Plea Side of the court.

Each entry records the county, the type of writ, by whom and against whom issued, the return day at which it was to be returned, and the name of the attorney who secured its issue, often one of the chief clerks or a filazer of the court. The roll for Michaelmas 1552 includes no fewer than 1,861 such entries. Only two such rolls have so far come to light, the other being for Trinity term 1553, and it is possible that the keeping of such a comprehensive record was merely a short-lived experiment.

Docket rolls recording the issue of writs and other instruments begin to survive again in the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth I and some exist for the reigns of James I and Charles I. None have so far produced examples later in date than 1632, and the Latitat Rolls so far discovered do not begin until 1619. The latter can produce comparative figures for the issue of latitats to compare with those derived from the two rolls in this series.