Catalogue description Judicial Committee of the Privy Council: Appeals Miscellanea

Papers and volumes recording the process of appeal in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, including accounts of fees payable after completion of the appeal.

The draft instruments are in volumes, and record proceedings in the Court of Surrogates. They relate mainly to testamentary, matrimonial and Admiralty cases.

The bundles of draft judgments of the Judicial Committee itself record dates of hearings, members of the Council present and in some cases the final judgment for recommendation to the Crown.

The draft minutes, mainly in booklet form, give dates of hearings in Doctors' Commons and the stage reached in each case. They are sometimes accompanied by rough notes by the proctors, lawyers who had been admitted to practice in the Court of Arches and given exclusive rights to act as agents in all civil law appeals to the Judicial Committee. Petitions for leave to appeal to the Privy Council appear in the name, not of the petitioner, but of his proctor. Correspondence between the proctors and registry of the Committee record transference of documents between the two. Similar booklets of minutes exist for hearings before the Judicial Committee proper, but they have not survived as fully.

Bills of costs relating to individual cases are in roll form recording fees due to the Court after judgement had been given. Volumes of bill books contain accounts by case; fees for each stage of the proceedings are given with totals, and occasionally with notes of receipt. There are also accounts of sundry payments to the office, for example for searches for wills or power of attorney. There are separate account books for naval prize appeals, similar in format to the bill books.

Copies of instruments from probate cases in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury are also included in the series.