Catalogue description Records of the Court of the Honour of Peveril

The ancient court of record for the Honour of Peveril was customarily held twice a year in Nottingham, for the recovery of small debts.

The basis of the court's jurisdiction and practice was said in its own records to arise 'according to the custom of the said honour used and approved in the same from the time whereof the memory of man is not to the contrary and according to the liberties and privileges of the same honour by divers royal charters in that behalf granted and confirmed', that is, a mixture of custom and royal prescription. The court is supposed to have been created by William the Conqueror and granted by him to his natural son, William de Peveril.

The letters patent of 1639 specified its jurisdiction as encompassing pleas of debt, detinue, covenant, account, trespass, trespass on the case and distraint of beasts, goods and chattels where the value of debts or damages demanded did not exceed £50 in value. At the time of the court's abolition its stewardship was held under royal grant by the Willoughby family with whom the Honour had long been associated.

In addition to lands and former lands of the honour in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, its jurisdiction covered, under letters patent of 1639, the whole of Broxtowe and Thurgarton wapentakes in Nottinghamshire and, from 1672 to 1706, the manor of Worksop in Nottinghamshire and the parishes of Rotherham, Sheffield, Ecclesfield, Whiston, Handsworth and Treeton in Yorkshire.

The letters patent of 1639 provided for the court to meet on Tuesdays at a place of the steward's choosing. The warrant of 1672 mentioned the shire halls of Nottingham and Derby as possible venues, or such other places as the steward should appoint. In fact, from the 1660s to 1686 the court was held at a number of different places in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, often with a long series of successive meetings at the same place: Wirksworth, Ashbourne, Normanton and Glapwell in Derbyshire; Nottingham castle and shire hall, Mansfield, Lenton, Linby, Radford and Basford in Nottinghamshire.

In November 1686 it settled down at Radford, but in January 1694 moved to Basford, where it seems thereafter to have remained for a long period, although some sessions were certainly later held elsewhere in the nineteenth century, for example at Lenton in 1819 and at the Plough Inn in Radford between 1839 and 1843.

The court was abolished by the County Courts Act 1849. From 1850 actions or suits not exceeding £20 falling within the former limits of the court passed to the County Court for the district within which the defendant was resident or, where an action exceeded £20, to the Court of Common Pleas.