Catalogue description Chancery: Crown Office: Lord Chancellor's Petition Books

Entry books of the petitions presented in Chancery. Until August 1794 the petitions of plaintiffs and defendants are entered in separate books. These volumes, each of which has an index of contents, contain fairly full abstracts, and frequently complete transcripts, of the petitions.

The entries in the later volumes, from April 1801, are in much briefer form, containing only the names of the parties, their solicitors and a short note concerning the subject of the petition. They are entered day by day according to the date of presentation, but there is an index in each volume by title of suit. The petitions are frequently to do with the payment of funds from or the authorisation of work on estates in Chancery. However, some petitions and responses are still entered in full, mostly in cases where the Chancellor was acting as Visitor of colleges in the University of Oxford or the University of Cambridge, or where a school or other charitable foundation was involved.

Some of the volumes also contain miscellaneous entries, such as letters to the Lord Chancellor concerning the administration of his office and warrants to the clerk or keeper of the hanaper to pay accounts for stationery and other expenses, such as the costs of the king's messengers in delivering writs for elections to Parliament.

For appeal petitions in Chancery suits from 1774 and ordinary petitions from 1834, see C 36