Catalogue description Chancery: Surrender Rolls

These rolls contain principally surrenders of offices by individuals to the Crown, and surrenders back to the Crown of fee-farm rents previously sold to individuals.

The entries on the rolls cite the details of the office to be surrendered, usually a government or royal household position, together with the date of its granting, or the details of the original sale of the fee-farm rent and its surrender. Most of the surrenders enrolled in this series were of rents sold during the Commonwealth.

There are also some surrenders of pensions, annuities and licences, and some bargains and sales, and other deeds.

Other specification and surrender rolls are in C 210

Chancery surrenders of office are also enrolled in C 73

For details of the sale and surrender of fee-farm rents, see S J Madge, Domesday of Crown Lands (London, 1938); C D Chandaman, English Public Revenue, 1660-1688 (Oxford, 1975); Estates of the English Crown, 1558-1640, ed R W Hoyle (Cambridge, 1992).