Catalogue description Chancery: Petty Bag Office: Reports of Commissioners on Courts of Justice

Reports, received by successive lord chancellors, of various commissions of inquiry into aspects of the administration of courts and other matters.

The report is usually preceded by the royal commission outlining the purpose and scope of the inquiry and naming the commissioners. The procedures adopted by the commissioners are then described with reference to the objects of their inquiry, and recommendations made to ameliorate the state of affairs which prompted the investigation.

The object of the earliest reports concerned the offices and fees of the courts of Chancery (1740 and 1816), King's Bench (1818), Common Pleas (1819), the Exchequer (1822), the ecclesiastical courts (1823), and the Admiralty, Delegates and Prize Courts (1824).

Later reports targeted the practice of the courts; the process, practice and system of pleading; the state of the county courts; and the state of the law.

Oddments include a report on the Fleet, Marshalsea and Palace Court prisons of 1818, and a report on the accountant general's department in Chancery of 1864.

Most of the reports in this series are printed as Parliamentary Papers by order of the House of Commons. Many of the commissions are surveyed in J M Collinge, Officials of Royal Commissions of Inquiry 1815-1870 (Office Holders in Modern Britain IX, London, 1984). See also, Subject Catalogue of the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers 1801-1900, ed P Cockton (Chadwyck Healey, 1988). For an analysis, see H M Clokie and J W Robinson, Royal Commissions of Inquiry: the Significance of Investigations in British Politics (Stanford, California, 1937).