Catalogue description Chancery: Bails on Special Pardons (Tower and Rolls Chapel Series)

These files, which came to be known as the Horn Bundle, record the finding by men granted pardons by the king of six sureties for their future good behaviour.

The documents are of two distinct types: single membranes relating the finding of sureties in Chancery; and writs to the sheriff and coroners ordering them to see that such sureties were found in the county court, with their return either endorsed, or more usually, attached.

The bails of Edward I's reign are apparently all of the first type, the fourteenth-century ones are mixed, those of the fifteenth century and until the end of Henry VIII's reign are virtually all Chancery bails, and from the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth I all are county court bails. The files of Edward I's reign also include a few subsidiary documents.

Most of these records were formerly included in C 202