Catalogue description Chancery Files, Tower and Rolls Chapel Series, Miscellaneous Files and Writs

The varied records in this series include writs of supplicavit, which protected a man from those threatening his life and property;

wool certificates, concerned with the collection of wool under Edward III;

warrants for proclamations, to be made throughout particular counties or in particular towns;

documents recording disputes between English and alien merchants;

warrants to do justice, revealing the intervention of the Crown in courts of inferior but independent status in an attempt to procure for individuals justice that has been delayed;

warrants to deliver writs, usually summonses of various kinds;

warrants for proclaiming prorogations of Parliament;

warrants concerned with the custody of prisoners and their release on bail;

warrants to admit persons to a wide variety of lesser offices under the Crown;

warrants for the protection and enforcement of rights and privileges;

mandates commanding particular individuals to take up the degree of sergeant at law;

writs requiring the transfer of documents to Chancery;

writs ordering the capture and detention of individuals for specified offences;

writs concerned with the assessment and collection of taxes;

orders to sheriffs to take into their custody the chests of Jewish indentures kept in their county towns;

writs connected with the exaction of oaths for political reasons, such as at the time of the Merciless Parliament in 1388;

writs concerned with purveyance for the royal household and for military and naval purposes;

writs connected with various aspects of the king's interest in the affairs of the church;

and other miscellaneous warrants and writs.

Most of these records were formerly included in C 47 and C 202