Catalogue description Records of the Petty Bag Office

Details of Division within C
Reference: Division within C
Title: Records of the Petty Bag Office
Description:

These are records created by, or inherited and acquired by, the clerks of the Petty Bag; in many cases they are closely related to the functions of other Chancery officers, particularly those of the clerk of the Crown in Chancery, who initiated much of the work which the clerks then prosecuted.

Proceedings on statute staple are in C 228, with certificates of statute merchant and statute staple in C 241. Writs in other debt proceedings are in C 243

The main body of Chancery's administrative and common law writs, with their returns, is in C 202

Writs of certiorari for acts of Parliament are in C 204. Parliamentary writs and related records are in C 218 and C 219

Special commissions on various matters, chiefly Crown property rights, are in C 205

Common law pleadings, memoranda, and orders from the Petty Bag Office are in C 206, C 221 and C 222

Treasury warrants for the appointment of customs officers are in C 208; warrants for bishops' patents are in C 201. Enrolments of bishops' patents and customs officers' patents are in C 209

Rolls relating to the appointment of sheriffs are in C 227. Writs and returns relating to appointments and oaths are in C 254; certificates of election are in C 267. Records of oaths of allegiance are in C 213, C 214 and C 215, with sacrament certificates in C 224

Specifications for inventions are in C 210

Admission rolls of solicitors and Chancery officers are in C 216

Some patent roll indexes compiled for the Petty Bag Office are in C 274

Records of successive commissioners of sewers are in C 225 and C 226, with decrees in connection with the Bedford Level Commissioners in C 229

Commissions and inquisitions in lunacy are in C 211

Miscellaneous records arising from the Petty Bag Office's inheritance of the duties of the cursitors are in C 207 and C 220

Enrolments and other records reflecting a wide variety of miscellaneous functions are in C 212 and C 217; precedent books and registers of writs are in C 230. Writ files on various common law matters are in C 244, C 249, C 250, C 251, C 257, C 258 and C 261

Various certificates retained in the Petty Bag Office are in C 203. A collection of reports, 1740 to 1864, on legal and judicial matters, deposited in the Petty Bag Office in 1864, is in C 223

Miscellaneous Petty Bag Office records (Pot Bundle) are in C 236

Wine licences are in C 238

Scire facias writs are in C 245 and C 246

Date: c1216-2000
Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Creator:

Chancery, Petty Bag Office, 1375-1875

Supreme Court of Judicature, 1875-

Supreme Court of Judicature, Petty Bag Office, 1875-1899

Physical description: 46 series
Administrative / biographical background:

The clerks of the Petty Bag are first mentioned in the Chancery ordinances of 1388, when it is clear that their office was already well established, with primacy amongst the second grade of clerks and a range of duties which were evidently thought too obvious to need description. Their name referred, apparently, to their practice of keeping the writs and returns on matters immediately concerning the Crown in a little bag (parva baga or petit bag) rather than in a hamper like the court's financial records.

The number of clerks of the Petty Bag in 1388 was not stated, but throughout their perceptible history there were three, with a modest body of under-clerks as well. The clerks were appointed by the master of the rolls until the early seventeenth century, when the right of appointment reverted to the Crown. Their ranks and staff seem not to have swollen in the fashion of many other Chancery offices, possibly because much of their business was on behalf of the Crown and was not therefore as susceptible to inflated and reduplicative fees as business subsidised by private litigants. In fact their business dwindled with the abolition of feudal tenures in 1660, although it rose again in subsequent years with the growth of work in connection with the registration of attorneys, and with patents for inventions.

In 1848, despite the transfer to the Petty Bag Office in 1835 of the remaining work of the cursitors, the number of clerks was reduced formally from three to one. This clerk, with two under-clerks, was transferred to the Supreme Court of Judicature in 1875, before the post was finally abolished in 1889.

The duties of the clerks of the Petty Bag were very varied, as their surviving records attest, and indeed they changed over the course of time; broadly speaking, they executed the administrative procedures on Crown business and on the common law side of Chancery, together with any other administrative business which fell to Chancery from time to time.

The clerks

  • issued (until 1660, when they became obsolete) the various writs arising from feudal tenure (most commonly, the writ diem clausit extremum on the death of a tenant-in-chief) and processed the returns, copying them when relevant to the Exchequer for the levying of incidents;
  • made out all writs of summons to Parliament and writs of congé d'élire for the electing of archbishops and bishops, with the subsequent royal assents, patents of assistance and restitution of temporalities, and patents for the appointment of collectors of customs, searchers, and tidewaiters;
  • made out attachments of privilege, and drew up the declarations and pleadings for and against Chancery officers and other privileged persons, and also on traverses of escheats and lunacies;
  • issued the main body of Chancery writs in administrative and common law matters;
  • drew up all proceedings on writs of scire facias and on recognisances and bonds enrolled in Chancery;
  • made out commissions to inquire into lands purchased by aliens, given to superstitious (i.e. religious) uses, or which were derelict by the sea, as well as all estates which escheated or were forfeited to the Crown;
  • made out writs of certiorari for removing into Chancery acts of Parliament and other records (which were then filed in the Petty Bag Office for the information of the court);
  • administered the oaths to solicitors and various officers of the Court of Chancery, and enrolled their admissions;
  • enrolled surrenders of offices and (until 1835) the specifications of patent inventions.

At the time of the enactment of the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1873 the work of the Petty Bag Office had greatly diminished and its clerk, in 1874, candidly admitted that 'the Petty Bag Office, as it is, is of small usefulness to the public'.

Under the Great Seal (Offices) Act of 1874, the Treasury was given power, with the concurrence of the lord chancellor and the master of the rolls, to abolish the office of clerk of the Petty Bag. The act also transferred all the duties and powers of the clerk of the Petty Bag relating to any writs or letters patent passed under the great seal to the clerk of the crown in Chancery.

It was also provided that, upon the abolition of the office of clerk of the Petty Bag, all the duties and powers he had taken over from the cursitors of the court of Chancery in 1836 and all his duties and powers with respect to the admission of solicitors, the administering of oaths, the attendance with records, the sealing and issuing of documents or writs under the Chancery common seal, and other matters relating to the administration of justice, should be vested in any such officer of the Supreme Court of Judicature as was directed by rule of court.

The Supreme Court of Judicature (Officers) Act of 1879 finally provided for the abolition of the office of clerk of the Petty Bag on next vacancy. This took effect in 1889 when the residual work of the post passed to the Crown Office of the Central Office of the Supreme Court.

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