Catalogue description Exchequer, Council and Other Courts: Miscellaneous Equity Proceedings and Special Commissions

Most of the records comprise the standard elements of proceedings in equity. Indeed, the series was once thought to document the early growth of the equity jurisdiction of the Exchequer, and includes the earliest surviving book of decrees and orders of that court, beginning in 1555. While it does contain a few bills and depositions heard in equity in the Exchequer, most of the records are either strays from Exchequer writ and bille files, or proceedings heard in other courts.

These proceedings encompass all the main courts of equity at Westminster, minor royal courts, and a few common law strays. Jurisdictions represented in addition to the Exchequer are Assizes, Augmentations, Chancery, the King's council in its various forms, including the Courts of Star Chamber (otherwise in STAC) and Requests, and the Privy Council. Also included are the duchy of Lancaster, General Surveyors, the High Court of Admiralty, the councils of queens consort and of the Prince of Wales, wards, quarter sessions at Anglesey, and an unidentified ecclesiastical court.

They also include a warrant for a new survey of the lands and goods of religious houses in Essex in 1537; secular private deeds, deposited probably as a result of the forfeiture of lands; and special commissions, arising out of the Exchequer's responsibility for revenue matters, and concerned with the apportionment of taxation on particular places, the enforcement of customs and export regulations, and with breaches of penal statutes and offences against the prerogative.