Catalogue description Exchequer: King's Remembrancer: Miscellaneous Books, Series II

This series consists of an artificial collection of documents, all of them in book form, and mostly from the King's Remembrancer's Office.

The series contains four main elements: books and registers which supplement, and in some instances replace, the record on the memoranda rolls, including, after 1833, business transferred from the office of the Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer; registers, accounts, and books of precedent concerning the working of the King's Remembrancer's Office, including a register of writs written on behalf of the Exchequer of Pleas; accounts of funds in court, minute books of the revenue court, and rule books of the 19th-century common law court of Exchequer Chamber; and a small quantity of miscellanea.

The series thus reflects the dual function of the King's Remembrancer's side of the Exchequer as a court of law and as a place of account for the casual revenue of the Crown.

Included in the series are registers recording the filing of informations; the issue of writs and commissions; respites of process; and pleadings. There are entry books of seizures and appraisements of uncustomed goods; registers of licences to compound in revenue actions; books of fines, and of judgements; and registers concerning the delivery of port books and the return of uncertified coast bonds.

Books of recognizances largely duplicate information found on the memoranda rolls. They include bonds given in the course of legal proceedings, bonds entered into by officials and accountants at the Exchequer, and bonds of printers and publishers. Several registers deal with the process of account, including books of process concerning debts outstanding after audit. Many relate to taxation.

Registers dealing with business from the Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer's Office, some commencing well before the actual transfer of that business in 1833, include registers of the appointments of sheriffs, undersheriffs, coroners, and clerks of the peace; others concern the delivery of estreats of judicial fines and deodands, and process thereon.

Books concerning the workings of the King's Remembrancer's Office include both central registers of that office and notebooks kept by individual clerks.

The miscellanea comprises accounts of the Hanaper, the Mint, of the commissioners for wine licences, and for Westminster School and almshouses during the Commonwealth period; books of debts and other memoranda associated with the several commissions of debts operating in the 16th and 17th centuries; and registers concerning leases, bonds, and other matters of a type more commonly found among the records of the Auditors of Land Revenue.