Catalogue description Administrative records of officials of the Court of Common Pleas

The activities of officers of the Court of Common Pleas, and particularly of attorneys practising in that court, were regulated by legislation from the end of the seventeenth century.

The Attorneys and Solicitors Act of 1728 required attorneys and solicitors wishing to practise to take a prescribed oath, to be examined by a judge as to their fitness and capacity to act, to demean themselves 'truly and honestly', and to have their names entered on a roll before they could be admitted to practise. They were also required to have served five years as clerks under articles. Following a statute of 1749, an affidavit attesting to the due execution of such articles had to be filed with the court within three months of admission. The Solicitors Act of 1848 reduced the period of articles to three for graduates of Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin, Durham or London.

From 1838, the Common Law Procedure Act required attorneys and solicitors who wished to practise in a court other than that in which they were enrolled to sign a roll of the court concerned.