RECOGNIZANCES

These are recognizances for appearance to answer, to do and receive the orders of the court, to be of good behaviour or to keep the peace, in many cases towards named individuals, to prosecute and give evidence, to keep affiliation orders, not to victual etc.

Most of the recognizances were taken before and signed by individual justices or two justices but some before a group of four or five justices, meeting in some form of special or petty session. This last supposition is re-inforced by several references in the conditions of some recognizances; two recognizances refer to presentments at "a private sessions" at Dartford [QM/SRc/1605/148-149]; a group of six recognizances refer to orders of the Petty Session at St. Mary's Cray [QM/SRc/1605/189-92, 197-8]; one is for an appearance to be made, not at Quarter Sessions, but "at the next sessions of the peace to be holden for the hundred of Little and Lesnes" [QM/SRc/1610/155] and another makes reference to "at a late six weeks sitting at Mailling" [QM/SRc/1618/39]; Normally the recognizances were returned to the next Quarter Sessions at Canterbury or Maidstone according to whether the recognizance concerned had been taken in the East or West Division of the county. There are two references to Quarter Sessions being held at Ashford [QM/SRc/1595/13,79].

Though almost all the recognizances are signed, only the signatures of well known justices or of mayors of boroughs or clergymen are noted. These last include the Bishop of Rochester and the Dean of Canterbury. Another justice with ecclesiastical connections was Dr. George Newman of Canterbury, who became Chancellor of the Diocese of Canterbury and was thus active in both the ecclesiastical and civil courts.

There are a large number of recognizances for the Bromley area, a great many of which were taken before Sir Timothy Lowe of Bromley. Recognizances taken by Sir Timothy, a man with legal training at Lincoln's Inn, often have very full explanations of the circumstances involved and of the characters of the persons bound over, giving more incidental information than is usual in a formal legal record following a common form. For example a Bromley man was bound over for allowing a servant of his, aged 13 or 14, to take a hurdle and pales for him from another man, with the explanation "this cognisar not accused by any of them for the same, yet I wish he receive some exemplary blame for training up the said youth in such misdemeanours" [QM/SRc/1602/110]. Two Bromley men were bound over not to beat their wives with the provision in each case that he should "well and honestly order and govern his said wife and not otherwise chastise and correct her than lawfully and reasonably to the husband's government appertaineth" [QM/SRc/1606/29, QM/SRc/1612/44]. A Bromley man accused of assault and robbery was bound over to keep the peace against his accuser, who it was pointed out was only prosecuting him for trespass not for felony, which had the much more serious consequences of capital punishment [QM/SRc/1610/34]. Several men in Bromley who came before Sir Timothy were described in their recognizances in terms such as "a person of disorderly behaviour, a fighter, a frequenter of alehouses, a player of unlawful games" who being drunk did "swagger" up and down the town of Bromley, frightening the inhabitants [QM/SRc/1610/84], or "a person of disorderly behaviour, provoking people by blows to break the peace and revilling the borsholder with "reproachfull words" [QM/SRc/1610/130], or "a person of evil demeanour, a common quarreler, a common drunkard, a common slanderer of honest persons and one that maketh debate betwixt man and wife and an accustomed rayler against the King's Majesty's honest subjects" [QM/SRc/1612/57].

Unlike the series of indictments [QM/SI] where many original sessional files survive, most of the recognizances were found loose and only a few original files exist among them, some being of haphazard composition and some including victuallers recognizances in addition to the other recognizances. The documents in this recognizance series, whether in file form or loose have been numbered in a continuous series for each year, unlike the indictments where the numbering has been based on the sessional files which exist in larger numbers.

Sureties are each bound in half the sum of each principal unless otherwise stated