Palace Court: Plea Rolls

PALA 6

1629-1849

Records of pleas before the Palace Court together with a plea roll of the Court of the Verge. In later years the records are not filed and so form bundles rather than rolls. From 1818 the pleas were written on sheets of parchment. The individual rotuli which form the rolls are usually marked with the name of the prothonotary at the foot.

The plea rolls are initially for regnal years, not legal years, and from 1705 for Old Style calendar years, running from 25 March to 24 March. In between the rolls said to be for 1710 and 1712 the method of reckoning the calendar year changes; there is no gap in the series at that point. That pattern continues until the change to the New Style calendar (January to December) in 1752. Some of the rolls cover only a part of a year, however.

Entries in the rolls for cases which reached judgment from 1802 can be found through the docket books in PALA 3. In addition, some bail books in PALA 1 bear cross-references to the rolls.

The earlier part of the series has many gaps which, because they are so numerous, are not pointed out in the list. The series is complete only from 1793.

Records of the Court of the Verge are in E 37

The gaps seem to reflect missing rolls rather than failure of the court to sit. Some rolls certainly escaped from public custody.

The roll for 1 Wm & Mary is in

PRO 30/26/58/6

Public Record(s)

English

• Court of the Verge, 1611-1630
• Palace Court, 1630-1652
• Palace Court, 1660-1849

135 bundles and rolls

The letters patent defined the court's sitting days as being any day of any week of the year, excluding Sunday and certain main specified feast days: Christmas, Circumcision, Epiphany, the Purification and the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin, Good Friday, Ascension, Michaelmas and All Saints. It was not therefore bound by the legal terms or system of return days followed by the courts of common law. The rolls of the rulers from Charles I to William III consequently run for a regnal year, beginning with the first sitting day during that year and ending with the last.