Court of Chancery: Common Law Pleadings, Rolls Chapel Series

C 43

c1485-c1625

This series contains the pleadings, or formal statements by the parties, in common law suits brought in Chancery.

The variety of suits include:

• actions on recognizances acknowledged in Chancery;
• actions on writs of scire facias, most of which concern the revocation of royal grants and charters and the repeal of letters patent, due to fraud or abuse;
• actions on writs of partition of land among co-parceners (joint heiresses, usually sisters) or for the assignment of dower;
• petitions of right for relief against the Crown, generally in connection with claims to property, usually in the form of a 'traverse', or challenge, that the findings of an inquisition post mortem into lands or goods was defective or unsafe;
• determinations of the liability of a landowner's estate to pay incidents of tenure to the Crown, by taking inquisitions and making assessments.

The records in this series are continued in C 206 C 221 C 222

Other records relating to the common law business of the court of Chancery are in:

Public Record(s)

Latin

34 bundle(s)

Topics

Marriage and divorce

Landed estates

Crime

The records in this series were formerly housed in the Rolls Chapel, prior to their transfer to the Public Record Office in the nineteenth century.

Although the chancellor was bound to observe the normal procedure of the common law in these cases, and, when issue was joined on a question of fact, submit the action, together with the record, to the court of King's Bench for settlement, a petition to Parliament in 1400-1 in fact reveals that the chancellor sometimes preferred to call the common law judges into Chancery to assist him.