Chancery: Petty Bag Office: Enrolments of Laws, Adjudications, Orders and Appointments...

A series of rolls recording laws and adjudications made by commissioners of sewers, either as they stood or as confirmations and exemplifications.

The original documents on which these enrolments were based are now in C 225. The series also includes copies of commissions appointing commissioners of sewers.

The last document to be enrolled was an order made by Lord Chancellor Cowper on 14 March 1714, following the receipt of a petition of protest from the owners of land in Deeping Fen, Lincolnshire; the chancellor ordered that a recent adjudication of the commissioners of sewers for that area had been defective, and that the filing of the adjudication was to be stayed.

Material from the Crown Office relating to commissions of sewers is in C 191

Topics

Public disorder

The reason why these laws and adjudications were enrolled is not clear. There was no statutory requirement for enrolments to be made. The 1531 Statute of Sewers simply provided for certain decrees of the commissioners to be engrossed on parchment and certified into Chancery; no subsequent legislation added anything further.

It therefore appears that the enrolment of a selection of decrees and appointments was undertaken solely for administrative convenience, presumably by the clerks of the Petty Bag, who held the original decrees. To judge by their handwriting, the rolls were written not long after the dates of the instruments they record, not all together at the end of the period they cover.