Chancery Files (Tower and Rolls Chapel) Remissions of Court

Letters patent of individual lords waiving the jurisdiction of their courts in actions of right concerning land held of them, which were produced in Chancery by demandants wishing to bring writs of precipe.

Most are authenticated solely by the affixing of a seal; but some of the fifteenth-century ones also bear the signature of the lord or lady whose court was being remitted.

Clause 34 of the first issue of Magna Carta in 1215 forbade the issuing of the writ precipe in any case where this might be prejudicial to the jurisdiction of a seigneurial court, and a similar clause was included in each of the later re-issues of the charter. In practice, the prohibition was taken to apply only to actions of right for land; its effect being to compel all demandants bringing such actions, unless they claimed to hold the land being demanded directly of the crown, to use the breve de recto patens, which initiated litigation in the court of the lord of whom the land was held, rather than a writ precipe, which initiated litigation in the king's court.

It was, however, still possible to remove a case brought by the breve de recto patens into the king's court by using the procedure known as tolt to bring the case into the county court, and by purchasing the writ pone to remove the case from the county court into the bench or eyre. By the third quarter of the thirteenth century, it had also become possible, if the lord concerned was willing to waive the jurisdiction of his court, for the demandant to avoid the lengthy process of removing a case from the lord's court into the king's court, by producing written evidence of the lord's agreement to remit his court, whereupon Chancery would issue a variant of the old pre-1215 precipe writ, initiating litigation directly in the king's court.