Court of Common Pleas: Attorneys Rolls

CP 11

1730-1750

A broken series of rolls, presumably compiled in the Court of Common Pleas following the act of 1728 for regulating attorneys and solicitors (2 Geo II, c 23), but not required by it.

Their purpose is uncertain, but they may have been intended to provide a list of those actually practising in the court in a given year; they may have ceased because their compilation came to be considered unnecessary.

All the surviving rolls are arranged in alphabetical sequences by the first letter of the attorneys' names, those names being preceded by the name of a county, presumably that in which they resided. At the right-hand side are two columns, initially headed 'proclam' and 'abinde', which include both figures of low denomination and punched holes whose significance has not been established, and occasionally the note of a term and regnal year. An occasional attorney is noted as having been struck off as a result of a rule of court. The last two surviving rolls are a little different, in that the holes disappear, although the occasional notes of terms continue. Additionally, the word 'mort' has been added alongside the names of many attorneys who had died, but their dates of death are not given, and the annotations may have been made some time later.

Public Record(s)

English

13 roll(s)