Court of Common Pleas: Notes of Fines Files, Henry III - Elizabeth I

CP 26/1

Henry III - 1603

Files containing the drafts of the chirographer, the court official responsible for engrossing final concords, from which he drew up the copies of the agreement, including the foot of the fine that was filed by the court; afterwards he filed these notes. Notes may have existed from 1195, the date at which the feet of fines began, and the earliest example dates from 1200. The earliest notes may, however, be what were later called concords. The earliest in this series are thought to date from the reign of Henry III, although they only become numerous under Edward I; they do not include the dating clause found on the feet of fines. They do include the full text of the agreement, including the consideration, which did not appear in the concord but was added by the chirographer, and various annotations at the foot at different periods. There are very few notes for the period between 1377 and 1509, but thereafter the series is fairly complete, achieving a settled format by the seventeenth century, and by the nineteenth they were being drawn up on printed forms.

A major series of repertories of the notes of fines, or rather two different series which briefly overlapped, are in IND 1/7233 - IND 1/7244 and IND 1/17217 - IND 1/17268. These are in practice mainly used as means of reference to the feet of fines CP 25/2

These early notes are arranged by county in modern covers or in bundles with paper wrappers; they do not reflect the original filing arrangement, which was by term, although the original filing holes remain. CP 26/1/4/8 includes old file covers, the earliest being from the reign of Edward II, which confirm that they were in fact filed by term. The earliest file titles seem to indicate that there was more than one file per term by that date, but no research to elucidate the nature and significance of the filing system indicated by these covers has yet been undertaken.

The early Edward III file covers, mostly survive with their contents in the order in which they were sorted into them in the mid nineteenth century. The few still in their original state on their original thong, are labelled 'Note ingrossate...', a perhaps significant modification of 'Note ingrossande...', as are later examples, or occasionally simply 'Note...', so the other series may have ceased in the early fourteenth century. No evidence has been found to suggest that there was ever subsequently more than one series of files.

From other file covers found in CP 26/1, it seems that the notes of the reign of Edward II were rearranged into county files, with some 'divers counties' files for notes covering more than one county, covering the whole of that reign, at some time during the fifteenth century. From 1509 onwards the series of notes is fairly complete, although the files are not in their original format. When they were repaired in the mid nineteenth century the earlier ones were usually restrung, whether in their original order or not is unclear. The notes from the later seventeenth century onwards were arranged in small county files joined with pink tape, and are consequently easier to search. From 1509 to 1551 each piece consists of the notes for a regnal year; thereafter each piece includes the notes for a single term, for all counties, although for the reign of Elizabeth there are some Monmouthshire files, each covering a number of years.

The notes were kept in term files, but most of the original files broke and the surviving material was rearranged in the present 14 separate series in the nineteenth century.

Fragments and detached file covers are in

CP 26/14

Public Record(s)

Latin

277 file(s)

Topics

Conveyancing

Litigation

Notes are occasionally still discovered among unsorted common law miscellanea, so missing ones may yet be found.