Court of Common Pleas: Portions of Broken Writs of Covenant Files

Portions of files of writs of covenant or individual writs of covenant which have become separated from the files of which they originally formed part, and which were arranged in bundles at the Carlton Ride branch of the Public Record Office in the 1840s and listed and made available later in the nineteenth century. There is an occasional intact original covenant file, such as that for Easter 18 Edw IV. Most belong the the 16th century.

The writs will eventually be reunited with the other covenant files, complete or broken, in CP 55, but in the meantime they are useful as providing examples of the writs and their endorsements over a long period. The writs were predominantly used for levying final concords in the court.

Alienation Office entry books of writs of covenant are in A 7

Additional stray writs of covenant are in the British Library, Add Charters 24915-25516.

Topics

Archives and libraries

Conveyancing

The writs of covenant were issued by the Cursitors' Office of Chancery, or its predecessors, for levying final concords in the Court of Common Pleas by means of a collusive suit initiated by the writ. When the fine had been made the writs were retained by the chirographer, the official responsible for drawing up the fine; he was doing so by the 1360s at latest. During the thirteenth century a variety of different sorts of writ were used to initiate suits intended to end in final concords, but by the early years of Edward III the writ of covenant was totally dominant, and only a few later examples are known of other writs being used.

The formulae of the writs are well known and easily ascertained from formularies and accounts of court practice. Of more interest in these actual examples are the annotations which they bear. By the sixteenth century the face of the writ bore only the sum paid for the issue of the writ and paid into the hanaper. Until about the middle of the reign of Henry VII, the name of the judge before whom the fine was made is usually annotated at the top of the writ, in the middle or towards the left. Before the mid fifteenth century other annotations often appear. Some of them were certainly made by the chirographer for filing purposes.

Endorsements normally included, in the fourteenth century, from the top to the bottom, the name of the attorney, the names of the two pledges for prosecution of the writ (apparently still real people), the names of the two summoners (likewise), and the name of the sheriff making the return. Later, by the mid fifteenth century, the position formerly occupied by the name of the attorney was taken up with a written oath by him that the value of the property which was the subject of the writ did not exceed a particular value, which was given; by the mid sixteenth century, the oath was signed by the attorney. By that period also the names of the pledges and summoners were invariably fictitious.