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Series
Exchequer: King's Remembrancer: Depositions taken by Commission
Catalogue reference: E 134
What's it about?
E 134
This series contains surviving depositions relating to cases heard on the King's Remembrancer's side of the Exchequer, taken by commissioners appointed by the Court of Exchequer, with associated documents. Local commissioners were appointed only...
Full description and record details
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Reference (The unique identifier to the record described, used to order and refer to it)
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E 134
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Title (The name of the record)
- Exchequer: King's Remembrancer: Depositions taken by Commission
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Date (When the record was created)
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c1558-1841
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Description (What the record is about)
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This series contains surviving depositions relating to cases heard on the King's Remembrancer's side of the Exchequer, taken by commissioners appointed by the Court of Exchequer, with associated documents. Local commissioners were appointed only when the witness to be examined lived outside a ten mile radius of London. The series includes both equity and revenue cases.
Depositions, or statements of witnesses, were answers to a pre-agreed set of questions known as interrogatories. The taking of these proofs followed the initial proceedings of the case in which the plaintiff and defendant set out the matter in dispute by the bill and answer process.
Disputes covered a wide range of topics: title, tithe and testamentary disputes; manorial customs and disputes over common lands; mining and minerals; commercial ventures both on land and at sea, including fraudulent insurance claims; and a wide spectrum of revenue matters of direct interest to the Crown, including customs evasion and maladministration by Crown officials.
Documents in this series include commissions, by which individuals were empowered to take evidence on oath from deponents. From 1726 commissioners themselves swore oaths of secrecy and impartiality. Certificates on how they had fulfilled the terms of their commission were sometimes also returned, which might highlight the degree of intimidation or obstruction that one or other party to the case imposed. Interrogatories were prepared in advance and agreed by the court. Finally, depositions record the name, residence, age and occupation of the deponent, as well as their evidence. The names of over 80,000 deponents, up to 1685, were added in 2023 from the work of Dr Alice Whiteoak, using the unpublished listing of the Genealogical Co-operative Research Club, 1916-1918: a later listing is available at the Society of Genealogists.
Most disputes in this series arose within England and Wales, but some cases also relate to Ireland, Europe, and the Americas.
Original finding aids are in E 501
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Arrangement (Information about the filing sequence or logical order of the record)
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Arrangement
The commission, interrogatories and depositions in each suit are joined together on a string and the resulting file has been labelled with the county, regnal year and law term in which the depositions were returned to the court. The individual suit files within each law term are then numbered from 1 onwards. The files are not necessarily complete.
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Related material (A cross-reference to other related records)
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A chronological calendar of depositions, 1760-1841, may be found in E 501
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Separated material (A cross-reference between records that are related by provenance but now kept separately)
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Fragment transferred to
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Held by (Who holds the record)
- The National Archives, Kew
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Legal status (A note as to whether the record being described is a Public Record or not)
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Public Record(s)
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Language (The language of the record)
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Dutch, English, French and Latin
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Physical description (The amount and form of the record)
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2632 bundles and files
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Subjects (Categories and themes found in our collection (our subject list is under development, and some records may have no subjects or fewer than expected))
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Unpublished finding aids (A note of unpublished indexes, lists or guides to the record)
- A topographical calendar of depositions, 1558-1760, is available. A calendar of deponents, 1559-1695, is subdivided by region and in chronological order.
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Publication note(s) (A note of publications related to the record)
- A chronological calendar of depositions, 1558-1760, is in Reports of the Deputy Keeper of Public Records, vols xxxviii-xlii. A guide to the procedures of the court, written by one of its practitioners, is D B Fowler, The Practice of the Court of Exchequer (London, 1795) A modern account is W H Bryson, The Equity Side of the Exchequer (Cambridge, 1975) See also, House of Commons Sessional Papers, 1822: vol xi, Courts of Justice For a guide to the range of surviving records of the court, and for a bibliography of principal works, see Equity Proceedings in the Court of Exchequer (PRO Records Information Leaflet 96).
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Record URL
- https://beta.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/id/C6580/
Catalogue hierarchy
Over 27 million records
This record is held at The National Archives, Kew
393,709 records
Within the department: E
Records of the Exchequer, and its related bodies, with those of the Office of First...
You are currently looking at the series: E 134
Exchequer: King's Remembrancer: Depositions taken by Commission
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