England Chancery Court Records

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Chancery Court
In early times it was the king in council who received the petitions from those subjects not satisfied by common law procedures, but by the end of the 15th century the chancellor, a leading member of the king's council had taken over this role. The Chancellor was often a bishop having no legal training but much common sense, and his chancery could sit anywhere and at any time; the procedures was a simple and informal thus quick and inexpensive. It was based on equity not common law and conducted entirely by English.

Equity is a system of justice based on conscience and fairness rather than on the strict rules of common law. A decision in equity was one given in accordance with natural justice where the law did not provide adequate remedy, or in which its operation would have been unfair. After the Reformation lawyers tended to be appointed as chancellors and they regarded decisions in equity as precedents and thus equity soon became an organized system of rules as rigid as those of law. Chancery business became more rigid, slow and expensive because chancery clerks were paid fees not salaries, so the more paperwork they could generate the higher their income. However this system had benefits for the future genealogist with the volume of documents generated! Chancery is the court with more surviving records than any other.

The system became so moribund during the early 19th century that reforms were made, culminating in the incorporation of chancery as simply a division in the new High Court of Justice in 1873-1875 and the empowering of judges to administer both law and equity.

Content
Proceedings consist of the following documents:


 * Bill of Complaint by the plaintiff (also referred to as the complainant or orator) which states his name, quality or occupation and residence as well as the nature of the complaint. Alternatively the proceedings could start with a Bill of Information by the crown. Either would be addressed to the Lord Chancellor or the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. These bills are very long and full of legal jargon but end with a citation of the names of those complained against. In over 20% of cases the filing of a bill resulted in an informal settlement perhaps by arbitration, and maybe with a financial settlement, and no more records for the case are found (Horwitz 1998). Of those which went further into the pleadings stages (below) some 70% did not result in a decree, but were abandoned for the same reasons but which are not recorded because they took place out of court.


 * Writ of Subpoena ordering the defendant to appear in court. Not a lot of these have survived.


 * Answer by the Defendant, which is the defendant’s version of the facts, or a Plea to Reject the Bill on legal grounds.


 * Replication, or Exception, by the plaintiff which further protracts the case.


 * Rejoinder by the defendant.


 * Rebuttal may be given by the plaintiff.


 * Surebuttal may be given by the defendant.


 * Interrogatories which are lists of questions to be put to the parties, drawn up by counsels for both parties.


 * Depositions by witnesses, which give their name, age, residence and occupation. Town depositions (1534-1867) are those taken in London from witnesses living there or visiting for the purpose; there may be two sets- one for the plaintiff and one for the defendant. Country depositions (1558-1714) are those taken outside London or abroad by a commission set up for that purpose.


 * A Bill of Revival, if one of the parties died before the case was heard.

The Family History Library has no original records from the court of Chancery, but it does have many finding aids such as record calendars, abstracts, and indexes. To find Chancery Court records, look in the Place Search of the FamilySearch Catalog under:

ENGLAND - COURT RECORDS

Chancery Court records are held at The National Archives.

Anglo American Legal Tradition has digitized 1000s of the earliest cases on their free website.

Genealogical Value
Coldham evinces that it is probably "a sufficient recommendation of the value of chancery records in a genealogical context to say that it is often possible to come across a five-generation pedigree not only compiled by contemporary litigants and witnesses but authenticated by a master in chancery."

Primary information about migration, marriage, births, deaths and kinship are all here. So also is evidence of their social relationships and aspirations, land ownership, business transactions and wealth or lack thereof. The court of chancery did not deal with criminal cases but did handle disputes arising from criminal cases.

Chancery Calendars, Indexes and Abstracts
Some of the Chancery court records have been indexed. See the article by Ronald A. Hill mentioned below to see a list of indexes for different time periods. Also, two of The National Archives Research Guides “Chancery Proceedings: Equity Suits from 1558" and “Chancery Proceedings: Equity Suits before 1558” list the records and what records have been indexed.

The National Archives website has available the “Equity Pleadings Database”, which includes part of the C6 class of records and is searchable by name or place. Also, some of these records have been indexed in The National Archives Catalogue. Search the catalogue with an ancestor's surname in the "Word or Phrase" field and the letter C in the "Department or Series code" field.

Two men, Charles Allen Bernau and George Frederick Tudor Sherwood, have both complied calendars and indexes to chancery material. The Family History Library has the Bernau Collection and Sherwood Collection:


 * Genealogical Extracts from Chancery Proceedings by Bernau.
 * Depositions from Chancery Proceedings, 1714-1758, Exchequer, Charity Depositions, With a Few Before 1714 by Bernau.
 * The Sherwood Record Collection: The Sherwood Slip Index by Surname and County..

For cases from the eighteenth century forward, try searching Google Books for summaries of chancery cases in publications such as The Jurist.

Chancery Proceedings and Depositions Indexes and Published Records
The information in the following chart was compiled from The National Archives Research Guides to Chancery Records, and Ronald A. Hill's superb article “English Genealogical Research: Using Chancery Court Proceedings”. National Genealogical Society Quarterly. Volume 91, No. 2, June 2007. pp. 111-138. Digital version at NGS website (£) (used with permission).


 * Miscellaneous set of answers and subsidiary documents are in C 4, which is searchable.
 * For C 6, C 7, C 8 and C 10, there are indexes to disputed wills (by the name of the testator, not of the plaintiff) available at The National Archives. P W Coldham compiled these idexes.