The Duchy of Lancaster Records

R. Somerville

doi:10.2307/3678546

The Duchy of Lancaster Records

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2009

R. Somerville

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Two hundred and fifty years ago a record-keeper sat amid the boxes, the cupboards and the shelves which housed his charges, compiling ‘an account of all or most of the records in the Duchy office and how to find them’. The result was invaluable for searchers in the Duchy of Lancaster records, but lacking order and arrangement, as its author was the first to admit, it is not a systematic description of these records and it says very little about their history. There is therefore some justification for attempting a comprehensive view of these records. The rich diversity of interest which the Duchy bears is fully reflected in the range of its records. It has indeed been said that ‘what the records of the United Kingdom are at large, these records of the Duchy are in miniature’. That is a bold assertion, difficult to sustain. For one thing, the Duchy never knew the complicated processes of the royal exchequer, and it must be obvious that the Duchy could not repeat in parvo the whole pattern of the nation's life. Yet the analogy gives a hint of the records' scope, and it becomes closer if we take the Duchy records to include those of the Palatinate of Lancaster. It is true that in the Public Record Office, which contains most of the records under discussion, the two series are treated separately, and the Guide, repeating a distinction drawn in 1868 in the Deputy Keeper's Report, says that the Duchy records ‘are entirely distinct from the records of the County palatine, which, although public, are purely local, whilst the Duchy Records, though private, concern the government and jurisdiction of the entire dominion of the Duchy and embrace the County Palatine as a subordinate regality’. This statement, which the grammarian finds imperfect as an example of the chiastic construction, is equally unsatisfactory to the archivist or historian if we understand it to refer to the palatinate, and not to the administration of the modern county council. We ought no more to segregate the palatinate simply because it was an organ of public administration than we should, say, a private hundred, and the description itself recognises the county palatine as a component part of the Duchy. How the judicial records of the court of Duchy chamber were any less public than those of the chancery court in Lancashire, is not explained. The distinction, in fine, is fallacious.

Type: Research Article
Information: Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 29 , December 1947 , pp. 1 - 17

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/3678546 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1947

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^{page 1 note 1} ‘Great Ayloffe’, P.R.O. Obs. 518. All records cited are in the Public Record Office, unless otherwise specified. I may appear in this paper to be a little critical of that institution; from individual members of its staff, however, I have invariably met with great courtesy and helpfulness, and I gladly take the opportunity to express my indebtedness to them.

^{page 1 note 2} Winfield, P. H., Chief Sources of English Legal History, p. 34.Google Scholar

^{page 2 note 1} i. 325.

^{page 3 note 1} I hope that before long a fuller account of the Duchy's administration will be available in a history of the Duchy on which I am working.

^{page 3 note 2} There are in all 5,288: 427 royal charters, 789 ancient deeds in the three volumes of Cartae Misc., and 3,635, 106 and 331 respectively in the classes L, LL and LS.

^{page 3 note 3} Cf. E.H.R., lv. 608.Google Scholar

^{page 3 note 4} The collection, anciently kept in some 90 boxes, was hence known as Grants in Boxes. It was first listed about 1700, again early in the last century, and more recently at the P.R.O.

^{page 3 note 5} 28 Hen. VI. D.L. Chanc. Roll 18, which List and Index XIV makes out to be that roll, is something quite different.

^{page 4 note 1} Fragments of the missing volumes were bound up in 1686, Misc. Books 99.

^{page 4 note 2} Apart from the regular series of enrolments there are a few volumes of special collections: most notable are the two Great Cowchers (1402–7)— Misc. Books 1 and 2, but there is also a register made up about the middle of the fourteenth century (Misc. Books 11) and another compiled towards the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth centuries (Misc. Books 12).

^{page 4 note 3} 11–12 Hen. IV; see note on cover of D.L. Accts. Var. 4/7.

^{page 4 note 4} Trans. R. Hist. Soc., 4th Ser., xxiii. 175–6.Google Scholar The drafts of the judicial orders are fairly complete from Henry VIII.

^{page 5 note 1} Misc. Books 143–6, 172–85, the remainder being in the Duchy office.

^{page 5 note 2} These are all in the Duchy office.

^{page 5 note 3} Just. Itin. 1152–3.

^{page 5 note 4} Sometimes these purchasers had much difficulty in securing delivery of the records.

^{page 5 note 5} E.g. Long Bennington (Henry V's widow, 1422–37), B.M. Add. Ch. 55011–22.

^{page 5 note 6} Accts. Var. 32/11 is an earlier example not in the series, and there is the Lacy roll of 1295/6, D.L. Min. Accts. 1/1.

^{page 5 note 7} Not all of those extant are in the P.R.O. class of Rentals and Surveys. Some are among the Misc. Books.

^{page 5 note 1} The three-volume survey of Tutbury honor made in 1559 goes under the name of William Humberstone, surveyor-general in the north parts of the Duchy, although in the making of it the deputy receiver of the honor was associated with him.

^{page 6 note 2} Madge, S. J., Domesday of Crown Lands, pp. 129–30.Google Scholar

^{page 6 note 3} Misc. Books 12, fo. 28.

^{page 6 note 4} Obs. 509 (1754). They are calendared in Ducatus Lancastrie. For this purpose they were bound up in 30 volumes.

^{page 6 note 5} The late Col. Parker has given a general description of Lancashire records, Genealogist's Magazine, viii (1938).Google Scholar

^{page 7 note 1} Not 1485 in the case of the bills, as the P.R.O. Guide says.

^{page 8 note 1} Min. Accts. bundles 637–51.

^{page 8 note 2} E.H.R., liv. 429.Google Scholar

^{page 8 note 3} E.g. Accts. Var. 1/11, 5/8 Min. Accts. 12035. Accts. Var. 2/1–11 are accounts pf the treasurer and comptroller of Calais for some years of Henry VII.

^{page 8 note 4} Accts. Var. 33/8–10. Less easy to account for is a volume of directions for the signet office, Misc. Books 133. This is actually a register of bills signed by the king; cf. Maxwell-Lyte, , The Great Seal, pp. 91Google Scholar, where his reference to this volume is given as 153.

^{page 8 note 5} Add. MSS. 38446–51.

^{page 8 note 6} Among these was a list of the royal army in 1620 (Obs. 818) and a copy of Queen Anne's first speech (Obs. 517 f. 2). The warrant, signed by Edward VI, for the arrest of Ket in 1549 was apparently once in the Duchy records. It was already missing in the eighteenth century. Misc. 35/19, fo. 76 v.

^{page 8 note 7} Obs. 520.

^{page 9 note 1} Lancashire Court Rolls, 1323–4, p. xvii.Google Scholar

^{page 9 note 2} Misc. Books 144, fo. 96. Early in the nineteenth century a burst pipe did some harm, but on the whole the Duchy has been fortunate.

^{page 9 note 3} The inventories are Misc. 1/35, 36, and cf. 37. For the exchequer array, see Galbraith, V. H. in Essays presented to T. F. Tout, p. 231.Google Scholar

^{page 9 note 4} Misc. 1/33, 3/27, John of Gaunt's Register 1379–83 (Camden 3rd Ser., lvi), i. p. xv.Google Scholar

^{page 10 note 1} Misc. Books 11.

^{page 10 note 2} E.H.R., li. 599.Google Scholar

^{page 10 note 3} Misc. Books 97, fo. 99 v., Accts. Var. 9/11, fo. 14.

^{page 10 note 4} Misc. Books 95, fo. 78.

^{page 11 note 1} House of Commons Committee Reports, i. 524.Google Scholar At that time the Pipe Office was also in Gray's Inn.

^{page 11 note 2} Misc. 35/19.

^{page 11 note 3} Ibid., fos. 39, 80: Entry Books of Orders 5, fos. 125, 161.

^{page 11 note 4} Misc. Books 97, fo. 100v. There was the usual collection of linen, canvas and leather bags, wicker cases, pixes, chests and hutches in which the records reposed. Some large chests which existed already in 1400 were scrapped only at the beginning of last century.

^{page 12 note 1} Obs. 520.

^{page 12 note 2} Ayloffe's chief single monument is his compilation known as ‘Great Ayloffe’. For some account of him see Selby, W. D., Lancashire and Cheshire Records (Lancs, and Chesh. Ree. Soc. 7) xiii ff.Google Scholar

^{page 12 note 3} Farley is of course known for his later work on Domesday.

^{page 12 note 4} Obs. 510, 509.

^{page 13 note 1} The calendars are on the open shelves at the P.R.O.

^{page 13 note 2} Jenkinson, H., Manual (new edn.), p. 236.Google Scholar

^{page 13 note 3} Ducatus Lancastrie. It contains calendars of the Duchy inquisitions post mortem, the pleadings in the Duchy Court (Henry VII—Eliz.), and depositions (Hen. VII—Philip and Mary).

^{page 13 note 4} This and most of the succeeding paragraphs are based on material in the Duchy office.

^{page 14 note 1} While with the Duchy he was allowed to carry on a lucrative business as record agent.

^{page 14 note 2} The Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster and the Office of Woods sought exemption for their records, although both Duchies had been recognised as offices of state in the reports of 1800 and 1837.

^{page 14 note 3} P.R.O. Correspondence 27, 15 June 1863.

^{page 15 note 1} Records of Halton honor were presented by the Duchy (Deputy Keeper's Thirty-ninth Report, 1878Google Scholar) and there were further transfers to P.R.O. in 1920.

^{page 15 note 2} The dust was admitted, but it was claimed that the documents in Lancaster castle were free from damp.

^{page 15 note 3} First Report of Royal Commission on Public Records, ii. 19.Google Scholar Doubts on the application of the 1852 order in council had apparently been resolved, and this warrant was then unique in placing in the custody of the master of the rolls records of courts not specified in the 1838 act.

^{page 16 note 1} E.g. the auditor's valors are distributed among three distinct classes.

^{page 16 note 2} They have other uses too. A valuable clue to the dates of many of the maps and plans is overlooked in the List and Index, and almost irretrievably lost in the rearranged numbering of the modern combined list. The first 102 items are taken straight out of the 1752 Repertory, which reproduced Ayloffe's list made up probably before 1700. A return made by the Clerk of the Council to the Record Commissioners in 1832 contains much detailed information on the Duchy records.

^{page 16 note 3} It was the north-east tower in Fetter Lane.

^{page 16 note 4} See p. 5, note 3.

^{page 16 note 5} First Report, iii. 107, 141, 138 ff.Google Scholar

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