Out of Print
Framed to introduce scholarly researchers and family historians to Chancery equity records of the early modern era, this guide is based on three years' research involving extensive sampling of the bills and answers and tracing of the course of over 570 suits.
It consists of an introduction to the development of Court of Chancery from the later fourteenth century and four substantive chapters analysing the Court's operation and records during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Chapter one describes the Court's procedure and process; chapter two analyses the range and distribution of matters litigated, the length of litigated suits, and the identity of the litigants; chapter three furnishes a class-by-class description of Chancery equity materials in the Public Record Office and their respective finding aids; chapter four offers a series of specimen searches organized on a step-by-step basis.
Also included are a glossary of terms and a bibliography of contemporary and modern works on the Court and its operation.