Legal documents, 1325-1819

Component identifier:

Series 1

Content Summary:

This series comprises 111 fragments of legal documents listed in chronological order. The description of each item includes the following information, where available: the language of the document, type of document, where the document was created, some detail about the content, and the names of people involved. The range of document types includes: deeds of gift, recoveries, leases, marriage settlements, bonds, apprenticeship indentures, quitclaims, financial accounts, letters, and an indenture relating to Drury Lane Theatre. There is also a large group of documents relating particularly to the Elliott family of Salisbury dating from 1561 to 1785.

In 1978 the Library contacted the Public Records Office, London, to enquire about the possible provenance of documents in the collection which appear to be estrays from the Court of Wards. A response was received from C.J. Kitching advising ‘It was very common in the 16th century for court officials to take away the papers of their office, and estrays from collections otherwise represented among the public records continue to turn up from time to time’.

Please note that information in the description of individual items is as transcribed from the documents and replicates the very idiosyncratic spellings of those times, often with different spellings of the same word within the same document. For instance Portsmouthe and Portsmouth or the name ‘Elliott’, which is also spelt variously Eliot, Ellyot, Ellyott, Eliatt and Ellyatt.

Note: more detailed descriptions of the items in this series including expanded texts, some transcriptions and translations of texts, paleographic features, and notes can be found in Barbara Ross’s guide, a PDF copy of which is held at series 4. Each item listed in this series includes in its description a page location reference for further information about that item within this guide.

Immediate source of acquisition:

The documents in this collection were presented to the National Library of Australia by Sir Rex Nan Kivell in 1969. He referred to it as ‘The Nan Kivell Calligraphy Collection’. The documents were collected by him as specimens of early calligraphy and/or examples of early documentation. He acquired them over a number of years from varied sources which were not recorded. However, it seems likely that the group of legal documents in Series 1 relating to the Elliott family of Salisbury would have a single provenance. Nan Kivell had a country house in Devizes, Wiltshire, which is only a short distance from Salisbury.

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