Matching chirographs.- Court of the Common Bench, Westminster, Matching chirographs of Final Agreement made in front of justices Oliver St., John Edward Atkyns, Matthew Hale and Hugh Wyndham, between William Fletcher and Henry Tooker & Elizabeth his wife in respect of "one mesuage one cottage three barnes one Douehouse two gardens two orchards, one hundred & forty acres of land tenn acres of meadows thirty acres of pasture & twenty acres of wood w[i]th the appurten[e]nces in Clothall", manuscript in English on vellum, 4to, 1654.
⁂ The documents arise out of a fictitious lawsuit over land between the parties which they could settle in a "Finall agreement" which contained the agreed ownership of the land in question (the 'fine') and was recorded in the archives of the court. The court would provide each party with a chirograph of the agreement cut from the same document to prevent forgery and a third copy was retained by the court. These documents are both of the chirographs of Fletcher and Tooker which fit together at their heads to prove they are the originals issued by the court. It is exceptionally rare to find two matching chirographs.
The practice existed from the early thirteenth century until it was abolished in 1833.
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