Chancery Files, Tower Series, Recognizances

Recognizances or bonds made in Chancery by one or more sureties, occasionally on a personal surety alone, undertaking that a named person or persons will carry out the detailed terms of the bond, commonly under pain of a specified penalty for failure to comply.

The recognizances cover a variety of topics. As part of keeping the peace, many persons were bound over to be of good behaviour towards specified persons and the procedure could equally well be more general in forbidding a man to indulge in convocations or assemblies.

Recognizances were also used to enforce legislation, and occasionally politics were involved, as in the personal bond entered into to be faithful and loyal to Richard II while he was in Ireland and to raise no insurrection against him.

Most of these records were formerly included in C 47 and C 202