Petty Bag Office - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition petty-bag-office

Definition :

Petty-bag Office, an office belonging to the Common Law jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery, for suits for and against solicitors and officers of that Court, and for process and proceedings by extents on statutes, recognizances, ad quod damnum scire facias to repel letters-patent, etc., Termes de la Ley. The term is derived from the little bag (parva baga) in which original writs relating to the business of the Crown were anciently kept.

By the Great Seal Offices Abolition Act, 1884, s. 5, provision was made for the abolition of the office of Clerk of the Petty Bag, and the transfer of his duties, and in 1888, the last holder of the office dying, it ceased to exist.

The Common Law jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery is now transferred to the High Court of Justice [(English) Jud. Act, 1925, s. 18(2)(b)], replacing (English) Jud. Act, 1873, s. 16).

Pew [fr. puye, Dut.; appui, Fr.], an enclosed seat in a church. It is some what in the nature of an heirloom, and may descend by immemorial custom, without any ecclesiastical concurrence, from an ancestor to his heir. Consult Cripps's Law of the Church and Clergy, 5th Edn., 467.

The right to sit in a particular pew in the church arises either from prescription, as appurtenant to a messuage--but not to land, Philipps v. Halliday, 1891 AC 228, or from a faculty or grant from the ordinary, for he has the disposition of all pews, which are not claimed by prescription. As to the proof of a right by prscription and the doping of repairs, see Stileman-Gibbara v. Wilkinson, (1897) 1 QB 749, and see Bathurst (Earl) v. Cirencester Parish, 1921 P. 381. All other pews and seats in the body of a church are the property of the parish; and the churchwardens, as the officers of the ordinary, and subject to his control, have authority to place the parishioners therein. See 3 Steph. Com.; Carson's R.P. Stat., p. 98; 3 Hagg. Ec. Rep. 733; Reynolds v. Monckton, (1841) 2 M&Rob 384.

The New Parishes Act, 1856, s. 6, provides for pew-rents in district churches, but also that one half of the whole number of pews or sittings shall be free sittings; the New Perishs Acts and Church Building Acts Amendment Act, 1869, that pews or sittings which are subject to any trust or are private property may be surrendered to the bishop and become 'subject to the same laws as to all rights and property therein as the pews and sittings of ancient parish churches'; and by the Church Seats Act, 1872, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners may accept a church site under a grant declaring that the pews or part of them shall not be let. A mortgage of pew rents by the vicar of a district church is void under the Act 13 Eliz. c. 20 (Ex parte Arrowsmith, (1878) 8 Ch D 96). See Chitty's Statutes, tit. 'Church and Clergy.'