NRS-4560 | Rules and orders

Full description

Volume 4/7857B comprises the Rules and Orders of the Governor's Court drawn up by the Judge Advocate, Ellis Bent, before his death in 1815. In this manuscript volume there are 67 numbered rules, including those concerning the admissibility of attorneys to practise, regulations concerning the issuing and returning of writs, the keeping of court records, the execution of judgments, the giving of sureties for appearance, provisions for trial in actions where the sum sued for did not exceed £5, rules for pleading, and so forth. Each rule was given a short title which is contained in the margin.

Bent's rules remained officially in force through the Judge Advocacy of Garling and until Wylde introduced a simplified procedure in 1817, although minor changes prior to this were reported in the Sydney Gazette.

Judge Advocate Wylde's annotated printed copy of the Rules and Orders, containing additional rules in his own hand and notes on which of the original rules were "not in operation" in October 1821, is to be found in the Mitchell Library.

A small number of rough manuscript drafts of new rules, including some of those later printed in the Sydney Gazette and/or entered by Wylde in his printed copy, have been retained in a separate volume (4/7857A). Also included with these are pages 41-56 (containing rules 36-61) from the printed version and two rough drafts of proposed procedural forms.

(4/7857A-B). 2 vols.

Note:

This description is extracted from Concise Guide to the State Archives of New South Wales, 3rd Edition 2000.