Fonds GB 0210 CGREATS - Court of Great Sessions in Wales,

The main records of the court are: (1) civil side: plea rolls which is the formal record of civil actions, mainly debt, but from around 1700 only those actions which reached issue - an extremely small proportion in fact; docket rolls and books which serve as indexes to the plea rolls; prothonotary files which include draft pleadings, including those which did not reach issue, challenge pedigrees, insolvent debtors' papers and slander and libel papers where a defendant had moved for a writ a prohibition to halt the action being heard in the consistory court; feet of fines and common recoveries which are indexed in docket books of fines and recoveries and, for the Brecon circuit only, in the docket books of pleas and fines; and order books, which is a formal records of the court's orders in both civil and criminal cases; (2) Crown side: gaol files which include indictments, depositions of witnesses, recognizances, calendars of prisoners and coroner's inquests; indexes to criminal prosecutions for Flintshire (called Crown books, 1564-1666) and the Brecon circuit (called the Black Books, 1726-1830) though the order books already referred to contain formal records of orders to carry out sentences or to discharge prisoners; calendars rolls of indictments for Radnorshire, 1554-1659, Glamorgan, 1554-1603, Cardiganshire, 1541-1602, and Pembrokeshire, 1541-1622, 1674; and mainprize rolls (only six have survived) which list names of individuals bound over from one sessions until the next for an indefinite period; (3) equity side: pleadings of complainant and defendants together with interrogatories or set questions submitted to witnesses together with their replies; reports of the registrar of the court, decree books and bill books, the latter serving as indexes to the pleadings.