The series contains eleven sixteenth-century court books recording proceedings at sessions of the court leet and view of frankpledge for the barony of Dunham Massey, 1533/4-82 (EGR2/1/4/1-11). Sessions include the freeholders' great inquest, the great inquest for Dunham, the great inquest for Hale, and sessions held to hear pleas between parties. All the court books are drafts that appear to have been compiled during proceedings of the court, in a rough, cursive hand. The record of each court is set out in broadly the same format as in the parchment court rolls (EGR2/1/3 above), and it is likely that the information was later copied into parchment rolls that have not survived.
The bundle also contains a court book and two bundles of verdicts, 1613-30, 1631-43 and 1663-8 (EGR2/1/4/12-14), in which the records of the separate sessions are more clearly differentiated. The verdicts adhere to a common format. The headings appear to have been drawn up in standard form before the court, with the name of the manor in the left-hand margin, and the title, date and place of the court, and the name of the steward recited in the first paragraph, followed by a list of the jurors sworn. The orders and amercements made by the jury are then recorded. Each verdict concludes with the signatures of the jurors. In some cases these may have been written up during the proceedings, but in others they appear to have been compiled afterwards and were received at the next session.
It has been suggested above (see EGR2/1/3) that at some time in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century the practice of copying the draft records of proceedings into parchment rolls was abandoned, and that from this period onwards the court books and bundles of verdicts were intended to stand as records of the court in their own right, not as preparatory drafts. Verdicts dating after 1668 for the freeholders' great inquest, the great inquest for Dunham and the great inquest for Hale are to be found in separate bundles (see EGR2/1/5-7 below).