<<I have acquired some of these acts of parliament for the 1700s. They relate to family settlements of real and personal estates and are a fertile source of genealogical information. Does anyone know why it was necessary to use parliament?>> Hello Keith, Acts of Parliament were used when somone wanted to do something which the general law did not allow to be done. For example, a family settlement created a couple of generations earlier might be preventing the current head of the family from selling the family estate (which of course was exactly what the settlement had been designed to do) - he could get round that by obtaining a private Act empowering him to sell notwithstanding the settlement. Matt Tompkins Blaston, Leics