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The list provided for under section 5 of the Act of Anne, 1708, naming the individuals attached to diplomatic missions (including personal servants of the ambassador) on whom it was a criminal offence to attempt to initiate legal proceedings, typically for debt. It was known as ‘the Sheriffs’ List’ because although compiled in the office of one of the principal secretaries of state it then had to be ‘transmitted to the sheriffs of London and Middlesex for the time being, or their under sheriffs or deputies, who shall, upon the receipt thereof, hang up the same in some publick place in their offices, whereto all persons may resort, and take copies thereof, without fee or reward’. The Sheriffs’ List was thus the original London Diplomatic List, and this List still carried this eighteenth century title until the early 1960s, even though it was by this time generally referred to orally as ‘the London Diplomatic List’. The offence created by the Act of Anne was abolished by the Diplomatic Privileges Act passed by the United Kingdom parliament in 1964, and in the same year the Sheriffs’ List was formally restyled ‘The London Diplomatic List’. |
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