Definition
Clerici de cancellaria (Latin: "clerks of the chancery") refers to the body of clerks who staffed the English Court of Chancery, the royal office responsible for issuing writs and conducting the administrative and judicial functions that developed under the Lord Chancellor. These clerks performed the clerical and procedural work of the Chancery, including the drafting and engrossment of writs, the recording of proceedings, and the authentication of official documents issued under the Great Seal. The term encompasses the various grades and offices of clerks that evolved within the Chancery from the medieval period onward.
Common Confusion
Clerici de cancellaria should not be confused with clerici prænotarii, a more specific designation referring to the Six Clerks in Chancery — the principal filing and record officers of the Court of Chancery who held a distinct and elevated office within the same institution. The broader term clerici de cancellaria denotes the general body of Chancery clerks; the prænotarii were a formalized, smaller subset with defined statutory and customary duties. Both Black's and Burrill's note the prænotarii separately, signaling that the two designations were understood as distinct in English legal usage.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
The historical sources point to at least two recognized categories within the broader class of Chancery clerks:
Clerici Prænotarii (the Six Clerks in Chancery): The senior clerks who maintained the formal records of the Court of Chancery, received pleadings, and supervised the under-clerks (the Sixty Clerks). Their office was ancient, formalized by practice and later statute, and was abolished in the nineteenth-century reforms of the Chancery.
Clerici de Prima Forma: Referenced in Burrill as a related designation, indicating a further internal gradation among Chancery clerks based on rank or function, though Burrill's entry is fragmentary on this point.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter clerici de cancellaria primarily in medieval and early modern English legal sources — Year Books, Chancery records, and statutory materials — where the Latin designation appears without further explanation. Three practical points bear emphasis.
First, the statutory anchor: Burrill cites the Statute of Westminster II (1285), chapter 24, as a foundational text referencing these clerks directly. Any researcher tracing the institutional history of the Chancery or the writ system in the thirteenth century should treat that statute as a primary source for the clerks' defined role.
Second, the maxim connection: Black's entry pairs the term with the maxim clerici non ponantur in officiis — "clergymen should not be placed in [secular] offices" — reflecting the historical reality that Chancery clerks were frequently in holy orders. This is not incidental. For much of the medieval period, the Chancery was staffed by ecclesiastics, and the overlap between clerical (religious) status and clerical (administrative) function is a persistent source of ambiguity in historical sources. A researcher reading medieval documents must be alert to whether "clericus" signals religious or administrative role, or both.
Third, the reform gap: The office of clerici de cancellaria, in its various forms, was substantially reorganized and eventually abolished through the nineteenth-century restructuring of the English courts, particularly under the Chancery Amendment Act 1852 and the broader Judicature Acts. Sources written before those reforms assume an institutional structure that ceased to exist. Post-reform secondary sources may use the term historically without flagging that the office itself was gone.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary treats the term briefly, defining it as "clerks of the chancery" and immediately appending the related maxim and the separate entry for clerici prænotarii, suggesting Black's editors viewed the term primarily as a gateway to those connected concepts rather than as a self-standing subject. The entry is minimal and largely translational.
Burrill's Law Dictionary is more informative, citing the Statute of Westminster II directly and signaling the existence of the subcategory clerici de prima forma, though the entry as preserved is incomplete. Burrill's citation practice is valuable here: it gives researchers a statutory hook that Black's omits entirely.
Neither dictionary addresses the institutional evolution of the clerkship structure, the distinction between the ecclesiastical and lay character of the clerks across different periods, or the abolition of the offices in the nineteenth century. For that history, researchers must move beyond the dictionary shelf to sources such as Reeve's History of the English Law (cited in Black's for the related prænotarii entry) and the primary Chancery records held at the National Archives.
The two dictionaries agree on the core translation and general function but diverge in depth: Burrill situates the term in a statutory context; Black's situates it in a doctrinal and maxim context. Used together, they triangulate the term's institutional and legal significance more fully than either does alone.
Jurisdictional Note
Clerici de cancellaria is exclusively an English legal institution with no direct American counterpart. American courts of equity developed their own clerk and master structures independently, and the Latin designation does not appear in American legal usage except in historical or comparative contexts.