Definition
An officer of the English crown court, serving as an assistant to the clerk of assize, whose duties centered on the administration of criminal proceedings on circuit. The Clerk of Arraigns was responsible for managing the formal arraignment process — calling defendants to the bar, reading indictments, recording pleas, and maintaining the record of crown court proceedings during assize sittings. The role was a subordinate but operationally essential position within the assize court structure, handling the procedural mechanics of criminal business while the clerk of assize held overall responsibility.
---
Common Confusion
CLERK OF ARRAIGNS vs. CLERK OF ASSIZE: These are not interchangeable titles. The clerk of assize was the principal officer of the assize court; the clerk of arraigns was a subordinate assistant specifically assigned to crown (criminal) side duties. Researchers encountering both titles in historical records should not assume they refer to the same individual or the same functions. Bouvier's entry compounds the confusion by running the clerk of arraigns definition directly into an entry for "clerk, articled" — a completely unrelated term — without a clean break, which can mislead a casual reader into conflating the two.
---
Why It Matters in Research
This is a historical English office with no direct American counterpart and no modern survival in its original form. The English assize courts were abolished by the Courts Act 1971, which replaced them with the Crown Court. With that structural change, the office of clerk of arraigns ceased to exist as a distinct role. Researchers should be aware of several navigational points:
The term appears almost exclusively in pre-1972 English legal records, assize calendars, and treatises on English criminal procedure. American sources will rarely use this title, and when they do, it is typically in comparative or historical context only.
The function of the clerk of arraigns — managing arraignment procedure and plea entry — is now distributed across Crown Court administrative staff. When tracing the procedural lineage of arraignment mechanics in English law, this office is a meaningful link in the chain but should not be read as equivalent to any single modern role.
Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus may encounter this term in older English criminal procedure materials, historical commentaries, or sources discussing the assize system. It connects most directly to the broader machinery of the assizes and the formal requirements of arraignment as a procedural step. Any source using this title was written before 1972, which is a useful dating signal when provenance is otherwise unclear.
The Bouvier's entry is notably unreliable here: the definition is truncated and flows without separation into an unrelated entry (clerk, articled), suggesting a typographical or editorial error in the source. Do not rely on Bouvier's alone for this term.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary identifies the clerk of arraigns as an English office, an assistant to the clerk of assize, with duties in the crown court on circuit. This is accurate as far as it goes but offers minimal operational detail.
Bouvier's entry is practically unusable for research purposes. The definition begins with a partial sentence ("An assistant of the clerk of assize") and immediately runs into the unrelated entry for "clerk, articled" without completing the description of the clerk of arraigns. This appears to be a typesetting or editorial failure in the source edition. Bouvier's cross-references Byrne's Law Dictionary for the underlying definition, suggesting that even Bouvier's compiler was relying on a secondary source rather than independent analysis.
Neither dictionary provides meaningful detail about the clerk of arraigns' specific procedural duties, their appointment, their relationship to the judiciary on circuit, or how the role interacted with grand jury proceedings and indictment management. Researchers needing fuller treatment should look to historical works on English assize procedure and the administrative history of the crown courts rather than these dictionary entries.
---
Jurisdictional Note
This office was specific to England and Wales under the pre-1972 assize court system. It has no equivalent in Scottish, Irish, or American court structures. The office was extinguished by the Courts Act 1971 (England and Wales) when the assizes were replaced by the unified Crown Court.
---
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Arraignment and Entry of Plea — The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia
Courts-Martial Procedure: Investigation (Article 32), Arraignment, Trial, and Sentencing — The Law Mind Military, Veterans & Admiralty Law Encyclopedia
---