Definition
Latin. Literally "persons of the king's household." A historical English legal term designating the officers who served as the Six Clerks of Chancery — senior administrative officers of the Court of Chancery responsible for filing and enrolling proceedings and supervising the work of the junior clerks beneath them. The title reflects the ancient fiction that these officers were members of the royal household, a conception rooted in the early medieval period when the Chancery functioned as an arm of the king's personal administration rather than an independent court.
Why It Matters in Research
This term will appear in historical English legal sources, particularly those treating the organization and procedure of the Court of Chancery before the abolition of the Six Clerks' Office in 1842. Researchers encountering familiares regis in primary sources should understand it as an institutional title, not a general descriptor of royal retainers or courtiers. The phrase could plausibly be read either way without context, and conflating it with the broader class of royal household servants will produce misdirection.
The term's relevance is almost entirely historical. Following the abolition of the Six Clerks by the Court of Chancery Act 1842, the office ceased to exist and the designation passed out of practical legal use entirely. Any corpus material using familiares regis after the mid-nineteenth century is likely either antiquarian commentary or historical recapitulation rather than operative legal text.
Researchers working on the history of English equity procedure, Chancery administration, or the evolution of the clerical and bureaucratic infrastructure of English courts will find this term a useful anchor point for the older organizational structure of Chancery. The Latin phrase also appears transliterated in early French legal sources as familier de la chauncery — Burrill records this form and attributes it to Kelham's glossary — which may matter when navigating Year Books or Anglo-Norman legal records.
Cross-reference the Six Clerks carefully: they were not the Clerks of the Crown, the Masters in Chancery, or the Six Clerks' subordinate sworn clerks (also called the "sixty clerks"), all of which are distinct offices that appear in overlapping historical sources.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries converge closely. Black's (both editions), Bouvier's, and Burrill all define familiares regis as "persons of the king's household" and identify the term as the ancient title of the Six Clerks of Chancery, citing the same underlying authorities: Crabb's History of English Law at page 184 and Reeves's History of English Law at volume 2, pages 249 and 251. The agreement across sources reflects that all draw from the same mid-nineteenth century historical legal scholarship rather than from independent investigation.
Burrill adds one piece of information the others omit: the Anglo-Norman equivalent familier de la chauncery, drawn from Kelham's dictionary of Norman French — a useful navigational note for researchers working in pre-modern sources. No source provides detail about the actual functions of the Six Clerks or the procedural mechanics of their office; for that, researchers must go directly to Crabb or Reeves, or to the parliamentary materials surrounding the 1842 abolition.
None of the dictionary entries situate the term in the broader transformation of Chancery from a royal secretariat into an independent equity court — a limitation of their format rather than any error. The term makes most sense when understood against that institutional history.
Jurisdictional Note
Familiares regis is a term of English legal history with no direct counterpart in American, Scottish, or colonial legal systems. It does not appear in any operative American legal context and is irrelevant outside the history of the English Court of Chancery.