Definition
An officer appointed to perform official sealing functions, with two historically distinct roles:
1. Officer in Chancery. A court officer responsible for affixing the official seal to writs and instruments issuing from the Court of Chancery. The office was a formal appointment with defined duties and, as Bouvier records, demanding conditions — the Sealer of 1798 reported perpetual attendance, no fixed hours, and no holidays. The office, along with the Deputy Sealer, the Chaff Wax, and the Deputy Chaff Wax, was abolished by the Court of Chancery Act, 1852, s. 23.
2. Inspector of weights and measures. In American administrative law and in certain statutory contexts, a sealer (often styled Sealer of Weights and Measures) is a local or county official responsible for testing, certifying, and stamping commercial weighing and measuring devices to confirm their accuracy and legal compliance.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A tool used to seal something; a person employed to seal things; a coating designed to prevent absorption into porous surfaces; in sports slang, a decisive late goal or point.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): One who seals; especially, an officer whose duty it is to seal writs or instruments, to stamp weights and measures, or the like.
Editorial note: Webster's 1913 captures both legal senses adequately, which is unusual — the dictionary definition here is not misleading. The gap worth noting is that modern common usage has drifted almost entirely toward physical sealants and tools, making the administrative officer sense invisible to researchers unfamiliar with older sources. A researcher encountering "sealer" in a nineteenth-century American municipal record should not assume the word refers to a material or tool.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Sealer of the Court of Chancery (England): The original and historically primary legal sense. A named court office, now abolished.
Deputy Sealer: The subordinate to the Chancery Sealer, abolished simultaneously under the same statutory provision.
Sealer of Weights and Measures: The surviving administrative sense, still found in American state and local government structures. This officer operates under statutory authority, typically at the county or municipal level, and holds inspection and certification powers over commercial measuring equipment.
Why It Matters in Research
The term carries two entirely separate meanings that rarely appear in the same jurisdiction or era, and conflating them will send a researcher down the wrong path entirely.
For English legal history researchers: The Chancery Sealer is an extinct office. Any reference to a Sealer in English Chancery records predates 1852. Post-1852 English sources referencing a sealer in a court context are either historical references or errors. The abolition statute — the Court of Chancery Act, 1852 (15 & 16 Vict. c. 87, s. 23) — is the clean terminus. Rapalje & Lawrence notes the same provision. Researchers in equity practice records, fee registers, or Chancery administrative documents from before 1852 may encounter the Sealer as a fee-collecting officer; his role affected the cost and timing of process.
For American legal and regulatory history researchers: The weights-and-measures sense is the operative one. American states adopted sealer offices through general inspection statutes in the nineteenth century, and many counties still maintain the position. This sealer has enforcement authority — the power to condemn non-conforming devices — and generates inspection records, compliance orders, and occasionally litigation. This officer appears in municipal codes, administrative regulations, and consumer protection enforcement history.
Corpus connection trap: In digitized historical legal materials, a search for "sealer" without date or jurisdiction filtering will return both senses indiscriminately. A reference to a sealer in an 1840 English equity filing means something categorically different from a sealer in an 1890 American county ordinance.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence and Bouvier agree on the core definition — the Chancery officer — and both cite the abolition under 15 & 16 Vict. c. 87, s. 23. Bouvier adds the period detail from the 1798 Sealer's own account of his duties: perpetual attendance, all hours, no holidays. This is one of Bouvier's characteristic inclusions of administrative color that Rapalje & Lawrence omits. The detail is not merely anecdotal; it illustrates how Chancery offices were self-described for purposes of compensation and reform advocacy, which became relevant in the broader early-nineteenth-century movement to rationalize and ultimately abolish the sinecure-laden Chancery structure.
Neither dictionary addresses the American weights-and-measures sealer in any developed way, reflecting the English orientation of both sources. Webster's 1913 is the stronger source for that sense. Researchers working in American administrative law should treat the historical law dictionaries as incomplete on this point.
Jurisdictional Note
The Chancery sealer is exclusively an English legal-historical office with no American counterpart. The weights-and-measures sealer is an American administrative phenomenon governed by state statute; the title, powers, and appointment process vary by state, and not all jurisdictions use the term "sealer" — some use "inspector" or "director of weights and measures." In England, the post-1852 successor functions were absorbed into centralized administrative structures.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Courts of Chancery (for the Chancery officer and the 1852 reform context)
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Weights and Measures Administration (for the American regulatory officer)