Clerk of the Signet

Last updated

The Clerks of the Signet were English officials who played an intermediate role in the passage of letters patent through the seals. For most of the history of the position, four clerks were in office simultaneously.

Letters patent prepared by the Clerk of the Patents were engrossed at the Patent Office and then sent by the Secretary of State to receive the royal sign-manual. The duty of the Clerks of the Signet was to compare the signed bills with a transcript prepared by the Clerk of the Patents, and then to rewrite the transcript as a bill of privy signet, which was returned to the Secretary of State to be signed with that instrument. [1]

By the end of the seventeenth centuries, many of the Clerks of the Signet performed their work through deputies, with the office itself becoming a sinecure. The Treasury was given the authority to reduce the number of clerkships in 1832, abolishing one in 1833 and another in 1846. The two remaining posts were done away with in 1851. [2]

List of Clerks of the Signet

The history of these earlier Signets in the medieval period is not recorded by the table below.

DateOneTwoThreeFour
Early Modern to Later Modern Clerks of the Signet
1509 Brian Tuke
1523 Thomas Derbey UnknownUnknownUnknown
1530 Thomas Wriothesley
1532 William Paget
bef. 1537 John Godsalve
2 October 1539John Huttoft
14 April 1540Thomas Knight
1541Richard Taverner
bef. 1544 William Honing
bef. 1545William or Gregory Railton. [5]
1547/55Nicasius YetsweirtJohn Cliffe
30 October 1561 John Somer
December 1569Sir Thomas Windebank
1578/89Sir John WoodCharles Yetsweirt
9 March 1589 Sir Thomas Lake
23 December 1595Nicholas Faunt
24 October 1607Levinus Munck
1608Francis Gall
5 September 1610 Francis Windebank
13 January 1616Robert Kirkham
27 May 1623Sir Humphrey May
9 June 1630John More
15 June 1632Sir Abraham Williams
1638Edward NorgatePhilip Warwick
1641/5 Sir Thomas Windebanke, 1st Baronet

Appointments were not made under the Commonwealth of England until 1655 as the republic did not recognise hereditary house of Lords, so peerages were not created.

Appointments resumed upon the Restoration in 1660, including two of the former officeholders, Warwick and Windebanke.

DateOneTwoThreeFour
1660 Sir Philip Warwick Sir Thomas Windebanke, 1st Baronet William Trumbull Sir John Nicholas
bet. 1674–1678Sidney Bere
1678 Nicholas Morice
15 January 1683 Sir William Trumbull
1684 John Gauntlett
9 February 1705William Cooke
25 August 1708 Joseph Moyle
18 February 1716Hon. Peter Alexander
2 October 1716Gauntlet Fry
28 May 1728 Charles Delafaye
Thomas Delafaye
13 November 1729 Edward Weston
7 May 1736 Sir Joseph Copley, 1st Baronet
22 May 1746 William Blair
1747 Charles Delafaye
22 December 1762James Rivers
15 July 1770Montagu Wilkinson
16 April 1781John Tirel Morin
4 March 1782 William Fraser
June 1797Eardley Wilmot
24 January 1801 Sir Brook Taylor
11 December 1802William Harry Edward Bentinck
19 March 1807John Gage
30 October 1807Thomas Norton Powlett
26 February 1825Alexander Cockburn
8 May 1826 Augustus Granville Stapleton
1831abolished
15 October 1846abolished
26 January 1847Charles Samuel Grey
7 August 1851Office abolished

Related Research Articles

The Lord High Chancellor of Ireland was the highest judicial office in Ireland until the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922. From 1721 to the end of 1800, it was also the highest political office of the Irish Parliament: the Chancellor was Speaker of the Irish House of Lords. The Lord Chancellor was also Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of Ireland. In all three respects, the office mirrored the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Privy seal</span> Personal seal of a reigning monarch

A privy seal is the personal seal of a reigning monarch, used to authenticate official documents of a personal nature, in contrast to a great seal, which is used for documents of greater importance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lord Clerk Register</span> Scottish Great Officer of State

The office of Lord Clerk Register is the oldest remaining Great Officer of State in Scotland, with origins in the 13th century. It historically had important functions in relation to the maintenance and care of the public records of Scotland. Today these duties are administered by the Keeper of the National Records of Scotland and the Keeper of the Registers of Scotland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oliver King</span> 15th and 16th-century Bishop of Bath and Wells

Oliver King was a Bishop of Exeter and Bishop of Bath and Wells who restored Bath Abbey after 1500.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clerk of the Crown in Chancery</span> Senior British civil servant

The Clerk of the Crown in Chancery in Great Britain is a senior civil servant who is the head of the Crown Office.

The Treasurer of the Chamber was at various points a position in the British royal household.

A fiant was a writ issued to the Irish Chancery mandating the issue of letters patent under the Great Seal of Ireland. The name fiant comes from the opening words of the document, Fiant litterae patentes, Latin for "Let letters patent be made". Fiants were typically issued by the chief governor of Ireland, under his privy seal; or sealed by the Secretary of State, who served as "Keeper of the Privy Seal of Ireland", just as the English Secretary of State did in England. Fiants dealt with matters ranging from appointments to high office and important government activities, to grants of pardons to the humblest of the native Irish. Fiants relating to early modern Ireland are an important primary source for the period for historians and genealogists. The Tudor fiants were especially numerous, many relating to surrender and regrant. A fiant often provides more information than the ensuing letters patent recorded on patent rolls. There are also fiants for which the patent roll does not list any letters patent, either because none were issued or because those issued were never enrolled, through accident or abuse. Prior to the Act of Explanation 1665, letters patent were enrolled after they were granted; under the act, the fiant was enrolled first, and the letters issued afterwards. Thereafter the rolls, which were catalogued in the 19th century, give the same information as the original fiants.

William Honnyng (1520–1569) was an English Member of Parliament and Tudor Court official who served as Clerk of the Signet and Clerk of the Privy Council under Henry VIII and Edward VI.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Secretary of State (England)</span> Appointed position in the English government

In the Kingdom of England, the title of Secretary of State came into being near the end of the reign of Elizabeth I, the usual title before that having been King's Clerk, King's Secretary, or Principal Secretary.

John Frowyk was an English-born cleric and judge in fourteenth-century Ireland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas de Thelwall</span>

Thomas de Thelwall was an English judge and Crown official who spent part of his career in Ireland, where he held office as Master of the Rolls in Ireland and Clerk to the Privy Council of Ireland. He was Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster 1377–78.

Robert de Holywood was an Irish judge and landowner who held the office of Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer. He was the ancestor of the Holywood family of Artane Castle, and of the St. Lawrence family, Earls of Howth. He was a substantial landowner with property in Dublin, Meath and Louth. He became extremely unpopular, and was removed from office after numerous complaints of "oppression and extortion" were made against him. These were apparently inspired ĺargely by his close association in the mid-1370s with Sir William de Windsor, the embattled Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

William Hatteclyffe, sometimes spelt in other ways, such as Hattclyff, Hatcliff, and even Atcliff, was an English physician, diplomat, and King's Secretary.

The Great Seal of Ireland was the seal used until 1922 by the Dublin Castle administration to authenticate important state documents in Ireland, in the same manner as the Great Seal of the Realm in England. The Great Seal of Ireland was used from at least the 1220s in the Lordship of Ireland and the ensuing Kingdom of Ireland, and remained in use when the island became part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1801–1922), just as the Great Seal of Scotland remained in use after the Act of Union 1707. After 1922, the single Great Seal of Ireland was superseded by the separate Great Seal of the Irish Free State and Great Seal of Northern Ireland for the respective jurisdictions created by the partition of Ireland.

Sir John Nicholas was an English courtier and Member of Parliament.

The Clerk of the Crown and Hanaper was a civil servant within the Irish Chancery in the Dublin Castle administration. His duties corresponded to the offices of Clerk of the Crown and Clerk of the Hanaper in the English Chancery. Latterly, the office's most important functions were to issue writs of election to the Westminster Parliament, both for the House of Commons and for Irish representative peer in the House of Lords.

Baron Galtrim was an Irish feudal barony which was hereditary in the Hussey family. The holder of the barony was entitled to style himself Lord Galtrim, but was not entitled as of right to sit in the Irish House of Lords, although at least two holders of the title did receive a summons to sit in Parliament, and a third sat in the House of Commons. The title was created in the late fourteenth century by summons to Parliament.

Annette Jocelyn Otway-Ruthven was an Irish historian specialising in medieval Irish history, and was among the earliest female academics appointed in Trinity College Dublin.

Edward Dantsey or Dauntsey was a fifteenth-century Bishop of Meath, who also held high political office in Ireland, serving as Lord High Treasurer of Ireland and twice as Deputy to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. In a curious episode in 1426, he was wrongfully charged with theft, but acquitted.

Stephen Roche was an Irish Crown official and Law Officer. He held office as Attorney-General for Ireland and was a member of the Privy Council of Ireland.

References

  1. Andrews, Charles McLean (1912). Guide to the Materials for American History, to 1783 v. 1. Carnegie Institution of Washington. pp. 268–273. Retrieved 2008-08-30.
  2. "Lists of appointments". Office-Holders in Modern Britain: Volume 2: Officials of the Secretaries of State 1660-1782 (1973). pp. 22–58. Retrieved 2008-08-30.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Otway-Ruthven, J. The King's Secretary and the Signet Office in the XV Century.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Otway-Ruthven, J. The King's Secretary and the Signet Office in the XV Century. p. 159.
  5. Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1560–1563, 2 (London: HMSO, 1948), p. 100
Bibliography