Catalogue description Records of Equity Side: the Six Clerks

The later 'six clerks' were in origin the clerks subordinate to the master of the rolls in matters dealing with the preparation and safe-keeping of Chancery enrolments. Their subsidiary activities, however, included acting as attorneys for parties appearing before the court of Chancery, and, with the rapid expansion of equitable suits from the late fourteenth century onwards, these clerkships came to be the principal conduit of this type of business. Consequently, the records prepared by the six clerks (sometimes called 'prothonotaries'), or passing through their hands, constitute the main source of information about most equitable suits in Chancery.

The procedure was reasonably standardised, and changed little over the centuries except for a secular tendency to increased convolution and verbosity (in the late eighteenth century John Wesley complained of '42 pages in large folio to tell a story which need not have taken up 40 lines'). The plaintiff presented a petition or bill, addressed to the chancellor, detailing the grievance and praying for relief; the defendant submitted an answer, rebutting the plaintiff's case; the plaintiff submitted a replication in response to the answer and the defendant, in his turn, a rejoinder. These written pleadings might be supplemented by exhibits in the form of deeds, accounts, or other documents.

The six clerks received and filed all these pleadings, and entered memoranda of them in books, from which they were to certify to the court, as occasion should require, the state of the proceedings in the various causes. All the records in the office of the six clerks remained in their respective studies for the space of six terms, in order that the sworn clerks might resort to them when necessary without fee; after that time they were sorted into bundles and deposited in the record room.

The business of the six clerks was enormous; from their first appearance they were expected to have subordinate clerks to assist them, and in time this body of subordinates grew, and became officially recognised. From being employees at will of the six clerks personally, from 1596 the under-clerks became officers of the court in their own right, taking an oath of office and thus becoming known as 'sworn clerks'. The number of sworn clerks was fixed, under James I, at a maximum of eight for each of the six clerks, but pressure and practice soon increased the maximum to ten, and in 1668 this higher number was officially recognised, and thenceforward they were known as the 'sixty clerks', each of whom had to have served a seven-year apprenticeship, thus implying a yet further level of junior clerks supporting their seniors.

Although the six clerks eventually delegated some of their business entirely - by the early seventeenth century there were separate offices handling their previous duties of filing affidavits and bills and answers - they managed to maintain and increase their bureaucratic functions in Chancery. In particular, the six clerks kept their notional responsibility for examining and conducting all process in equity suits, and derived huge fees because of the ostensible need to supply excessively verbose and elaborate copies of all proceedings to litigants and the court. Not until 1842, with the general reform of court practices, were the offices of the six clerks abolished, and even then the incumbents were compensated from public funds. The effective work, meanwhile, was transferred to the clerk of records and writs.