Catalogue description Records of the Equity Side: Chancery Masters

In the course of the thirteenth century, and possibly before, the chancellor gathered round him a body of senior clerks who advised him on the whole range of administrative and, in particular, legal issues which came before him. By the time of Edward I, these senior clerks, though varying in number from time to time and varying too in title, formed a recognised group within Chancery, who reviewed petitions and other cases which came to the chancellor, and advised him accordingly.

The Chancery ordinances of 1388-89, being issued 'by the chancellor... and by the twelve clerks of the first grade', make clear both the settled number of such clerks and their effective status as conjoint (but not equal) arbiters of Chancery practice. These twelve clerks generally (though in medieval times not invariably) included the master of the rolls, and on occasion the clerk of the Hanaper.

The twelve 'masters' - so called from 1375 at the latest - were augmented in the sixteenth century and later by 'masters extraordinary', who carried out certain similar duties, when required, at distances above ten miles from London; but the 'masters in ordinary' formed a discrete professional cadre, with a degree of collegiate existence (all being in holy orders until the Reformation) and a status beyond all the other Chancery clerks.

This status commanded commensurate fees, so that the office was lucrative and the purchase of it expensive. Masters in Chancery were appointed by the Crown, until Edward IV granted the chancellor the right to appoint eleven (i.e. excepting the master of the rolls), a right which the chancellor retained until 1833. From 1661 onwards the masters were required by statute to maintain a public office near the courts of law.

The duties of the Chancery masters, though various, fell for the most part into three categories. In the first place, they were in theory responsible for overseeing the drafting of original writs. While this may have been an onerous duty in the thirteenth century, when the proliferation of common law writs was at its height, the gradual standardisation of the forms of action upon original writ meant that by the fourteenth century almost all writs were in common form and could be left to the routine attention of the cursitors; only in exceptional cases were the masters expected to advise or supervise.

Second, the masters attended Parliament, where they sometimes acted as triers of petitions, or else as less formal but expert advisers to the chancellor, reviewing the content of petitions and contributing to the responses; in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries they must have been somewhat akin to parliamentary draftsmen.

Thirdly, and most importantly in terms of volume of business, the Chancery masters had crucial and elaborate roles in the procedures of Chancery's equitable jurisdiction. Their basic function was to report to the court - in effect, to the chancellor - on matters referred to them by the court, but this encompassed a variety of subsidiary procedures.

Until the end of the sixteenth century, they examined witnesses in cases pending before the court. They heard and reported on queries relating to procedure in particular cases. They heard answers and affidavits sworn in Chancery, and they took the acknowledgements of deeds and recognisances intended to be enrolled. They took custody of exhibits entered by parties to cases, and (when so required) reported upon the implications of the exhibits as evidences in the cases.

They also, on occasion, took custody of funds in court, although they were technically not accountable for them, as was discovered in 1725 when unauthorised investment of funds in court (in effect, fraudulent conversion) was brought to light when the South Sea Bubble burst. They might make enquiries into facts in dispute, although by the early sixteenth century this was often delegated to lay commissioners appointed ad hoc.

All these processes were calculated to inform the court when cases came to issue. Unfortunately, the elaboration of the system and its financial value to the masters (and others) provided a process vastly more bureaucratic and expensive than was either necessary or just to litigants; each master, for example, executed the orders of reference made to him independently of the other masters, and filed the process separately.

Yet the power of vested interests successfully blocked reforms until the nineteenth century, when Chancery's traditional structures were slowly dismantled. In particular, the inefficiency of referring causes, or aspects of causes, to and fro between judges and masters was at last regarded as inequitable, and in consequence the reforms included the abolition of the Chancery masters (except for the master of the rolls) in 1852. Under new organisation and new regulation, the Chancery judges were thenceforward assisted by two 'chief clerks', although their underlying functions remained sufficiently continuous for these chief clerks to be renamed 'masters of the Supreme Court' in 1896.