Six Clerks’ Office

It is possible to locate the Six Clerks’ Office on Ogilby and Morgan’s 1667 Map [o]n the west side of Chancery Lane, south of Carey Street, outside the City Boundary, opposite the Rolls (Harben 534). The location of the original Six Clerks’ Office is now where the Law Institute stands. The office was formerly the Inn of the Prior of Nocton, but around the time that it was reconstructed in 1539, it was known as Harflete Inn or Harflu Inn. Stow records the history and shifting function of the space, observing that that it was a Brewhouse, but now faire builded for the sixe Clearkes of the Chauncerie, and standeth ouer against the saide house, called the Rolles (Stow 2:430). In Henry Wheatley’s annotation on a diary entry by Samuel Pepys, he recalls that the business of the office was to enrol commissions, pardons, patents, warrants, and that had passed the Great Seal; also other business in Chancery (Wheatley 1058). Eventually, as Wheatley notes, the Six Clerks were abolished by act of Parliament (Wheatley 1058). Elijah Williams further explicates that the need for such an office can be traced back to 1415, when [t]he number of Clerks writing the Rolls of Chancery was increased from three to six (Williams 1441).

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