History of the Company
The mediaeval regulations and ordinances for the governance of the Scriveners Company (as for all other Livery Companies) were to ensure the integrity in business, and the competence in practice, of those engaged in the craft, thus strengthening their position and enhancing the confidence of members of the public using their services. Notaries appear as members of the Company from 1392 onwards, when it issued new ordinances to coincide with the appointment by the Archbishop of Canterbury as Papal Legate of laymen as papal and imperial notaries.
The early history of the Company was mainly
concerned with its efforts to establish control over the practice of all those
writing legal documents in
By 12 March 1590 members of the Company were refusing to meet its quota to pay for armour, weapons, gunpowder and wheat for Her Majesty (Elizabeth I)'s service, and the Master and Wardens attended the Court of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen and were authorised to commit any Scrivener refusing to contribute, to a debtors' prison.
A new era opened with the securing by the "Master, Wardens and Assistants of the Society of Scriveners of London" of a Royal Charter of Incorporation from King James I on 28 January 1617. This, and the new ordinances made under its authority in 1635, greatly increased the Company's status (but probably - firm evidence is lacking - greatly depleted its finances). On 11 November 1634 the Company received a grant of arms, confirming the arms in use since circa 1530.
In keeping with the newly-chartered Company's
growing importance, on 10 June 1628 it acquired as its Hall Bacon House, off
In 1665 occurs the first record of the admission
of women to the Company. Women were admitted fairly regularly until the Victorian
age, and again more recently: today the Scriveners Company has as many women
members proportionately to its size as any Livery Company. In the same year it
is recorded that "Attornies in the Courts of Law and Solicitors in the
Courts of Equity. . . have taken upon them to exercise the proper Art or
Mistery of Scriveners as well within the City of
On 13 May 1703 the Company had for reasons of
financial necessity to sell its Hall, disposing of it to the Worshipful Company
of Coachmakers and Coach Harness Makers. From this time also, the Company's
Visitations ceased.
During the Seventeenth Century the Scriveners, having
established control of conveyancing in London (though not elsewhere), gradually
evolved to deal primarily with land agency and the confidential negotiation of
loans as 'Money Scriveners", while their original functions were
increasingly usurped by attorneys whom the Company was unable to compel to
become members. Intense struggles took place between the evolving professions.
From the Act of Parliament of 1729 "for the better Regulation of Attorneys
and Solicitors", legislation progressively strengthened the solicitors and
constrained the scriveners.
As
In 1801 the Scriveners Company secured the Public Notaries Act, compelling all persons applying to the Archbishop of Canterbury for faculties to become notaries within the jurisdiction of the Company to become members of the Company before applying to the Court of Faculties (set up under an Act of Henry VIII to administer the faculty-granting and other like powers of the Archbishop). This gave the Company responsibility for ensuring that such persons were properly qualified. The Company's professional activities were effectively limited to regulating the London Scrivener Notaries in 1804; when the preparation of deeds by non-professional persons was prohibited by statute, and membership of the Scriveners Company was not included in the list of those authorised to draw up conveyances for payment contained in the Stamp Act of that year
The Company produced its second Lord Mayor, Sir James
Shaw, in 1805. He was famous for being upheld by King George III in a dispute
with the Prince Regent, over whom he rightly claimed precedence in the City as
Lord Mayor of
Apart from the two Scrivener Lord Mayors of London, the best-known Scrivener is probably John (Jack) Ellis (1698 - 1791), four times Master and an author of some note in his day, of whom Dr Samuel Johnson said “the most literary conversation that I ever enjoyed, was at the table of Jack Ellis, a money-scrivener behind the Royal Exchange, with whom I at one period used to dine generally once a week:” Other members of the Company with literary connections were Francis Kyd; a Warden in 1580, whose son Thomas Kyd (1558 - 1594) wrote The Spanish Tragedy (from which T. S. Eliot quoted in the closing lines of The Waste Land (1922)); John Milton (1563 - 1647), Court Assistant and composer the father of the poet; and Philip Gray, scrivener of Cornhill, father of another poet, Thomas Gray (Elegy in a Country Churchyard). Jeremy Bentham, the Utilitarian philosopher (1748 - 1832), was the son of the second of the two Jeremy (Jeremiah) Benthams to be Clerk of the Company (1753 - 1792).
The Scriveners Company responded to the Royal Commission into the Livery Companies of 1880 with a restrained but firm defence of their discharge of their chartered responsibilities and their stewardship of their limited funds. The deeply differing reports presented by the majority and minority of the Commissioners in 1884 led to no government action being taken to expropriate the property and income of the Scriveners or any other Livery Company.
In the First World War the Scriveners Company, as
an ancient legal organisation, added its name to those of other legal bodies in
support of a public appeal for help for Belgian lawyers distressed in
consequence of the invasion of their country. Today the Company holds itself in
readiness for whatever other changes may proceed from
To mark the Company's Sexcentenary in 1973, a
Badge was added to its armorial insignia by grant of the
The Access to Justice Act 1999 removed the
exclusive jurisdiction of the Scriveners Company over Notaries wishing to
practise within the City of
General
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