Clerk

\L.l,B.i. clericus; L.Fr. c/er.] In English ecclesiastical law. A priest or clergyman; a person in orders. When a person has been ordained a priest, he is, in the language of the law, a clerk in orders, 1 Bl, Com, 388. A person presented to a benefice or living is technically called a c Urk. Id. ibid, et seq. In genera] law and practice. An officer of a court, who keeps its minutes or records its proceedings, and has the custody of its records and seal. Sometimes called a/wothonotary, (q. v.) See Clerkship. This latter meaning of the term clerk, which is the prevalent one in modern law, though itself of considerable antiquity, seems to have entirely grown out of the primitive signification of ecclesiastic. Selden*s Diss, ad Fletam, ch.

9, sect. 3.

Among other branches of learning formerly exclusively confined to the clergy were the (now ordinary) accomplishments of reading and writing. The ability to rsad^ as we have seen, was at first so entirely peculiar to that body that for a convict to be able to read (though never in holy orders,) was, of itself, sufficient to entitle him to the privilege of clergy.

4 Bl. Com, 367.

The mere certificate of the ordinary or his deputy, legit ut clericus, (he reads as a clerk, like one of the clergy,) procured his immediate discharge from the temporal court. See Benefit of clergy, Clericus. The still rarer accomplishment of writing, was so far engrossed by the clergy as, in the course of time, to obtain for any person who habitually used Ms pen, in any employment, the appellation of " a clerk," {clericus;) and this circumstance, in addition to the fact that the judges of courts were formerly usually created out of the sacred order, and that all the inferior offices were supplied by the lower clergy, sufficiently accounts for the application of the term clerk (once peculiar to the clergy) to those officers of courts whose principal function' was to use their pen in recording the proceedings.

Termes de la ley, 1 Bl, Com, 17.

Seldens Diss, ad Fletam, ch.

9, sec. 3.