Notaries

Several articles in this collection touch upon documentary problems in English legal history — signing of documents, dating of documents, forgery, etc. It should be mentioned that these were northern-European problems. Southern Europe produced documents using public notaries, whose established practices dated back to the Romans (they were a Roman invention) and were aimed specifically at those problems.

The notaries were public scribes, well-trained and authorized by the Pope. They wrote the documents in their own hand and included their signature and signum, a distinctive sign drawn with a pen. They also dated the document. A document "drawn" by a notary was accepted as legally accurate. Questions about its authenticity could be settled by checking with the notary or, if he were dead, with others who could identify his signum, signature, and handwriting. This greatly reduced forgery, which was always a problem in England.

Why England did not adopt this system is unclear. In the latter half of the fourteenth century Chancery scribes began to write their surnames in the corner of royal writs; for private documents, however, England never did establish the regular practice of identifying the scribe. Some English scribes aspired to notarial practice, though they were not trained in it and so the results were uneven. A few true notaries were used from time to time but mostly, it appears, for documents that involved or needed to impress the papacy.

The modern notary public preserves the purpose of attempting to discourage fraud. The importance of the notary, however, has largely been forgotten in a world awash in documents. The casualness with which notarial privileges are granted, and with which they are often practiced, vitiates even their vestigial function.