ABSTRACT
The analysis of the corpus shows a great deal of work concentrated in the hands of a comparatively restricted circle of administrators, their secretariats, and the signet clerks. While the personal secretariats of the senior ministers' households have been investigated by scholars, the presence of the signet and certain signet clerks invites attention to the inner mechanisms of this office. This chapter examines the work of the signet clerks starting from the documents they were required to produce as part of the administration of trade, military affairs, local government, and royal diplomacy. In 1557, the predecessors of our clerks set up the organisation of the office in a document preserved in the State Papers Domestic of the reign of Mary I. The importance of the registers as records of the signet activity is testified by two interesting episodes that took place precisely during the vacancy.
