ALL SORTS OF CLERKS 55

government his allowance in the public levy became a salary of
12, 000 pounds of tobacco a year. ¹⁸ It was raised in 1716 to
14, 000 pounds and was then reduced twenty percent in 1747. "
This salary, like that of the Clerk of the Upper House, and for
the same reason, was delayed from 1747 to 1756 and again from
the latter date until 1766. As his total fees, from year to year,
were of slight value, the income of this officer probably ranged
between £ 50 and £ 60 sterling per annum in the eighteenth
century. ²⁰

We have seen that the Clerk of the Secretary's Office and of
the Provincial Court was until 1673 Clerk of the Prerogative
Office and until 1695 Register in Chancery. Originally he received
a part of the Secretary's fees, often one third. ²¹ By an act of
April, 1671, he was given instead the same fee as any county
clerk for a like service. On repeal of this law, in 1692, he was
left without legal fees though he may have retained some custom-
ary ones. His revenue consisted thereafter chiefly, if not wholly,
of an allowance from the Secretary in the form either of a salary
or of a proportion of that officer's fees. ²² He in turn employed and
paid his own clerks assistant. ²³ His income, less than that of
most county clerks, amounted in 174$ to about £ 65 sterling. ²⁴
Under the Constitution of 1776 this officer became the Clerk of
the General Court, appointed by the justices of that body.

Similarly the Clerk of the Prerogative Office and the Register
in Chancery had no fees by law, for each received a salary from

¹⁸ Ibid., 1, 93, 122; XXV, 320.

¹⁹ Ibid., XXX, 551. The delegates voted their own clerk, from time to time,
additional sums for extra expenses; but they would never allow such payments
to the Clerk of the Upper House.

²⁰ The estimate of about 1745 (see note 15 above) values this clerkship at
£ 50 sterling a year.

²¹ This proportion was allowed to John Blomfield in his commission of May 5,
1669 (Ibid., V, 49).

²² He had a salary in 1715; but forty years later he seems to have been receiving
a portion of the fees (Ibid., XXV, 320; XXXI, 481).

²³ In 1768 Sharpe wrote that " the Register or Clerk [of the Secretary's Office]
being under Engagement to find all under Clerks, he gets as many as he wants at
very low wages.... " (Horatio Sharpe to Hugh Hamersley, July 25, 1768,
Ibid., XIV, 517).

²⁴ See the estimate cited in note 15 above. It is hard to believe that this clerk
was actually receiving so little.