A Journal of the Deacon Brodie Summer:

The Diary of George Sandy 1788

George Sandy’s apprenticeship

1. keeping it in the legal family: george sandy, father and son

George Sandy’s diary is one that could only have been written by someone whose whole intent was to follow his father into a legal career. His record of his activities with his companions is made up of a series of quasi-legal texts and documents – “instruments” and “acts of sederunt”, whilst the “Independent Society of Friends” possesses a Sederunt Book and an entire set of seals – a Great Seal, a Small Seal and a Privy Seal – with which the text is decorated. Although the diary is on the whole a cheerful affair, the presence of so much lawyerly lumber offers it also as a memorial to his late father, an Edinburgh lawyer whose name was also George Sandy.  

For the bulk of his legal career, George Sandy’s father served as the Underkeeper to the Signet – the Clerk of the WS Society – a post he occupied from 1767 until his death in December 1784. As Clerk, he was responsible for the upkeep of the various minute books and records of the Writers to the Signet, and his son would have grown up familiar with the language and layout of the styles and procedures of Scots Law. The signature of George Sandy’s father peppers the Minutes of the Commissioners of the WS Society, and it is identical with the signature of his son that appears throughout the pages of the 1788 diary. During the nineteenth century, the signature of father and son would become familiar with thousands of people across Scotland, because as Secretary to the Bank of Scotland from 1805, George Sandy’s signature would appear on Bank of Scotland bank notes. For comparison, here is the signature of George Sandy’s father (left); the signature of George Sandy as it appears in his 1788 Diary (centre) and George Sandy’s signature as it appeared on Bank of Scotland notes (right).

2. george sandy’s apprenticeship

 George Sandy’s father was a well-liked man, and his son’s path to an apprenticeship with the Writers to the Signet was greatly smoothed, firstly by the willingness of his father’s friend Anthony Barclay WS to take George into an apprenticeship whilst waiving the usual apprenticeship fee and secondly by his father’s former subordinate Alexander Alison’s desire to help speed things administratively. George Sandy’s diary centres upon his apprenticeship petition, and his apprentice’s indenture with Barclay. Both are copied out in full in the diary by a proud and excited Sandy. The WS Society Archives contain many hundreds of apprentice petitions, but the text of an indenture between an apprentice and his WS master is less often seen.

The regulations under which George Sandy’s apprenticeship unfolded were set out in the 1778 Acts and Regulations of the Society of Clerks or Writers to His Majesty’s Signet (WS Society Archives GB 1487 WS/1/1/1). The process of becoming a Writer to the Signet had six stages: petition, indenture, a five year apprenticeship, discharge of apprenticeship, intrant’s petition and, lastly, receipt of commission and swearing of the oath.

Before Barclay could enter into an indenture with George Sandy, he would have to apply to the Keeper (in practice, the Deputy Keeper) and Commissioners of the Signet through a petition that detailed Sandy’s background and education. Once Barclay had received leave from the Keeper and Commissioners he had sixty days in which to register the indenture with the Clerk of the Society.

An apprenticeship with a Writer to the Signet would last five years. At the time of the indenture’s registration, George would be called upon to make a number of payments - “ten merks Scots money” to the WS Society Treasurer for the good of the poor, six shillings (sterling) to the Clerk of the Society, “four shillings sterling to the extractor, and two shillings sterling to the officer”. Income from the administration of apprenticeships formed the Society’s core revenue and would continue to do so well into the twentieth century.  

3. George sandy becomes a writer to the signet

Sandy did not receive his commission as a Writer to the Signet until 1798, a full decade after entering into his apprenticeship with Barclay. The Commissioners’ Minute Book records that the apprenticeship was discharged in April 1796. This makes Sandy’s apprenticeship one of the longest on record, and at 26 years old he was slightly older than the average intrant, but there is no available explanation as to why things ran on as they did.

More charges were payable on the discharge of Sandy’s apprenticeship. In order to qualify as an intrant to the Writers to the Signet, George Sandy was obliged to “attend two courses of the colleges” (in practice this almost always meant the University of Edinburgh) “either of the Civil or the Scots Law, or one of each, and shall produce to the Commissioners a certificate from the professors of his due attendance before he can be admitted to trial.” In 1788 Sandy had already produced a certificate recording his presence in the classes of John Hill at the University of Edinburgh, but his attendance at legal classes would have fallen within his apprenticeship with Barclay. The WS Society Archives preserves his attendance certficate to the classes of the great institutional writer of the Scottish Criminal Law, Baron David Hume (nephew to the famous philosopher of the same name). The certificate records that Sandy attended in 1791 and 1792.

At this point, Sandy would have entered his “Intrant’s Petition” which would both begin the final process of his becoming a Writer to the Signet and also serve as the permanent record of that process. His petition of March 1798 sought his entrance into a “private examination” with three appointed Commissioners to the Writers to the Signet, who would report his readiness (or not) to face the full “public examination” at the Signet Hall in Writers Court in the presence of the Deputy Keeper and Commissioners. Again, there were fees to pay, substantial ones: “five hundred merks Scots” to the Treasurer of the Society for the good of the poor, and ten pounds sterling to contribute to the Library of the Society. The Signet Library’s fortunes over its centuries of existence would rise and fall with the numbers of intrants year by year as its income came almost entirely from the payment of their intrant fees.

Although there is no known first-hand account of the public examination of an eighteenth century Writer to the Signet, the regulations state that the examiners, Keeper and Commissioners present could “put such questions to the candidate as they shall think fit..” The examination was not solely concerned with the candidate’s mastery of the law but also with the likelihood that he was the sort of person who would serve his commission without risk to the Society’s reputation or that of his calling more widely. It was a moral and social examination as well as a technical one. George Sandy passed, and took the Oath and subscribed his adherence to the Acts of the Society on 10th July 1798. By the time of his death in 1853 he would have served in the office of Writer to the Signet for 55 years.

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the intrant’s petition of george sandy, march to july 1798