Scriveners Guild

If you were reading this article in 1400 (presumably on a piece of stiff parchment rather than a smartphone), you can bet that its author would have belonged to the Worshipful Company of Scriveners, or a similar guild elsewhere in Europe. In London, this guild was founded in 1373, but it was only granted a royal charter in 1617, by King James I (writers, hundreds of years ago as today, have never been the most respected of craftspeople). You didn't have to belong to the scriveners' guild to publish a pamphlet or a play; rather, the function of this guild was to churn out "scrivener notaries," writers and clerks specializing in the law, with "minors" in heraldry, calligraphy, and genealogy. Amazingly enough, scrivener notary was a privileged trade in England until 1999, when (presumably at the urging of the European Community) the "Access to Justice" act leveled the playing field.