Kevin Beach

My Professional background

I obtained a degree in law from London University and qualified as a solicitor in 1976. I practised in various places in Greater London, running my own law firms from 1980 to 2015. I left my name on the Roll of Solicitors after I retired, but withdrew it in 2022 when the Solicitors Regulatory Authority started charging retired solicitors for the privilege of keeping our names on the record.

In 1983 I joined the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and dealt with many disputes on referral from Chambers of Commerce and the Law Society. I became a Chartered Arbitrator soon after the Institute introduced that qualification at about the turn of the millennium. I was an adjudicator for the Communication and Internet Services Adjudication Scheme (CISAS) while it was run by the Chartered Institute. I retired as an Arbitrator in 2015, at the same time as closing my law practice.

I was appointed as a Deputy District Judge in the County Court in 1993 and sat in many courts in London and the South-east for over 26 years until September 2019, when I retired from the bench.

I came rather late to the Notaries profession. I had always wanted to be a Notary, but for the first 25 years of my career the area within a radius of 10 miles from central London was legally reserved to Scrivener Notaries, a special breed who tend to work in the City of London. After the rules were changed, I studied for the exams and qualified in 2006. Although I retired from other legal work several years ago, I still enjoy the challenges of being a Notary Public.

The history of Notaries

Literacy was rare in the ancient world. Most people never even saw any writing, let alone understood it. In ancient Rome and Greece, literacy may have risen to 10% at times, but people were still mostly illiterate. It was not until the late medieval period, with the coming of printing, that society began to learn to read in larger numbers.

Those who could read and write in ancient cities had an advantage, because they could charge for their services. In the early days of the Roman Republic, various professional scribes, readers and document writers started working in the forum in Rome. Notaries were among them.

The word Notary comes from the Latin word NOTARIUS, which means a secretary or shorthand writer. In turn, Notarius came from NOTA, which means, as you would guess, a note, sign or mark.

It is thought that the very first Notarii in Rome were scribes who took notes of court proceedings, maybe in the 5th or 4th century BC. In time, the Notarius became the go-to for people who needed help in understanding legal papyri, and for having documents drawn up for trade, inheritance and property transactions. That is how Notarii were among the first recognised lawyers in a Roman society that would last, at first in Italy and then in Constantinople and the east, for about 1,800 years.

Rome and most of Italy fell to Gothic/Germanic invaders in the 5th and 6th centuries AD. But the culture wasn’t destroyed. The Barbarian rulers adopted and continued much of Roman law and many of the old empire’s ways, so that roles like those of the Notarii and other lawyers continued quietly through the years. Christianity had not been repressed by the invaders – many of them sought baptism for themselves and their families. The principal Bishop of Rome, by then often referred to as “Father” or “Papa”, took an increasing role in the governance and protection of Rome and its neighbouring cities. Many of the Germanic tribes within and to the north of Roman territories had become vassals of one tribe – the Franks. On Christmas Day AD 800, Papa (Pope) Leo III crowned King Karl the Great of the Franks (Charlemagne) as “Holy Roman Emperor”. This arrangement moved forward with varying success for a couple of hundred years until the new empire had become a dominant force in much of Europe by about the 11th century. The Holy Roman Empire continued in one form or another until the early 19th century, when it was abolished after the rise of the modern nation states.

The popes and the new emperors had been anxious to preserve all they could of old Rome, because in it they saw order and good government, instead of the chaos and anarchy of invasions and civil wars. The old Roman legal system had survived in Constantinople and the Eastern Roman Empire. It was reimported into the West, polished up and spread around all the territories that came under the influence of the Holy Roman Empire. Roman law was adopted throughout Europe. It even reached Scotland, through Scottish contacts with the Dutch, and it is still the substrate of much Scottish law today. With the law went Notaries, who had been calmly toiling away with their styli and quills throughout all the changes over the centuries. By the time of the Crusades, Notaries had become the principal lawyers dealing with property and inheritance issues, and many commercial transactions.

England was different. Although England was militarily defeated by Duke William of Normandy in 1066, the melding of Romano-Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Nordic cultures between the 6th and the 11th centuries had already created a very strong system of government and legal rule in England and Wales, which withstood the younger and less robust Norman system. Norman French became the language of politics and the law, but the laws themselves were mainly still those of the old Saxon kingdoms. In the second half of the12th century, King Henry II ordered the judges to travel around the country, to record and organise the various English systems into one structure – the Common Law of England. Therefore, England never found it necessary to adopt the revived system of Roman laws that was re-emerging on the continent.

That created a contrast between England and its colonies, on the one hand, and the laws of continental countries and their colonies, on the other. The old British territories, including almost the whole of the Anglosphere, use the “Common Law” system, whereas most of the others use the old Roman-Dutch principles, now called the “Civil Law” system.

Notaries are a feature of the (Roman) Civil Law and were therefore never prominent in England and other Common Law territories. However, England’s commerce with the continent threw up legal differences that had to be coped with. Particularly, the Empire required any legal documents drawn up or executed in England for continental purposes to be validated by a Notary. Although there are rumours of notaries living in England in the 8th or 9th century, records show that the first notaries, mainly Italian and probably sent by the Pope or the Emperor, arrived here in the 1270s. Very quickly afterwards, in 1279, the Pope authorised the Archbishop of Canterbury to start appointing notaries in England.

And there the appointing authority still lies. After Henry VIII’s break with the Catholic Church in 1533, he authorised the Archbishop of Canterbury to keep appointing English and Welsh Notaries. The Archbishop’s Faculty Office, at 1 The Sanctuary, London, right next door to Westminster Abbey, is still the legal regulator for Notaries in England and Wales. Although the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion still use a class of notaries called Ecclesiastical Notaries for their own purposes, and although all Notaries must make oaths of allegiance before Anglican clergymen before being appointed, there is no other formal church connection with Notaries Public in this country. And that is why English and Welsh Notaries are still appointed “by Royal authority”.

And that is why British people who have legal dealings in other countries so often need to have their foreign transactions and documents confirmed and certified by a Notary Public.

And that is why Notaries still have to study Roman Law!