Master of the Faculties
legal position in the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury
The Master of the Faculties is a judicial officer in the Faculty Office of the Archbishop of Canterbury and has some important powers in English law, in particular the appointment and regulation of public notaries. Since 1873 the position has always been held by the Dean of the Arches.
Functions
The Master of Faculties has retained his or her historical responsibility with respect to public notaries in England and Wales. This regulatory function is now subject to the statutory provisions of the Public Notaries Acts 1801 and 1843, and the Courts and Legal Services Act 1990. The Master of Faculties is an approved regulator under the Legal Services Act 2007: he or she is the sole relevant approved regulator for notaries. As notaries in England and Wales may also carry out certain non-contentious legal work, he or she may thereby be a relevant approved regulator for certain dealings in land registration and real property, and for probate and the administration of oaths. (Most, but not all, public notaries are also practising solicitors, so would carry out these functions in that capacity, and thus be regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.)
The Master of Faculties also has responsibility for the issue of special licences for marriage in England and Wales, and for Lambeth degrees.
Public notaries in some Commonwealth jurisdictions, such as New Zealand and Queensland, Australia, are still appointed through the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury, though in all other Australian States and Territories they are appointed by the relevant supreme court.
History
Following the English Reformation, the Ecclesiastical Licences Act 1533, s.3 gave the Archbishop, or "hys commissarie", power to issue "suche licences dispensacions composicions faculties delegacies rescriptes instrumentes or wrytynges have byn accustomed to be had, at the See of Rome". This included the power to appoint notaries in the ecclesiastical courts and the office of commissarie developed into that of the Master of the Faculties.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6785291. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1873, 1801, 1843 and 1990.
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This entry incorporates text from “Master of the Faculties” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.