TRADITIONALLY the occupational structure of medieval towns has been considered as falling into two main categories, the merchant class and the artisan, with the addition of the ecclesiastical sector. Recently there has been more recognition that major provincial cities would have needed a professional literate class to function but, unlike the merchants and the artisans, the members of this class are difficult to recognise or to quantify. However, an intriguing feature of Serena Kelly's study of the economic structure of Norwich between 1285 and 1311 is the number of men owning property in Norwich who were described as clerici or clerks. Apart from obvious ecclesiastics, her sixty-nine clerks made up the largest occupational group after the merchants and mercers combined. The same holds true both for Norwich over a longer period and for elsewhere. In Derek Keene's monumental survey of medieval Winchester clerici form one of the largest occupational groups at this date. At Norwich, looking at the whole period 1275–1348, the clerks as property-owners again come second in numbers only to the merchants. Altogether 147 clerks are known from all sources and 111 just from title deeds.

Clericus, of course, is an ambiguous term. Firstly it is used as a description of status and could be applied to anyone who had taken the tonsure, whether they were in holy orders (as priest, deacon or subdeacon) or just in one of the minor orders. This placed such clerks under the jurisdiction of the church and enabled them, for instance, should the occasion arise, to plead benefit of clergy at a criminal trial. From at least the end of the twelfth century the term could also be applied to a literate layman, and this may be what is happening in the case of Alexander Faber, who is described on the Mancroft tithing roll of c.1311–33 as dictus clericus (called clerk). On the whole, however, it is apparent that the term clericus is used in the Norwich records, like butcher or baker, not to denote status but as an occupational description. The distinction made in Norwich documents between the secular clergy and those described as clerici shows clearly in any comparison of the two groups. Despite the numbers involved, there is no apparent overlap between the men known as chaplains and those known as clerks.