Doctrine of Scriptual Accident

Definition and first recension

The Doctrine of Scriptual Accident is the Tower doctrine governing cases in which a clerical error, committed in good faith and unrecalled by its author, is subsequently found to have produced a binding and correct result. It is distinguished from ordinary corrections practice by a single condition: the accident must have been right. The doctrine is first recorded in the Fourth Concordance, Annex 9, which states that "the hand that errs in the making of an instrument shall not be presumed to have erred in the endurance of it" (Fourth Concordance, Annex 9, clause 2).

The doctrine descends from the documentary precedents of Ovida Fen, certifying clerk, whose misbinding of two dockets in 1,208 gave rise to the concept of Parallactic Reading. It is frequently cited alongside the Doctrine of Coincidental Names, though the two are not interchangeable; the relation between them is set out under operational extension below.

Origins: Floor 231 and the Winter Redaction

The doctrine's operative precedent dates to the winter of 1,344, on Floor 231, during what the scriptoria later called the Winter Redaction. A copying clerk of the Ninth Scriptorium, Dannet Verrow, was engaged in preparing duplicate recensions of a land instrument for an annexe granted to the Guild of Quiet Surveyors. Verrow transposed two clauses relating to the depth of a lower gallery: the clause reading "eight foot" was written in the position reserved for "eighteen," and the clause reading "eighteen foot" in that reserved for "eight."

The error was not detected during proof. It passed the certifying desk, received the seal of the Bureau of Annexation, and was filed. Eleven years later, in 1,355, the gallery in question was measured, and found to be eighteen foot at the upper reach and eight foot at the lower. The instrument, though wrongly drafted, had specified the gallery exactly. When the Guild of Quiet Surveyors pressed for confirmation of the deeper downshaft, they were referred, somewhat against the wishes of the Bureau, to the principle that would afterward become the doctrine.

Verrow was consulted and declined to take credit. His statement, lodged with the Bureau of Recensions in 1,356, is preserved in full:

"I transposed nothing aright. The instrument is mine and the accident is mine. If it now describes the floor, the floor has been patient with me."

— Bureau of Recensions, Register of Depositions, item 4,418

The doctrine stated

Vell Doctrine provides that the procedural requirements for sealing an instrument are met by the seal itself; the Doctrine of Scriptual Accident extends the same logic inward, holding that if an error in drafting produces an instrument that describes its subject accurately, the instrument is binding as written and the error is not curable. It is administered most often alongside the Doctrine of Imperfect Certification, and the two have never been harmonised.

A tribunal hearing a Scriptual Accident claim does not ask what the clerk intended; it asks whether the intended clause would have described the subject less well than the erroneous one. Where the answer is yes, the erroneous version stands. The doctrine is set out procedurally in the Manual of Custodial Protocol, which requires the certifying officer to affix to the corrected-in-error copy a marginal note reading "retained under accident," and to file the clerk's original intention — if recoverable — in a sealed docket that no subsequent hearing may open.

In practice, the doctrine does not require the accident to be a transposition of figures. In 1,402 a clerk of the Eleventh Scriptorium misspelled the name of a tower and, by inserting an initial letter, named after it a stairwell that did not previously carry a name. The stairwell is still so called. Applications from the Scriptorium to correct the spelling are refused at the Bureau desk and are not read.

Scholarly disagreement

The principal dispute concerns chronology. The Fourth Concordance treats the doctrine as retrospective only: an error is certified correct once its accuracy has been demonstrated, and never in advance. The Seventh Concordance, Annex 2, takes the converse position — that any instrument containing an uncorrected error is to be presumed accurate until measurement proves otherwise, and that the presumption is a property of the instrument and not of the clerk.

The two positions were held simultaneously for the better part of a century. The Courts of Recension on Floor 231 resolved the matter locally by adopting the Fourth where the instrument described ground and the Seventh where it described water. Clerks of the Ninth Scriptorium took the practical view that this left the deepest galleries, which are both, unresolved, and a standing memorial to that view was filed in 1,381 and remains open. The Register of Unanswered Questions lists the memorial as holding 2,904 and certifies that it has not been answered by accident.

A second and more bitter dispute concerns credit. It is held by some that where an error produces a correct instrument, the clerk cannot have erred at all, and the doctrine therefore has no field of application. This position is set out at length in the Doctrine of Unstable Foundations, though the Doctrine of Incompletability insists that the difficulty is a defect of language rather than of the archive. The Doctrine of Administrative Silence permits the ambiguity to persist indefinitely without hearing.

Administration and limits

The doctrine is administered by the Bureau of Recensions, which maintains a standing ledger of "accidents retained" and audits it each winter against the measuring surveys. The fallen are noted at the back of the ledger; the retained errors occupy the body. The Doctrine of Sufficient Paperwork requires that a retained accident be documented in three copies, of which two must disagree.

Its limits were tested in 1,449, when a clerk of the Bureau of Annexation erroneously entered into a register a chamber that did not exist. The chamber was entered in the correct position, in the correct sequence, with a correct description of a room containing nothing. On inquiry, the doctrine was found not to apply, on the grounds that an accurate description of nothing is not an accident, and that the accuracy had been supplied by the nothing.

Visitors wishing to consult the retained-accident ledger should apply at the desk on Floor 231 before the third bell. Stairs are not to be used during the reading.