Grateful to the lawyers for the cordiality with which they welcomed him to the country, William III. accepted an invitation to the Middle Temple, and was entertained by that society with a banquet and a masque, of which notice has been taken in another chapter of this work; and in 1697-8 Peter the Great was a guest at the Christmas revels of the Templars. On that occasion the Czar enjoyed a favorable opportunity for gratifying his love of strong drink, and for witnessing the ease with which our ancestors drank wine by the magnum and punch by the gallon, when they were bent on enjoyment.

In the greater refinement and increasing delicacy of the eighteenth century, the Inns of Court revels, which had for so many generations been conspicuous amongst the gaieties of the town, became less and less magnificent; and they altogether died out under the second of those Georges who are thought by some persons to have corrupted public morals and lowered the tastes of society. In 1733-4, when Lord Chancellor Talbot's elevation to the woolsack was celebrated by a revel in the Inner Temple Hall, the dulness and disorder of the celebration convinced the lawyers that they had not acted wisely in attempting to revive usages that had fallen into desuetude because they were inconvenient to new arrangements or repugnant to modern taste. No attempt was made to prolong the festivity over a succession of days. It was a revel of one day; and no one wished to add another to the period of riot. At two o'clock on Feb. 2, 1733-4, the new Chancellor, the master of the revels, the benchers of the inns, and the guests (who were for the most part lawyers), sat down to dinner in the hall. The barristers and students had their ordinary fare, with the addition of a flask of claret to each mess; but a superior repast was served at the High Table where fourteen students (of whom the Chancellor's eldest son was one), served as waiters. Whilst the banquet was in progress, musicians stationed in the gallery at the upper end of the hall filled the room with deafening noise, and ladies looked down upon the feasters from a large gallery which had been fitted up for their reception over the screen. After dinner, as soon as the hall could be cleared of dishes and decanters, the company were entertained with 'Love for Love,' and 'The Devil to Pay,' performed by professional actors who "all came from the Haymarket in chairs, ready dressed, and (as it was said), refused any gratuity for their trouble, looking upon the honor of distinguishing themselves on this occasion as sufficient." The players having withdrawn, the judges, sergeants, benchers, and other dignitaries, danced 'round about the coal fire;' that is to say, they danced round about a stove in which there was not a single spark of fire. The congregation of many hundreds of persons, in a hall which had not comfortable room for half the number, rendered the air so oppressively hot that the master of the revels wisely resolved to lead his troop of revellers round an empty grate. The chronicler of this ridiculous mummery observes: "And all the time of the dance the ancient song, accompanied by music, was sung by one Toby Aston, dressed in a bar-gown, whose father had formerly been Master of the Plea Office in the King's Bench. When this was over, the ladies came down from the gallery, went into the parliament chamber, and stayed about a quarter of an hour, while the hall was being put in order. They then went into the hall and danced a few minuets. Country dances began at ten, and at twelve a Very fine cold collation was provided for the whole company, from which they returned to dancing, which they continued as long as they pleased, and the whole day's entertainment was generally thought to be very genteelly and liberally conducted. The Prince of Wales honored the performance with his company part of the time; he came into the music incog. about the middle of the play, and went away as soon as the farce of 'walking round the coal fire' was over."

With this notable dance of lawyers round an empty grate, the old revels disappeared. In their Grand Days, equivalent to the gaudy days, or feast days, or audit days of the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, the Inns of Court still retain the last vestiges of their ancient jollifications, but the uproarious riot of the obsolete festivities is but faintly echoed by the songs and laughter of the junior barristers and students who in these degenerate times gladden their hearts and loosen their tongues with an extra glass of wine after grand dinners, and then hasten back to chambers for tobacco and tea.

On the discontinuance of the revels the Inns of Court lost their chief attractions for the courtly pleasure-seekers of the town, and many a day passed before another royal visit was paid to any one of the societies. In 1734 George III.'s father stood amongst the musicians in the Inner Temple Hall; and after the lapse of one century and eleven years the present queen accepted the hospitality of Lincoln's Inn. No record exists of a royal visit made to an Inn of Court between those events. Only the other day, however, the Prince of Wales went eastwards and partook of a banquet in the hall of Middle Temple, of which society he is a barrister and a bencher.



PART VII.

LEGAL EDUCATION.



CHAPTER XXXIII.

INNS OF COURT AND INNS OF CHANCERY.

Schools for the study of the Common Law, existed within the bounds of the city of London, at the commencement of the thirteenth century. No sooner had a permanent home been assigned to the Court of Common Pleas, than legal practitioners fixed themselves in the neighborhood of Westminster, or within the walls of London. A legal society speedily grew up in the city; and some of the older and more learned professors of the Common Law, devoting a portion of their time and energies to the labors of instruction, opened academies for the reception of students. Dugdale notices a tradition that in ancient times a law-school, called Johnson's Inn, stood in Dowgate, that another existed in Pewter Lane, and that Paternoster Row contained a third; and it is generally thought that these three inns were amongst the academies which sprung up as soon as the Common Pleas obtained a permanent abode.

The schools thus established in the opening years of the thirteenth century, were not allowed to flourish for any great length of time; for in the nineteenth year of his reign, Henry III. suppressed them by a mandate addressed to the mayor and sheriffs of the city. But though this king broke up the schools, the scholars persevered in their study; and if the king's mandate aimed at a complete discontinuance of legal instruction, his policy was signally defeated.

Successive writers have credited Edward III.'s reign with the establishment of Inns of Court; and it has been erroneously inferred that the study of the Common Law not only languished, but was altogether extinct during the period of nearly one hundred years that intervened between Henry III.'s dissolution of the city schools and Edward III.'s accession. Abundant evidence, however, exists that this was not the case. Edward I., in the twentieth year of his reign, ordered his judges of the Common Pleas to "provide and ordain, from every county, certain attorneys and lawyers" (in the original "atturnatus et apprenticiis") "of the best and most apt for their learning and skill, who might do service to his court and people; and those so chosen, and no other should follow his court, and transact affairs therein; the words of which order make it clear that the country contained a considerable body of persons who devoted themselves to the study and practice of the law." So also in the Year-book, 1 Ed. III., the words, "et puis une apprentise demand," show that lawyers holding legal degrees existed in the very first year of Edward III.'s reign; a fact which justifies the inference that in the previous reign England contained Common Law schools capable of granting the legal degree of apprentice. Again Dugdale remarks, "In 20 Ed. III., in a quod ei deforciat to an exception taken, it was answered by Sir Richard de Willoughby (then a learned justice of the Common Pleas) and William Skipwith, (afterwards also one of the justices of that court), that the same was no exception amongst the Apprentices in Hostells or Inns." Whence it is manifest that Inns of Court were institutions in full vigor at the time when they have been sometimes represented as originally established.

But after their expulsion from the city, there is reason to think that the common lawyers made no attempt to reside in colleges within its boundaries. They preferred to establish themselves on spots where they could enjoy pure air and rural quietude, could surround themselves with trees and lawns, or refresh their eyes with the sight of the silver Thames. In the earliest part of the fourteenth century, they took possession of a great palace that stood on the western outskirt of the town, and looked westwards upon green fields, whilst its eastern wall abutted on New Street—a thoroughfare that was subsequently called Chancellor's Lane, and has for many years been known as Chancery Lane. This palace had been the residence of Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, who conferred upon the building the name which it still bears. The earl died in 1310, some seventeen years before Edward III.'s accession; and Thynne, the antiquary, was of opinion that no considerable period intervened between Henry Lacy's death and the entry of the lawyers. In the same century, the lawyers took possession of the Temple. The exact date of their entry is unknown; but Chaucer's verse enables the student to fix, with sufficient preciseness, the period when the more noble apprentices of the law first occupied the Temple as tenants of the Knight's Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, who obtained a grant of the place from Edward III.[21] The absence of fuller particulars concerning the early history of the legal Templars, is ordinarily and with good reason attributed to Wat Tyler's rebels, who destroyed the records of the fraternity by fire. From roof to basement, beginning with the tiles, and working downwards, the mob destroyed the principal houses of the college; and when they had burnt all the archives on which they could lay hands, they went off and expended their remaining fury on other buildings, of which the Knights of St. John were proprietors.

The same men who saw the lawyers take possession of the Temple on the northern banks of the Thames, and of the Earl of Lincoln's palace in New Street, saw them also make a third grand settlement. The manor of Portepoole, or Purpoole, became the property of the Grays of Wilton, in the twenty-second year of Edward I.; and on its green fields, lying north of Holborn, a society of lawyers established a college which still retains the name of the ancient proprietors of the soil. Concerning the exact date of its institution, the uncertainty is even greater than that which obscures the foundation of the Temple and Lincoln's Inn; but antiquaries have agreed to assign the creation of Gray's Inn, as an hospicium for the entertainment of lawyers, to the time of Edward III.

The date at which the Temple lawyers split up into two separate societies, is also unknown; but assigning the division to some period posterior to Wat Tyler's insurrection, Dugdale says, "But, notwithstanding, this spoil by the rebels, those students so increased here, that at length they divided themselves into two bodies; the one commonly known by the Society of the Inner Temple, and the other of the Middle Temple, holding this mansion as tenants." But as both societies had a common origin in the migration of lawyers from Thavies Inn, Holborn, in the time of Edward III., it is usual to speak of the two Temples as instituted in that reign, and to regard all four Inns of Court as the work of the fourteenth century.

The Inns of Chancery for many generations maintained towards the Inns of Court a position similar to that which Eton School maintains towards King's at Cambridge, or that which Winchester School holds to New College at Oxford. They were seminaries in which lads underwent preparation for the superior discipline and greater freedom of the four colleges. Each Inn of Court had its own Inns of Chancery, yearly receiving from them the pupils who had qualified themselves for promotion to the status of Inns-of-Court men. In course of time, students after receiving the preliminary education in an Inn of Chancery were permitted to enter an Inn of Court on which their Inn of Chancery was not dependent; but at every Inn of Court higher admission fees were charged to students coming from Inns of Chancery over which it had no control, than to students who came from its own primary schools. If the reader bears in mind the difference in respect to age, learning, and privileges between our modern public schoolboys and university undergraduates, he will realize with sufficient nearness to truth the differences which existed between the Inns of Chancery students and the Inns of Court students in the fifteenth century; and in the students, utter-barristers, and benchers of the Inns of Court at the same period he may see three distinct orders of academic persons closely resembling the undergraduates, bachelors of arts, and masters of arts in our universities.

In the 'De Laudibus Legum Angliae,'[22] written in the latter part of the fifteenth century, Sir John Fortescue says—"But to the intent, most excellent Prince, yee may conceive a forme and an image of this study, as I am able, I wil describe it unto you. For there be in it ten lesser houses or innes, and sometimes moe, which are called Innes of the Chauncerye. And to every one of them belongeth an hundred students at least, and to some of them a much greater number, though they be not ever all together in the same."

In Charles II.'s time there were eight Inns of Chancery; and of them three were subsidiary to the Inner Temple—viz., Clifford's Inn, Clement's Inn, and Lyon's Inn. Clifford's Inn (originally the town residence of the Barons Clifford) was first inhabited by law-students in the eighteenth year of Edward III. Clement's Inn (taking its name from the adjacent St. Clement's Well) was certainly inhabited by law-students as early as the nineteenth year of Edward IV. Lyon's Inn was an Inn of Chancery in the time of Henry V.

One alone (New Inn) was attached to the Middle Temple. In the previous century, the Middle Temple had possessed another Inn of Chancery called Strand Inn; but in the third year of Edward VI. this nursery was pulled down by the Duke of Somerset, who required the ground on which it stood for the site of Somerset House.

Lincoln's Inn had for dependent schools Furnival's Inn and Thavies Inn—the latter of which hostels was inhabited by law-students in Edward III.'s time. Of Furnival's Inn (originally Lord Furnival's town mansion, and converted into a law-school in Edward VI.'s reign) Dugdale says: "After which time the Principall and Fellows of this Inne have paid to the society of Lincoln's Inne the rent of iiil vis iiid as an yearly rent for the same, as may appear by the accompts of that house; and by speciall order there made, have had these following priviledges: first (viz. 10 Eliz.), that the utter-barristers of Furnivall's Inne, of a yeares continuance, and so certified and allowed by the Benchers of Lincoln's Inne, shall pay no more than four marks apiece for their admittance into that society. Next (viz. in Eliz.) that every fellow of this inne, who hath been allowed an utter-barrister here, and that hath mooted here two vacations at the Utter Bar, shall pay no more for their admission into the Society of Lincoln's Inne, than xiiis iiiid, though all utter-barristers of any other Inne of Chancery (excepting Thavyes Inne) should pay xxs, and that every inner-barrister of this house, who hath mooted here one vacation at the Inner Bar, should pay for his admission into this House but xxs, those of other houses (excepting Thavyes Inne) paying xxvis viiid."

The subordinate seminaries of Gray's Inn, in Dugdale's time, were Staple Inn and Barnard's Inn. Originally the Exchange of the London woolen merchants, Staple Inn was a law-school as early as Henry V.'s time. It is probable that Bernard's Inn became an academy for law-students in the reign of Henry VI.

[21] Chaucer mentions the Temple thus:—

"A manciple there was of the Temple, Of which all catours might take ensemple For to be wise in buying of vitaile; For whether he pay'd or took by taile, Algate he wayted so in his ashate, That he was aye before in good estate. Now is not that of God a full faire grace, That such a leude man's wit shall pace The wisdome of an heape of learned men? Of masters had he more than thrice ten, That were of law expert and curious, Of which there was a dozen in that house, Worthy to been stewards of rent and land Of any lord that is in England; To maken him live by his proper good In honour debtless, but if he were wood; Or live as scarcely as him list desire, And able to helpen all a shire, In any case that might have fallen or hap, And yet the manciple set all her capp."

[22] The 'De Laudibus' was written in Latin; but for the convenience of readers not familiar with that classic tongue, the quotations from the treatise are given from Robert Mulcaster's English version.



CHAPTER XXXIV.

LAWYERS AND GENTLEMEN.

Thus planted in the fourteenth century beyond the confines of the city, and within easy access of Westminster Hall, the Inns of Court and Chancery formed an university, which soon became almost as powerful and famous as either Oxford or Cambridge. For generations they were spoken of collectively as the law-university, and though they were voluntary societies—in their nature akin to the club-houses of modern London—they adopted common rules of discipline, and an uniform system of instruction. Students flocked to them in abundance; and whereas the students of Oxford and Cambridge were drawn from the plebeian ranks of society, the scholars of the law-university were almost invariably the sons of wealthy men and had usually sprung from gentle families. To be a law-student was to be a stripling of quality. The law university enjoyed the same patrician prestige and eclat that now belong to the more aristocratic houses of the old universities.

Noblemen sent their sons to it in order that they might acquire the style and learning and accomplishments of polite society. A proportion of the students were encouraged to devote themselves to the study of the law and to attend sedulously the sittings of Judges in Westminster Hall; but the majority of well-descended boys who inhabited the Inns of Chancery were heirs to good estates, and were trained to become their wealth rather than to increase it—to perfect themselves in graceful arts, rather than to qualify themselves to hold briefs. The same was the case in the Inns of Court, which were so designated—not because they prepared young men to rise in courts of law, but because they taught them to shine in the palaces of kings. It is a mistake to suppose that the Inns of Court contain at the present time a larger proportion of idle members, who have no intention to practise at the bar, than they contained under the Plantagenets and Tudors. On the contrary, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the number of Templars who merely played at being lawyers, or were lawyers only in name, was actually as well as relatively greater than the merely nominal lawyers of the Temple at the present time. For several generations, and for two centuries after Sir John Fortescue wrote the 'De Laudibus,' the Inns-of-Court man was more busied in learning to sing than in learning to argue a law cause, more desirous to fence with a sword than to fence with logic.

"Notwithstanding," runs Mulcaster's translation of the 'De Laudibus,'[23] "the same lawes are taught and learned, in a certaine place of publique or common studie, more convenient and apt for attayninge to the knowledge of them, than any other university. For theyr place of studie is situate nigh to the Kinges Courts, where the same lawes are pleaded and argued, and judgements by the same given by judges, men of gravitie, auncient in yeares, perfit and graduate in the same lawes. Wherefore, euerie day in court, the students in those lawes resorte by great numbers into those courts wherein the same lawes are read and taught, as it were in common schooles. This place of studie is far betweene the place of the said courts and the cittie of London, which of all thinges necessarie is the plentifullest of all cities and townes of the realme. So that the said place of studie is not situate within the cittie, where the confluence of people might disturb the quietnes of the studentes, but somewhat severall in the suburbes of the same cittie, and nigher to the saide courts, that the studentes may dayelye at their pleasure have accesse and recourse thither without weariness."

Setting forth the condition and pursuits of law-students in his day, Sir John Fortesque continues; "For in these greater inns, there can no student bee mayntayned for lesse expenses by the yeare than twentye markes. And if hee have a servaunt to wait uppon him, as most of them have, then so much the greater will his charges bee. Nowe, by reason of this charge, the children onely of noblemenne doo studye the lawes in those innes. For the poore and common sorte of the people are not able to bear so great charges for the exhibytion of theyr chyldren. And Marchaunt menne can seldome finde in theyr heartes to hynder theyr merchaundise with so greate yearly expenses. And it thus falleth out that there is scant anye man founde within the realme skilfull and cunning in the lawes, except he be a gentleman borne, and come of noble stocke. Wherefore they more than any other kinde of men have a speciall regarde to their nobility, and to the preservation of their honor and fame. And to speake upryghtlye, there is in these greater innes, yea, and in the lesser too, beside the studie of the lawes, as it were an university or schoole of all commendable qualities requisite for noble men. There they learn to sing, and to exercise themselves in all kinde of harmonye. There also they practice daunsing, and other noblemen's pastimes, as they use to do, which are brought up in the king's house. On the working dayes, the most of them apply themselves to the studye of the lawe, and on the holye dayes to the studye of holye Scripture;[24] and out of the tyme of divine service, to the reading of Chronicles. For there indeede are vertues studied, and vices exiled. So that, for the endowment of vertue, and abandoning of vice, Knights and Barrons, with other states and noblemen of the realme, place their children in those innes, though they desire not to have them learned in the lawes, nor to lieue by the practice thereof, but onely uppon their father's allowance. Scant at anye tyme is there heard among them any sedition, chyding, or grudging, and yet the offenders are punished with none other payne, but onely to bee amooved from the compayne of their fellowshippe. Which punishment they doo more feare than other criminall offendours doo feare imprisonment and yrons: For hee that is once expelled from anye of those fellowshippes is never received to bee a felowe in any of the other fellowshippes. And so by this means there is continuall peace; and their demeanor is lyke the behaviour of such as are coupled together in perfect amytie."

Any person familiar with the Inns of Court at the present time will see how closely the law-colleges of Victoria's London resemble in many important particulars the law-colleges of Fortescue's period. After the fashion of four centuries since young men are still induced to enter them for the sake of honorable companionship, good society, and social prestige, rather than for the sake of legal education. After the remarks already made with regard to musical lawyers in a previous section of this work, it is needless to say that Inns of Court men are not remarkable for their application to vocal harmony; but the younger members are still remarkable for the zeal with which they endeavor to master the accomplishments which distinguish men of fashion and tone. If the nominal (sometimes they are called 'ornamental') barristers of the fifteenth century liked to read the Holy Scriptures, the young lawyers of the nineteenth century are no less disposed to read their Bibles critically, and argue as to the merits of Bishop Colenso and his opponents. Moreover, the discipline described by Fortescue is still found sufficient to maintain order in the inns.

Writing more than a century after Fortescue, Sir John Ferne, in his 'Blazon of Gentrie, the Glory of Generosity, and the Lacy's Nobility,' observes: "Nobleness of blood, joyned with virtue, compteth the person as most meet to the enterprize of any public service; and for that cause it was not for nought that our antient governors in this land, did with a special foresight and wisdom provide, that none should be admitted into the Houses of Court, being seminaries sending forth men apt to the government of justice, except he were a gentleman of blood. And that this may seem a truth, I myself have seen a kalendar of all those which were together in the society of one of the same houses, about the last year of King Henry the Fifth, with the armes of their House and family marshalled by their names; and I assure you, the self same monument doth both approve them all to be gentlemen of perfect descents and also the number of them much less than now it is, being at that time in one house scarcely three score."[25]

This passage from an author who delighted to magnify the advantages of generous descent, has contributed to the very general and erroneous impression that until comparatively recent times the members of the English bar were necessarily drawn from the highest ranks of society; and several excellent writers on the antiquities of the law have laid aside their customary caution and strengthened Ferne's words with inaccurate comment.

Thus Pearce says of the author of the 'Glory of Generositie'—"He was one of the advocates for excluding from the Inns of Court all who were not 'a gentleman by blood,' according to the ancient rule mentioned by Fortescue, which seems to have been disregarded in Elizabeth's time." Fortescue nowhere mentions any such rule, but attributes the aristocratic character of the law-colleges to the high cost of membership. Far from implying that men of mean extraction were excluded by an express prohibition, his words justify the inference that no such rule existed in his time.

Though Inns-of-Court men were for many generations gentlemen by birth almost without a single exception, it yet remains to be proved that plebeian birth at any period disqualified persons for admission to the law-colleges. If such a restriction ever existed it had disappeared before the close of the fifteenth century—a period not favorable to the views of those who were most anxious to remove the barriers placed by feudal society between the gentle and the vulgar. Sir John More (the father of the famous Sir Thomas) was a Judge in the King's Bench, although his parentage was obscure; and it is worthy of notice that he was a successful lawyer of Fortescue's period. Lord Chancellor Audley was not entitled to bear arms by birth, but was merely the son of a prosperous yeoman. The lowliness of his extraction cannot have been any serious impediment to him, for before the end of his thirty-sixth year he was a sergeant. In the following century the inns received a steadily increasing number of students, who either lacked generous lineage or were the offspring of shameful love. For instance, Chief Justice Wray's birth was scandalous; and if Lord Ellesmere in his youth reflected with pride on the dignity of his father, Sir Richard Egerton, he had reason to blush for his mother. Ferne's lament over the loss of heraldric virtue and splendor, which the inns had sustained in his time, testifies to the presence of a considerable plebeian element amongst the members of the law-university. But that which was marked in the sixteenth was far more apparent in the seventeenth century. Scroggs's enemies were wrong in stigmatizing him as a butcher's son, for the odious chief justice was born and bred a gentleman, and Jeffreys could boast a decent extraction; but there is abundance of evidence that throughout the reigns of the Stuarts the inns swarmed with low-born adventurers. The career of Chief Justice Saunders, who, beginning as a "poor beggar boy," of unknown parentage, raised himself to the Chiefship of the King's Bench, shows how low an origin a judge might have in the seventeenth century. To mention the names of such men as Parker, King, Yorke, Ryder, and the Scotts, without placing beside them the names of such men as Henley, Harcourt, Bathurst, Talbot, Murray, and Erskine, would tend to create an erroneous impression that in the eighteenth century the bar ceased to comprise amongst its industrious members a large aristocratic element.

The number of barristers, however, who in that period brought themselves by talent and honorable perseverance into the foremost rank of the legal profession in spite of humble birth, unquestionably shows that ambitious men from the obscure middle classes were more frequently than in any previous century found pushing their fortunes in Westminster Hall. Lord Macclesfield was the son of an attorney whose parents were of lowly origin, and whose worldly means were even lower than their ancestral condition. Lord Chancellor King's father was a grocer and salter who carried on a retail business at Exeter; and in his youth the Chancellor himself had acted as his father's apprentice—standing behind the counter and wearing the apron and sleeves of a grocer's servitor. Philip Yorke was the son of a country attorney who could boast neither wealth nor gentle descent. Chief Justice Ryder was the son of a mercer whose shop stood in West Smithfield, and grandson of a dissenting minister, who, though he bore the name, is not known to have inherited the blood of the Yorkshire Ryders. Sir William Blackstone was the fourth son of a silkman and citizen of London. Lords Stowell and Eldon were the children of a provincial tradesman. The learned and good Sir Samuel Romilly's father was Peter Romilly, jeweller, of Frith Street, Soho. Such were the origins of some of the men who won the prizes of the law in comparatively recent times. The present century has produced an even greater number of barristers who have achieved eminence, and are able to say with honest pride that they are the first gentlemen mentioned in their pedigrees; and so thoroughly has the bar become an open profession, accessible to all persons[26] who have the means of gentlemen, that no barrister at the present time would have the bad taste or foolish hardihood to express openly his regret that the members of a liberal profession should no longer pay a hurtful attention to illiberal distinctions.

According to Fortescue, the law-students belonging at the same time to the Inns of Court and Chancery numbered at least one thousand eight hundred in the fifteenth century; and it may be fairly inferred from his words that their number considerably exceeded two thousand. To each of the ten Inns of Chancery the author of the 'De Laudibus' assigns "an hundred students at the least, and to some of them a much greater number;" and he says that the least populous of the four Inns of Court contained "two hundred students or thereabouts." At the present time the number of barristers—together with Fellows of the College of Advocates, and certificated special pleaders and conveyancers not at the bar—is shown by the Law List for 1866 to be somewhat more than 4800.[27] Even when it is borne in mind how much the legal business of the whole nation has necessarily increased with the growth of our commercial prosperity—it being at the same time remembered, upon the other hand, how many times the population of the country has doubled itself since the wars of the Roses—few persons will be of opinion that the legal profession, either by the number of its practitioners or its command of employment, is a more conspicuous and prosperous power at the present time than it was in the fifteenth century.

Ferne was by no means the only gentleman of Elizabethan London to deplore the rapid increase in the number of lawyers, and to regret the growing liberality which encouraged—or rather the national prosperity which enabled—men of inferior parentage to adopt the law as a profession. In his address on Mr. Clerke's elevation to the dignity of a sergeant, Lord Chancellor Hatton, echoing the common complaint concerning the degradation of the law through the swarms of plebeian students and practitioners, observed—"Let not the dignitie of the lawe be geven to men unmeete. And I do exhorte you all that are heare present not to call men to the barre or the benches that are so unmeete. I finde that there are now more at the barre in one house than there was in all the Innes of Court when I was a younge man." Notwithstanding the Chancellor's earnest statement of his personal recollection of the state of things when he was a young man, there is reason to think that he was quite in error in thinking that lawyers had increased so greatly in number. From a MS. in Lord Burleigh's collection, it appears that in 1586 the number of law-students, resident during term, was only 1703—a smaller number than that which Fortescue computed the entire population of the London law-students, at a time when civil war had cruelly diminished the number of men likely to join an aristocratic university. Sir Edward Coke estimated the roll of Elizabethan law-students at one thousand, half their number in Fortescue's time. Coke, however, confined his attention in this matter to the Students of Inns of Court, and paid no attention to Inns of Chancery. Either Hatton greatly exaggerated the increase of the legal working profession; or in previous times the proportion of law-students who never became barristers greatly exceeded those who were ultimately called to the bar.

Something more than a hundred years later, the old cry against the low-born adventurers, who, to the injury of the public and the degradation of the law, were said to overwhelm counsellors and solicitors of superior tone and pedigree, was still frequently heard in the coteries of disappointed candidates for employment in Westminster Hall, and on the lips of men whose hopes of achieving social distinction were likely to be frustrated so long as plebeian learning and energy were permitted to have free action. In his 'History of Hertfordshire' (published in 1700), Sir Henry Chauncey, Sergeant-at-Law, exclaims: "But now these mechanicks, ambitious of rule and government, often educate their sons in these seminaries of law, whereby they overstock the profession, and so make it contemptible; whilst the gentry, not sensible of the mischief they draw upon themselves, but also upon the nation, prefer them in their business before their own children, whom they bereave of their employment, formerly designed for their support; qualifying their servants, by the profit of this profession, to purchase their estates, and by this means make them their lords and masters, whilst they lessen the trade of the kingdom, and cause a scarcity of husbandmen, workmen, artificers, and servants in the nation."

That the Inns of Court became less and less aristocratic throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there is no reason to doubt; but it may be questioned whether it was so overstocked with competent working members, as poor Sir Henry Chauncey imagined it. Describing the state of the inns some two generations later, Blackstone computed the number of law-students at about a thousand, perhaps slightly more; and he observes that in his time the merely nominal law-students were comparatively few. "Wherefore," he says, "few gentlemen now resort to the Inns of Court, but such for whom the knowledge of practice is absolutely necessary; such, I mean, as are intended for the profession; the rest of our gentry, (not to say our nobility also) having usually retired to their estates, or visited foreign kingdoms, or entered upon public life, without any instruction in the laws of the land, and indeed with hardly any opportunity of gaining instruction, unless it can be afforded to them in the universities."

The folly of those who lamented that men of plebeian rank were allowed to adopt the legal profession as a means of livelihood, was however exceeded by the folly of men of another sort, who endeavored to hide the humble extractions of eminent lawyers, under the ingenious falsehoods of fictitious pedigrees. In the last century, no sooner had a lawyer of humble birth risen to distinction, than he was pestered by fabricators of false genealogies, who implored him to accept their silly romances about his ancestry. In most cases, these ridiculous applicants hoped to receive money for their dishonest representations; but not seldom it happened that they were actuated by a sincere desire to protect the heraldic honor of the law from the aspersions of those who maintained that a man might fight his way to the woolsack, although his father had been a tender of swine. Sometimes these imaginative chroniclers, not content with fabricating a genealogical chart for a parvenu Lord Chancellor, insisted that he should permit them to write their lives in such a fashion, that their earlier experiences should seem to be in harmony with their later fortunes. Lord Macclesfield (the son of a poor and ill-descended country attorney), was traced by officious adulators to Reginald Le Parker, who accompanied Edward I., while Prince of Wales, to the Holy Land. In like manner a manufacturer of genealogies traced Lord Eldon to Sir Michael Scott of Balwearie. When one of this servile school of worshippers approached Lord Thurlow with an assurance that he was of kin with Cromwell's secretary Thurloe, the Chancellor, with bluff honesty, responded, "Sir, as Mr. Secretary Thurloe was, like myself, a Suffolk man, you have an excuse for your mistake. In the seventeenth century two Thurlows, who were in no way related to each other, flourished in Suffolk. One was Cromwell's secretary Thurloe, the other was Thurlow, the Suffolk carrier. I am descended from the carrier." Notwithstanding Lord Thurlow's frequent and consistent disavowals of pretension to any heraldic pedigree, his collateral descendants are credited in the 'Peerages' with a descent from an ancient family.

[23] This charming book was written during the author's exile, which began in 1463.

[24] This passage is one of several passages in Pre-reformation English literature which certify that the Bible was much more widely and carefully read by lettered and studious layman, in times prior to the rupture between England and Rome, than many persons are aware, and some violent writers like to acknowledge.

[25] Pathetically deploring the change wrought by time, Ferne also observes of the Inns of Court,—"Pity to see the same places, through the malignity of the times, and the negligence of those which should have had care to the same, been altered quite from their first institution."

[26] It is not unusual now-a-days to see on the screened list of students about to be called to the bar the names of gentlemen who have caused themselves to be described in the quasi-public lists as the sons of tradesmen. Some few years since a gentleman who has already made his name known amongst juniors, was thus 'screened'in the four halls as the son of a petty tradesman in an obscure quarter of London; and assuming that his conduct was due to self-respect and affectionate regard for his parent, it seemed to most observers that the young lawyer, in thus frankly stating his lowly origin, acted with spirit and dignity. It may be that years hence this highly-accomplished gentleman will, like Lord Tenterden and Lord St. Leonards (both of whom were the sons of honest but humble tradesmen), see his name placed upon the roll of England's hereditary noblesse.

[27] Of this number about 2500 reside in or near London and maintain some apparent connexion with the Inns of Court. Of the remainder, some reside in Scotland, some in Ireland, some in the English provinces, some in the colonies; whilst some of them, although their names are still on the Law List, have ceased to regard themselves as members of the legal profession.



CHAPTER XXXV.

LAW-FRENCH AND LAW-LATIN.

No circumstances of the Norman Conquest more forcibly illustrate the humiliation of the conquered people, than the measures by which the invaders imposed their language on the public courts of the country, and endeavored to make it permanently usurp the place of the mother-tongue of the despised multitude; and no fact more signally displays our conservative temper than the general reluctance of English society to relinquish the use of the French words and phrases which still tincture the language of parliament, and the procedures of Westminster Hall, recalling to our minds the insolent domination of a few powerful families who occupied our country by force, and ruled our forefathers with vigorous injustice.

Frenchmen by birth, education, sympathy, William's barons did their utmost to make England a new France: and for several generations the descendants of the successful invaders were no less eager to abolish every usage which could remind the vanquished race of their lost supremacy. French became the language of parliament and the council-chamber. It was spoken by the judges who dispensed justice in the name of a French king, and by the lawyers who followed the royal court in the train of the French-speaking judges. In the hunting-field and the lists no gentleman entitled to bear coat-armour deigned to utter a word of English: it was the same in Fives' Court and at the gambling-table. Schoolmasters were ordered to teach their pupils to construe from Latin into French, instead of into English; and young men of Anglo-Saxon extraction, bent on rising in the world by native talent and Norman patronage, labored to acquire the language of the ruling class and forget the accents of their ancestors. The language and usages of modern England abound with traces of the French of this period. To every act that obtained the royal assent during last session of parliament, the queen said "La reyne le veult." Every bill which is sent up from the Commons to the Lords, an officer of the lower house endorses with "Soit baile aux Seigneurs;" and no bill is ever sent down from the Lords to the Commons until a corresponding officer of the upper house has written on its back, "Soit baile aux Communes."

In like manner our parochial usages, local sports, and domestic games continually remind us of the obstinate tenacity with which the Anglo-Saxon race has preserved, and still preserves, the vestiges of its ancient subjection to a foreign yoke. The crier of a country town, in any of England's fertile provinces, never proclaims the loss of a yeoman's sporting-dog, the auction of a bankrupt dealer's stock-in-trade, or the impounding of a strayed cow, until he has commanded, in Norman-French, the attention of the sleepy rustics. The language of the stable and the kennel is rich in traces of Norman influence; and in backgammon, as played by orthodox players, we have a suggestive memorial of those Norman nobles, of whom Fortescue, in the 'De Laudibus' observes: "Neither had they delyght to hunt, and to exercise other sportes and pastimes, as dyce-play and the hand-ball, but in their own proper tongue."

In behalf of the Norman noblesse it should be borne in mind that their policy in this matter was less intentionally vexatious and insolent than it has appeared to superficial observers. In the great majority of causes the suitors were Frenchmen; and it was just as reasonable that they should like to understand the arguments of their counsel and judges, as it is reasonable for suitors in the present day to require the proceedings in Westminster Hall to be clothed in the language most familiar to the majority of persons seeking justice in its courts. If the use of French pleadings was hard on the one Anglo-Saxon suitor who demanded justice in Henry I.'s time, the use of English pleadings would have been equally annoying to the nine French gentlemen who appeared for the same purpose in the king's court. It was greatly to be desired that the two races should have one common language; and common sense ordained that the tongue of the one or the other race should be adopted as the national language. Which side therefore was to be at the pains to learn a new tongue? Should the conquerors labor to acquire Anglo-Saxon? or should the conquered be required to learn French? In these days the cultivated Englishmen who hold India by military force, even as the Norman invaders held England, by the right of might, settle a similar question by taking upon themselves the trouble of learning as much of the Asiatic dialects as is necessary for purposes of business. But the Norman barons were not cultivated; and for many generations ignorance was with them an affair of pride no less than of constitutional inclination.

Soon ambitious Englishmen acquired the new language, in order to use it as an instrument for personal advancement. The Saxon stripling who could keep accounts in Norman fashion, and speak French as fluently as his mother tongue, might hope to sell his knowledge in a good market. As the steward of a Norman baron he might negotiate between my lord and my lord's tenants, letting my lord know as much of his tenant's wishes, and revealing to the tenants as much of their lord's intentions as suited his purpose. Uniting in his own person the powers of interpreter, arbitrator, and steward, he possessed enviable opportunities and facilities for acquiring wealth. Not seldom, when he had grown rich, or whilst his fortunes were in the ascendant, he assumed a French name as well as a French accent; and having persuaded himself and his younger neighbors that he was a Frenchman, he in some cases bequeathed to his children an ample estate and a Norman pedigree. In certain causes in the law courts the agent (by whatever title known) who was a perfect master of the three languages (French, Latin, and English) had greatly the advantage over an opposing agent who could speak only French and Latin.

From the Conquest till the latter half of the fourteenth century the pleadings in courts of justice were in Norman-French; but in the 36 Ed. III., it was ordained by the king "that all plees, which be to be pleded in any of his courts, before any of his justices; or in his other places; or before any of his other ministers; or in the courts and places of any other lords within the realm, shall be pleded, shewed, and defended, answered, debated, and judged in the English tongue, and that they be entred and enrolled in Latine. And that the laws and customs of the same realm, termes, and processes, be holden and kept as they be, and have been before this time; and that by the antient termes and forms of the declarations no man be prejudiced; so that the matter of the action be fully shewed in the demonstration and in the writ." Long before this wise measure of reform was obtained by the urgent wishes of the nation, the French of the law courts had become so corrupt and unlike the language of the invaders, that it was scarcely more intelligible to educated natives of France than to most Englishmen of the highest rank. A jargon compounded of French and Latin, none save professional lawyers could translate it with readiness or accuracy; and whilst it unquestionably kept suitors in ignorance of their own affairs, there is reason to believe that it often perplexed the most skilful of those official interpreters who were never weary of extolling his lucidity and precision.

But though English lawyers were thus expressly forbidden in 1362 to plead in Law-French, they persisted in using the hybrid jargon for reports and treatises so late as George II.'s reign; and for an equal length of time they seized every occasion to introduce scraps of Law-French into their speeches at the bars of the different courts. It should be observed that these antiquarian advocates were enabled thus to display their useless erudition by the provisions of King Edward's act, which, while it forbade French pleadings, specially ordained the retention of French terms.

Roger North's essay 'On the study of the Laws' contains amusing testimony to the affection with which the lawyers of his day regarded their Law-French, and also shows how largely it was used till the close of the seventeenth century by the orators of Westminster Hall. "Here I must stay to observe," says the author, enthusiastically, "the necessity of a student's early application to learn the old Law-French, for these books, and most others of considerable authority, are delivered in it. Some may think that because the Law-French is no better than the old Norman corrupted, and now a deformed hotch-potch of the English and Latin mixed together, it is not fit for a polite spark to foul himself with; but this nicety is so desperate a mistake, that lawyer and Law-French are coincident; one will not stand without the other." So enamored was he of the grace and excellence of law-reporters' French, that he regarded it as a delightful study for a man of fashion, and maintained that no barrister would do justice to the law and the interests of his clients who did not season his sentences with Norman verbiage. "The law," he held, "is scarcely expressible properly in English, and when it is done, it must be Francoise, or very uncouth."

Edward III.'s measure prohibitory of French pleadings had therefore comparatively little influence on the educational course of law-students. The published reports of trials, known by the name of Year-Books, were composed in French, until the series terminated in the time of Henry VIII.; and so late as George II.'s reign, Chief Baron Comyn preferred such words as 'chemin,' 'dismes,' and 'baron and feme,' to such words as 'highway,' 'tithes,' 'husband and wife.' More liberal than the majority of his legal brethren, even as his enlightenment with regard to public affairs exceeded that of ordinary politicians of his time, Sir Edward Coke wrote his commentaries in English, but when he published them, he felt it right to soothe the alarm of lawyers by assuring them that his departure from ancient usage could have no disastrous consequences. "I cannot conjecture," he apologetically observes in his preface, "that the general communicating these laws in the English tongue can work any inconvenience."

Some of the primary text-books of legal lore had been rendered into English, and some most valuable treatises had been written and published in the mother tongue of the country; but in the seventeenth century no Inns-of-Court man could acquire an adequate acquaintance with the usages and rules of our courts and the decisions of past judges, until he was able to study the Year-Books and read Littleton in the original. To acquire this singular language—a dead tongue that cannot be said to have ever lived—was the first object of the law-student. He worked at it in his chamber, and with faltering and uncertain accents essayed to speak it at the periodic mootings in which he was required to take part before he could be called to the bar, and also after he had become an utter-barrister. In his 'Autobiography,' Sir Simonds D'Ewes makes mention in several places of his Law-French exercises (temp. James I.), and in one place of his personal story he observes, "I had twice mooted in Law-French before I was called to the bar, and several times after I was made an utter-barrister, in our open hall. Thrice also before I was of the bar, I argued the reader's cases at the Inns of Chancery publicly, and six times afterwards. And then also, being an utter-barrister, I had twice argued our Middle-Temple reader's case at the cupboard, and sat nine times in our hall at the bench, and argued such cases in English as had before been argued by young gentlemen or utter-barristers in Law-French bareheaded."

Amongst the excellent changes by which the more enlightened of the Commonwealth lawyers sought to lessen the public clamor of law-reform was the resolution that all legal records should be kept, and all writs composed, in the language of the country. Hitherto the law records had been kept in a Latin that was quite as barbarous as the French used by the reporters; and the determination to abolish a custom which served only to obscure the operations of justice and to confound the illiterate was hailed by the more intelligent purchasers of law as a notable step in the right direction. But the reform was by no means acceptable to the majority of the bar, who did not hesitate to stigmatize the measure as a dangerous innovation—which would prove injurious to learned lawyers and peace-loving citizens, although it might possibly serve the purposes of ignorant counsel and litigious 'lay gents.'[28]The legal literature of three generations following Charles I.'s execution abounds with contemptuous allusions to the 'English times' of Cromwell; the old-fashioned reporters, hugging their Norman-French and looking with suspicion on popular intelligence, were vehement in expressing their contempt for the prevalent misuse of the mother tongue. "I have," observes Styles, in the preface to his reports, "made these reports speak English; not that I believe that they will be thereby more generally useful, for I have always been and yet am of opinion, that that part of the Common Law which is in the English hath only occasioned the making of unquiet spirits contentiously knowing, and more apt to offend others than to defend themselves; but I have done it in obedience to authority, and to stop the mouths of such of this English age, who, though they be confessedly different in their minds and judgments, as the builders of Babel were in their language, yet do think it vain, if not impious, to speak or understand more than their own mother tongue." In like manner, Whitelock's uncle Bulstrode, the celebrated reporter, says of the second part of his reports, "that he had manny years since perfected the words in French, in which language he had desired it might have seen the light, being most proper for it, and most convenient for the professors of the law."

The restorers who raised Charles II. to his father's throne, lost no time in recalling Latin to the records and writs; and so gladly did the reporters and the practising counsel avail themselves of the reaction in favor of discarded usages, that more Law-French was written and talked in Westminster Hall during the time of the restored king, than had been penned and spoken throughout the first fifty years of the seventeenth century.

The vexatious and indescribably absurd use of Law-Latin in records, writs, and written pleadings, was finally put an end to by statute 4 George II. c. 26; but this bill, which discarded for legal processes a cumbrous and harsh language, that was alike unmusical and inexact, and would have been utterly unintelligible to a Roman gentleman of the Augustan period, did not become law without much opposition from some of the authorities of Westminster Hall. Lord Raymond, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, spoke in accordance with opinions that had many supporters on the bench and at the bar, when he expressed his warm disapprobation of the proposed measure, and sarcastically observed "that if the bill paused, the law might likewise be translated into Welsh, since many in Wales understood not English." In the same spirit Sir Willian Blackstone and more recent authorities have lamented the loss of Law-Latin. Lord Campbell, in the 'Chancellors,' records that he "heard the late Lord Ellenborough from the bench regret the change, on the ground that it had had the tendency to make attorneys illiterate."

The sneer by which Lord Raymond endeavored to cast discredit on the proposal to abolish Law-Latin, was recalled after the lapse of many years by Sergeant Heywood, who forthwith acted upon it as though it originated in serious thought. Whilst acting as Chief Justice of the Carmarthen Circuit, the sergeant was presiding over a trial of murder, when it was discovered that neither the prisoner, nor any member of the jury, could understand a word of English; under these circumstances it was suggested that the evidence and the charge should be explained verbatim, to the prisoner and his twelve triers by an interpreter. To this reasonable petition that the testimony should be presented in a Welsh dress, the judge replied that, "to accede to the request would be to repeal the act of parliament, which required that all proceedings in courts of justice should be in the English tongue, and that the case of a trial in Wales, in which the prisoner and jury should not understand English, was a case not provided for, although the attention of the legislature had been called to it by that great judge Lord Raymond." The judge having thus decided, the inquiry proceeded—without the help of an interpreter—the counsel for the prosecution favoring the jury with an eloquent harangue, no single sentence of which was intelligible to them; a series of witnesses proving to English auditors, beyond reach of doubt, that the prisoner had deliberately murdered his wife; and finally the judge instructing the jury, in language which was as insignificant to their minds as the same quantity of obsolete Law-French would have been, that it was their duty to return a verdict of 'Guilty.' Throwing themselves into the humor of the business, the Welsh jurymen, although they were quite familiar with the facts of the case, acquitted the murderer, much to the encouragement of many wretched Welsh husbands anxious for a termination of their matrimonial sufferings.

[28] In the seventeenth century, lawyers usually called their clients and the non-legal public 'Lay Gents.'



CHAPTER XXXVI.

STUDENT LIFE IN OLD TIME.

From statements made in previous chapters, it may be seen that in ancient times the Law University was a far more conspicuous feature of the metropolis than it has been in more modern generations. In the fifteenth century the law students of the town numbered about two thousand; in Elizabethan London their number fluctuated between one thousand and two thousand; towards the close of Charles II.'s reign they were probably much less than fifteen hundred; in the middle of the eighteenth century they do not seem to have much exceeded one thousand. Thus at a time when the entire population of the capital was considerably less than the population of a third-rate provincial town of modern England, the Inns of Court and Chancery contained more undergraduates than would be found on the books of the Oxford Colleges at the present time.

Henry VIII.'s London looked to the University for mirth, news, trade. During vacations there was but little stir in the taverns and shops of Fleet Street; haberdashers and vintners sate idle; musicians starved; and the streets of the capital were comparatively empty when the students had withdrawn to spend their holidays in the country. As soon as the gentlemen of the robe returned to town all was brisk and merry again. As the town grew in extent and population, the social influence of the university gradually decreased; but in Elizabethan London the eclat of the inns was at its brightest, and during the reigns of Elizabeth's two nearest successors London submitted to the Inns-of-Court men as arbiters of all matters pertaining to taste—copying their dress, slang, amusements, and vices. The same may be said, with less emphasis, of Charles II.'s London. Under the 'Merry Monarch' theatrical managers were especially anxious to please the inns, for they knew that no play would succeed which the lawyers had resolved to damn—that no actor could achieve popularity if the gallants of the Temple combined to laugh him down—that no company of performers could retain public favor when they had lost the countenance of law-colleges. Something of this power the young lawyers retained beyond the middle of the last century. Fielding and Addison caught with nervous eagerness the critical gossip of the Temple and Chancery Lane, just as Congreve and Wycherly, Dryden and Cowley had caught it in previous generations. Fashionable tradesmen and caterers for the amusement of the public made their engagements and speculations with reference to the opening of term. New plays, new books, new toys were never offered for the first time to London purchasers when the lawyers were away. All that the 'season' is to modern London, the 'term' was to old London, from the accession of Henry VIII. to the death of George II., and many of the existing commercial and fashionable arrangements of a London 'season' maybe traced to the old-world 'term.'

In olden time the influence of the law-colleges was as great upon politics as upon fashion. Sheltering members of every powerful family in the country they were centres of political agitation, and places for the secret discussion of public affairs. Whatever plot was in course of incubation, the inns invariably harbored persons who were cognisant of the conspiracy. When faction decided on open rebellion or hidden treason, the agents of the malcontent leaders gathered together in the inns, where, so long as they did not rouse the suspicions of the authorities and maintained the bearing of studious men, they could hire assassins, plan risings, hold interviews with fellow-conspirators, and nurse their nefarious projects into achievement. At periods of danger therefore spies were set to watch the gates of the hostels, and mark who entered them. Governments took great pains to ascertain the secret life of the collegians. A succession of royal directions for the discipline of the inns under the Tudors and Stuarts points to the jealousy and constant apprehensions with which the sovereigns of England long regarded those convenient lurking-places for restless spirits and dangerous adversaries. Just as the Student-quarter of Paris is still watched by a vigilant police, so the Inns of Court were closely watched by the agents of Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell, of Burleigh and Buckingham. During the troubles and contentions of Elizabeth's reign Lord Burleigh was regularly informed concerning the life of the inns, the number of students in and out of town, the parentage and demeanor of new members, the gossip of the halls, and the rumors of the cloisters. In proportion as the political temper and action of the lawyers were deemed matters of high importance, their political indiscretions and misdemeanors were promptly and sometimes ferociously punished. An idle joke over a pot of wine sometimes cost a witty barrister his social rank and his ears. To promote a wholesome fear of authority in the colleges, government every now and then flogged a student at the cart's tail in Holborn, or pilloried a sad apprentice of the law in Chancery Lane, or hung an ancient on a gibbet at the entrance of his inn.

The anecdote-books abound with good stories that illustrate the political excitability of the inns in past times, and the energy with which ministers were wont to repress the first manifestations of insubordination. Rushworth records the adventure of four young men of Lincoln's Inn who throw aside prudence and sobriety in a tavern hard by their inn, and drank to "the confusion of the Archbishop of Canterbury." The next day, full of penitence and head-ache, the offenders were brought before the council, and called to account for their scandalous conduct; when they would have fared ill had not the Earl of Dorset done them good service, and privately instructed them to say in their defence, that they had not drunk confusion to the archbishop but to the archbishop's foes. On this ingenious representation, the council supposed that the drawer—on whose information the proceedings were taken—had failed to catch the last word of the toast; and consequently the young gentlemen were dismissed with a 'light admonition,' much to their own surprise and the informer's chagrin.

Of the political explosiveness of the inns in Charles II.'s time Narcissus Luttrell gives the following illustration in his diary, under date June 15 and 16, 1681:—"The 15th was a project sett on foot in Grayes Inn for the carrying on an addresse for thankes to his majestie for his late declaration; and was moved that day in the hall by some at dinner, and being (as is usual) sent to the barre messe to be by them recommended to the bench, but was rejected both by bench and barr; but the other side seeing they could doe no good this way, they gott about forty together and went to the tavern, and there subscribed the said addresse in the name of the truelye loyall gentlemen of Grayes Inn. The chief sticklers for the said addition were Sir William Seroggs, Jun., Robert Fairebeard, Capt. Stowe, Capt. Radcliffe, one Yalden, with others, to the number of 40 or thereabouts; many of them sharpers about town, with clerks not out of their time, and young men newly come from the university. And some of them went the 17th to Windsor, and presented the said addresse to his majesty: who was pleasd to give them his thanks and confer (it is said) knighthood on the said Mr. Fairebeard; this proves a mistake since. The 16th was much such another addresse carried on in the Middle Temple, where several Templars, meeting about one or two that afternoon in the hall for that purpose, they began to debate it, but they were opposed till the hall began to fill; and then the addressers called for Mr. Montague to take the chaire; on which a poll was demanded, but the addressers refused it, and carried Mr. Montague and sett him in the chaire, and the other part pulled him out, on which high words grew, and some blows were given; but the addressers seeing they could doe no good with it in the hall, adjourned to the Divill Tavern, and there signed the addresse; the other party kept in the hall, and fell to protesting against such illegall and arbitrary proceedings, subscribing their names to a greater number than the addressers were, and presented the same to the bench as a grievance."

Like the King's Head Tavern, which stood in Chancery Lane, the Devil Tavern, in Fleet Street, was a favorite house with the Caroline Lawyers. Its proximity to the Temple secured the special patronage of the templars, whereas the King's Head was more frequented by Lincoln's-Inn men; and in the tavern-haunting days of the seventeenth century those two places of entertainment saw many a wild and dissolute scene. Unlike Chattelin, who endeavored to satisfy his guests with delicate repasts and light wines, the hosts of the Devil and the King's Head provided the more substantial fare of old England, and laid themselves out to please roysterers who liked pots of ale in the morning, and were wont to drink brandy by the pint as the clocks struck midnight. Nando's, the house where Thurlow in his student-period used to hold nightly disputations with all comers of suitable social rank, was an orderly place in comparison with these more venerable hostelries; and though the Mitre, Cock, and Rainbow have witnessed a good deal of deep drinking, it may be questioned if they, or any other ancient taverns of the legal quarter, encouraged a more boisterous and reckless revelry than that which constituted the ordinary course of business at the King's Head and the Devil.

In his notes for Jan. 1681-2, Mr. Narcissus Luttrell observes—"The 13th, at night, some young gentlemen of the Temple went to the King's Head Tavern, Chancery Lane, committing strange outrages there, breaking windowes, &c., which the watch hearing of came to disperse them; but they sending for severall of the watermen with halberts that attend their comptroller of the revells, were engaged in a desperate riott, in which one of the watchmen was run into the body and lies very ill; but the watchmen secured one or two of the watermen." Eleven years later the diarist records: "Jan. 5. One Batsill, a young gentleman of the Temple, was committed to Newgate for wounding a captain at the Devil Tavern in Fleet Street on Saturday last." Such ebullitions of manly spirit—ebullitions pleasant enough to the humorist, but occasionally productive of very disagreeable and embarrassing consequences—were not uncommon in the neighborhood of the Inns of Court whilst the Christmas revels were in progress.

A tempestuous, hot-blooded, irascible set were these gentlemen of the law-colleges, more zealous for their own honor than careful for the feelings of their neighbors. Alternately warring with sharp tongues, sharp pens, and sharp swords they went on losing their tempers, friends, and lives in the most gallant and picturesque manner imaginable. Here is a nice little row which occurred in the Middle Temple Hall during the days of good Queen Bess! "The records of the society," says Mr. Foss, "preserve an account of the expulsion of a member, which is rendered peculiarly interesting in consequence of the eminence to which the delinquent afterwards attained as a statesman, a poet, and a lawyer. Whilst the masters of the bench and other members of the society were sitting quietly at dinner on February 9, 1597-8, John Davis came into the hall with his hat on his head, and attended by two persons armed with swords, and going up to the barrister's table, where Richard Martin was sitting, he pulled out from under his gown a cudgel 'quem vulgariter vocant a bastinado,' and struck him over the head repeatedly, and with so much violence that the bastinado was shivered into many pieces. Then retiring to the bottom of the hall, he drew one of his attendants' swords and flourished it over his head, turning his face towards Martin, and then turning away down the water steps of the Temple, threw himself into a boat. For this outrageous act he was immediately disbarred and expelled the house, and deprived for ever of all authority to speak or consult in law. After nearly four years' retirement he petitioned the benchers for his restoration, which they accorded on October 30, 1601, upon his making a public submission in the hall, and asking pardon of Mr. Martin, who at once generously forgave him." Both the principals in this scandalous outbreak and subsequent reconciliation became honorably known in their profession—Martin rising to be a Recorder of London and a member of parliament; and Davies acting as Attorney General of Ireland and Speaker of the Irish parliament, and achieving such a status in politics and law that he was appointed to the Chief Justiceship of England, an office, however, which sudden death prevented him from filling.

Nor must it be imagined that gay manners and lax morals were less general amongst the veterans than amongst the youngsters of the bar. Judges and sergeants were quite as prone to levity and godless riot as students about to be called; and such was the freedom permitted by professional decorum that leading advocates habitually met their clients in taverns, and having talked themselves dry at the bars of Westminster Hall, drank themselves speechless at the bars of Strand taverns—ere they reeled again into their chambers. The same habits of uproarious self-indulgence were in vogue with the benchers of the inns, and the Doctors of Doctors' Commons. Hale's austerity was the exceptional demeanor of a pious man protesting against the wickedness of an impious age. Had it not been for the shortness of time that had elapsed since Algernon Sidney's trial and sentence, John Evelyn would have seen no reason for censuring the loud hilarity and drunkenness of Jeffreys and Withings at Mrs. Castle's wedding.

In some respects, however, the social atmosphere of the inns was far more wholesome in the days of Elizabeth, and for the hundred years following her reign, than it is at present. Sprung in most cases from legal families, the students who were educated to be working members of the bar lived much more under the observation of their older relations, and in closer intercourse with their mothers and sisters than they do at present. Now-a-days young Templars, fresh from the universities, would be uneasy and irritable under strict domestic control; and as men with beards and five-and-twenty years' knowledge of the world, they would resent any attempt to draw them within the lines of domestic control. But in Elizabethan and also in Stuart London, law-students were considerably younger than they are under Victoria.

Moreover, the usage of the period trained young men to submit with cheerfulness to a parental discipline that would be deemed intolerable by our own youngsters. During the first terms of their eight, seven, or at least six years of pupilage, until they could secure quarters within college walls, students frequently lodged in the houses or chambers of near relations who were established in the immediate vicinity of the inns. A judge with a house in Fleet Street, an eminent counsel with a family mansion in Holborn, or an office-holder with commodious chambers in Chancery Lane, usually numbered amongst the members of his family a son, or nephew, or cousin who was keeping terms for the bar. Thus placed under the immediate superintendence of an elder whom he regarded with affection and pride, and surrounded by the wholesome interests of a refined domestic circle, the raw student was preserved from much folly and ill-doing into which he would have fallen had he been thrown entirely on his own resources for amusement.

The pecuniary means of Inns-of-Court students have not varied much throughout the last twelve generations. In days when money was scarce and very precious they of course lived on a smaller number of coins than they require in these days when gold and silver are comparatively abundant and cheap; but it is reasonable to suppose that in every period the allowances, on which the less affluent of them subsisted, represent the amounts on which young men of their respective times were just able to maintain the figure and style of independent gentlemen. The costly pageants and feasts of the inns in old days must not be taken as indicative of the pecuniary resources of the common run of students; for the splendor of those entertainments was mainly due to the munificence of those more wealthy members who by a liberal and even profuse expenditure purchased a right to control the diversions of the colleges. Fortescue, speaking of his own time, says: "There can no student bee mayntayned for lesse expenses by the yeare than twentye markes. And if hee haue a seruant to waite uppon him, as most of them haue, then so much the greater will his charges bee." Hence it appears that during the most patrician period of the law university, when wealthy persons were accustomed to maintain ostentatious retinues of servants, a law-student often had no private personal attendant. An ordinance shows that in Elizabethan London the Inns-of-Court men were waited upon by laundresses or bedmakers who served and took wages from several masters at the same time. It would be interesting to ascertain the exact time when the "laundress" was first introduced into the Temple. She certainly flourished in the days of Queen Bess; and Roger North's piquant description of his brother's laundress is applicable to many of her successors who are looking after their perquisites at the present date. "The housekeeper," says Roger, "had been formerly his lordship's laundress at the Temple, and knew well her master's brother so early as when he was at the writing-school. She was a phthisical old woman, and could scarce crawl upstairs once a day." This general employment of servants who were common to several masters would alone prove that the Inns-of-Court men in the seventeenth century felt it convenient to husband their resources, and exercise economy. Throughout that century sixty pounds was deemed a sufficient income for a Temple student; and though it was a scant allowance, some young fellows managed to push on with a still more modest revenue. Simonds D'Ewes had L60 per annum during his student course, and L100 a year on becoming an utter-barrister. "It pleased God also in mercy," he writes, "after this to ease me of that continual want or short stipend I had for about five years last past groaned under; for my father, immediately on my call to the bar, enlarged my former allowance with forty pounds more annually; so as, after this plentiful annuity of one hundred pounds was duly and quarterly paid me by him, I found myself easyd of so many cares and discontents as I may well account that the 27th day of June foregoing the first day of my outward happiness since the decease of my dearest mother." All things considered, a bachelor in James I.'s London with a clear income of L100 per annum was on the whole as well off for his time as a young barrister of the present day would be with an annual allowance of L250 or L300. Francis North, when a student, was allowed only L60 per annum; and as soon as he was called and began to earn a little money, his parsimonious father reduced the stipend by L10; but, adds Roger North, "to do right to his good father, he paid him that fifty pounds a year as long as he lived, saying he would not discourage industry by rewarding it, when successful, with less." George Jeffreys, in his student-days, smarted under a still more galling penury, for he was allowed only L50 a year, L10 being for his clothes, and L40 for the rest of his expenditure. In the following century the nominal incomes of law-students rose in proportion as the wealth of the country increased and the currency fell in value. In George II.'s time a young Templar expected his father to allow him L150 a year, and on encouragement would spend twice that amount in the same time. Henry Fielding's allowance from General Fielding was L200 per annum; but as he said, with a laugh, he had too feeling and dutiful a nature to press an affectionate father for money which he was totally unable to pay. At the present time L150 per annum is about the smallest sum on which a law-student can live with outward decency; and L250 per annum the lowest amount on which a chamber barrister can live with suitable dignity and comfort. If he has to maintain the expenses of a distant circuit Mr. Briefless requires from L100 to L200 more. Alas! how many of Mr. Briefless's meritorious and most ornamental kind are compelled to shift on far less ample means! How many of them periodically repeat the jest of poor A——, who made this brief and suggestive official return to the Income Tax Commissioners—"I am totally dependent on my father, who allows me—nothing!"



CHAPTER XXXVII.

READERS AND MOOTMEN.

Romantic eulogists of the Inns of Court maintain that, as an instrument of education, the law-university was nearly perfect for many generations after its consolidation. That in modern time abuses have impaired its faculties and diminished its usefulness they admit. Some of them are candid enough to allow that, as a school for the systematic study of law, it is under existing circumstances a deplorably deficient machine; but they unite in declaring that there was a time when the system of the combined Colleges was complete and thoroughly efficacious. The more cautious of these eulogists decline to state the exact limits of the period when the actual condition of the university merited their cordial approval, but they concur in pointing to the years between the accession of Henry VII. and the death of James I., as comprising the brightest days of its academical vigor and renown.

It is however worthy of observation that throughout the times when the legal learning and discipline of the colleges are described to have been admirable, the system and the students by no means won the approbation of those critical authorities who were best able to see their failings and merits. Wolsey was so strongly impressed by the faulty education of the barristers who practised before him, and more especially by their total ignorance of the principles of jurisprudence, that he prepared a plan for a new university which should be established in London, and should impart a liberal and exact knowledge of law. Had he lived to carry out his scheme it is most probable that the Inns of Court and Chancery would have become subsidiary and subordinate establishments to the new foundation. In this matter, sympathizing with the more enlightened minds of his age, Sir Nicholas Bacon was no less desirous than the great cardinal that a new law university should be planted in town, and he urged on Henry VIII. the propriety of devoting a certain portion of the confiscated church property to the foundation and endowment of such an institution.

On paper the scheme of the old exercises and degrees looks very imposing, and those who delight in painting fancy pictures may infer from them that the scholastic order of the colleges was perfect. Before a young man could be called to the bar, he had under ordinary circumstances to spend seven or eight years in arguing cases at the Inns of Chancery, in proving his knowledge of law and Law-French at moots, in sharpening his wits at case-putting, in patient study of the Year-Books, and in watching the trials of Westminster Hall. After his call he was required to spend another period in study and academic exercise before he presumed to raise his voice at the bar; and in his progress to the highest rank of his profession he was expected to labor in educating the students of his house as assistant-reader, single-reader, double-reader. The gravest lawyers of every inn were bound to aid in the task of teaching the mysteries of the law to the rising generation.

The old ordinances assumed that the law-student was thirsting for a knowledge of law, and that the veterans were no less eager to impart it. During term law was talked in hall at dinner and supper, and after these meals the collegians argued points. "The cases were put" after the earlier repast, and twice or thrice a week moots were "brought in" after the later meal. The students were also encouraged to assemble towards the close of each day and practise 'case-putting' in their gardens and in the cloisters of the Temple or Lincoln's Inn. The 'great fire' of 1678-9 having destroyed the Temple Cloisters, some of the benchers proposed to erect chambers on the ground, to and fro upon which law-students had for generations walked whilst they wrangled aloud; but the Earl of Nottingham, recalling the days when young Heneage Finch used to put cases with his contemporary students, strangled the proposal at its birth, and Sir Christopher Wren subsequently built the Cloisters which may be seen at the present day.

But there is reason to fear that at a very early period in their history the Inns of Court began to pay more attention to certain outward forms of instruction than to instruction itself. The unbiassed inquirer is driven to suspect that 'case-putting' soon became an idle ceremony, and 'mooting' a mere pastime. Gentlemen ate heartily in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and it is not easy to believe that immediately after a twelve o'clock dinner benchers were in the best possible mood to teach, or students in the fittest condition for learning. It is credible that these post-prandial exercitations were often enlivened by sparkling quips and droll occurrences; but it is less easy to believe that they were characterised by severe thought and logical exactness. So also with the after-supper exercises. The six o'clock suppers of the lawyers were no light repasts, but hearty meals of meat and bread, washed down by 'green pots' of ale and wine. When 'the horn' sounded for supper, the student was in most cases better able to see the truth of knotty points than when in compliance with etiquette he bowed to the benchers, and asked if it was their pleasure to hear a moot. It seems probable that long before 'case-puttings' and 'mootings' were altogether disused, the old benchers were wont to wink mischievously at each other when they prepared to teach the boys, and that sometimes they would turn away from the proceedings of a moot with an air of disdain or indifference. The inquirer is not induced to rate more highly the intellectual effort of such exercises because the teachers refreshed their exhausted powers with bread and beer as soon as the arguments were closed.

When such men as Coke and Francis Bacon were the readers, the students were entertained with lectures of surpassing excellence; but it was seldom that such readers could be found. It seems also that at an early period men became readers, not because they had any especial aptitude for offices of instruction, or because they had some especial fund of information—but simply because it was their turn to read. Routine placed them in the pulpit for a certain number of weeks; and when they had done all that routine required of them, and had thereby qualified themselves for promotion to the rank of sergeant, they took their seats amongst the benchers and ancients with the resolution not to trouble themselves again about the intellectual progress of the boys.

Soon also the chief teacher of an Inn of Court became its chief feaster and principal entertainer; and in like manner his subordinates in office, such as assistant readers and readers elect, were required to put their hands into their pockets, and feed their pupils with venison and wine as well as with law and equity. It is amusing to observe how little Dugdale has to say about the professional duties of readers—and how much about their hospitable functions and responsibilities. Philip and Mary ordered that no reader of the Middle Temple should give away more than fifteen bucks during his readings; but so greatly did the cost of readers' entertainments increase in the following century, that Dugdale observes—"But the times are altered; there being few summer readers who, in half the time that heretofore a reading was wont to continue, spent so little as threescore bucks, besides red deer; some have spent fourscore, some an hundred."

Just as readers were required to spend more in hospitality, they were required to display less learning. Sound lawyers avoided election to the readers' chairs, leaving them to be filled by rich men who could afford to feast the nobility and gentry, or at least by men who were willing to purchase social eclat with a lavish outlay of money. Under Charles II. the 'readings' were too often nothing better than scandalous exhibitions of mental incapacity: and having sunk into disrepute, they died out before the accession of James II.

The scandalous and beastly disorder of the Grand Day Feasts at the Middle Temple, during Francis North's tenure of the reader's office, was one of the causes that led to the discontinuance of Reader's Banquets at that house; and the other inns gladly followed the example of the Middle Temple in putting an end to a custom which had ceased to promote the dignity of the law. Of this feast, and his brother's part in it, Roger North says: "He (i.e. Francis North) sent out the officers with white staves (for so the way was) and a long list to invite; but he went himself to wait upon the Archbishop of Canterbury, Sheldon; for so also the ceremony required. The archbishop received him very honorably and would not part with him at the stairshead, as usually had been done; but, telling him he was no ordinary reader, went down, and did not part till he saw him past at his outward gate I cannot much commend the extravagance of the feasting used at these readings; and that of his lordship's was so terrible an example, that I think none hath ventured since to read publicly; but the exercise is turned into a revenue, and a composition is paid into the treasury of the society. Therefore one may say, as was said of Cleomenes, that, in this respect, his lordship was ultimus herorum, the last of the heroes. And the profusion of the best provisions, and wine, was to the worst of purposes—debauchery, disorder, tumult, and waste. I will give but one instance; upon the grand day, as it was called, a banquet was provided to be set upon the table, composed of pyramids, and smaller services in form. The first pyramid was at least four feet high, with stages one above another. The conveying this up to the table, through a crowd, that were in full purpose to overturn it, was no small work: but, with the friendly assistance of the gentlemen, it was set whole upon the table. But, after it was looked upon a little, all went, hand over hand, among the rout in the hall, and for the most part was trod under foot. The entertainment the nobility had out of this was, after they had tossed away the dishes, a view of the crowd in confusion, wallowing one over another, and contending for a dirty share of it."