PART II.-CHAPTER XVI.
OF THE NUMBER OF ATTORNIES IN THIS COUNTIE NOW AND HERETOFORE.
[A STATUTE was passed in the reign of Edward I. which gave the first authority to suitors in the courts of law to prosecute or defend by attorney; and the number of attorneys afterwards increased so rapidly that several statutes were passed in the reigns of Henry IV. Henry VI. and Elizabeth, for limiting their number. One of these (33 Hen. VI. c. 7) states that not long before there were only six or eight attorneys in Norfolk and Suffolk, and that their increase to twenty-four was to the vexation and prejudice of those counties; and it therefore enacts that for the future there shall be only six in Norfolk, six in Suffolk, and two in Norwich. (Penny Cycle, art. Attorney.) Aubrey adopts the inference that strife and dissension were promoted by the increase of attorneys; which he accordingly laments as a serious evil. He quotes at some length from a treatise "About Actions for Slander and Arbitrements, what words are actionable in the law, and what not", &c. by John March, of Gray's Inn, Barrister (London, 1674, 8vo.); wherein the great increase of actions for slander is shewn, by reference to old law books. The author urges the propriety of checking such actions as much as possible, and quaintly observes, "as I cannot balk that observation of that learned Chief Justice (Wray), who sayes that in our old bookes actions for scandal are very rare; so I will here close with this one word: though the tongues of men be set on fire, I know no reason wherefore the law should be used as bellows". Aubrey remarks upon this:- "The true and intrinsic reason why actions of the case were so rare in those times above mentioned, was by reason that men's consciences were kept cleane and in awe by confession"; and he concludes the chapter with an extract from "Europæ Speculum", by Sir Edwin Sandys, Knight, (1637,) in which the advantages and disadvantages of auricular confession are discussed. - J. B.]
ME. BAYNHAM, of Cold Ashton, in Gloucestershire, bred an attorney, sayes, that an hundred yeares since there were in the county of Gloucester but four attorneys, and now (1689) no fewer than three hundred attorneys and sollicitors; and Dr. Guydot, Physician, of Bath, sayes that they report that anciently there was but one attorney in Somerset, and he was so poor that he went a'foot to London; and now they swarme there like locusts.
Fabian Philips tells me (1683) that about sixty-nine yeares since there were but two attorneys in Worcestershire, sc. Langston and Dowdeswell; and they be now in every market towne, and goe to marketts; and he believes there are a hundred.
In Henry 6th time (q. if not in Hen. 7?) there was a complaint to the Parliament by the Norfolk people that whereas formerly there were in that county but five or six attorneys, that now they are exceedingly encreased, and that they went to markets and bred contention. The judges were ordered to rectify this grievance, but they fell asleep and never awak't since. - Vide the Parliament Roll. [See the above note. In page 12 (ante) Aubrey states that the Norfolk people are the "most litigious" of any in England. - J. B.] 'Tis thought that in England there are at this time near three thousand;* but there is a rule in hawking, the more spaniells the more game. They doe now rule and governe the lawyers [barristers] and judges. They will take a hundred pounds with a clarke.
*[There are now upwards of three thousand attorneys in practice in the metropolis alone, to whom the celebrated remark of Alderman Beckford to King George the Third may be justly applied, with the substitution of another word for "the Crown", - "the influence of lawyers has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished." - J. B.]