There has also been, in connexion with the modern fellowship, a class of associates similar to the associates of the antient Templars.[574] These were illustrious persons who paid large sums of money, and made presents of plate, to be admitted to the fellowship of the Masters of the Bench; they were allowed to dine at the Bench table, to be as it were honorary members of the society, but were freed from the ordinary exercises and regulations of the house, and had at the same time no voice in the government thereof.
The conversion of the chief house of the most holy order of the Temple of Solomon in England into a law university, was brought about in the following manner.
Both before, and for a very considerable period after, the Norman conquest, the study of the law was confined to the ecclesiastics, who engrossed all the learning and knowledge of the age.[575] In the reign of king Stephen, the foreign clergy who had flocked over after the conquest, attempted to introduce the ancient civil law of Rome into this country, as calculated to promote the power and advantage of their order, but were resolutely resisted by the king and the barons, who clung to their old customs and usages. The new law, however, was introduced into all the ecclesiastical courts, and the clergy began to abandon the municipal tribunals, and discontinue the study of the common law. Early in the reign of Henry the Third, episcopal constitutions were published by the bishop of Salisbury, forbidding clerks and priests to practise as advocates in the common law courts. (Nec advocati sint clerici vel sacerdotes in foro sæculari, nisi vel proprias causas vel miserabilium personarum prosequantur.[576]) Towards the close of the same reign, (A. D. 1254,) Pope Innocent IV. forbade the reading of the common law by the clergy in the English universities and seminaries of learning, because its decrees were not founded on the imperial constitutions, but merely on the customs of the laity.[577]
As the common law consequently gradually ceased to be studied and taught by the clergy, who were the great depositaries of legal learning, as of all other knowledge in those days, it became necessary to educate and train up a body of laymen to transact the judicial business of the country; and Edward the First, who, from his many legal reforms and improvements, has been styled “the English Justinian,” made the practice of the common law a distinct profession.
In antient times the Court of Common Pleas had the exclusive administration of the common law, and settled and decided all the disputes which arose between subject and subject; and in the twentieth year of the reign of Edward the First, (A. D. 1292,) the privilege of pleading causes in this court was confined to a certain number of learned persons appointed by authority. By an order in council, the king commanded John de Metingham, chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and the rest of his fellow justices, that they, according to their discretions, should provide and ordain from every county a certain number of attorneys and apprentices of the law, of the best and most apt for their learning and skill, to do service to his court and people, and those so chosen should follow his court and transact the affairs therein, and no others; the king and his council deeming the number of fourscore to be sufficient for that employment; but it was left to the discretion of the said justices to add to that number, or to diminish it, as they should think fit.[578]
At this period the Court of Common Pleas had been fixed at Westminster, which brought together the professors of the common law at London; and about the period of the dissolution of the order of the Temple, a society appears to have been in progress of formation, under the sanction of the judges, for the education of a body of learned secular lawyers to attend upon that court. The deserted convent of the Knights Templars, seated in the suburb of London, away from the noise and bustle of the city, and presenting a ready and easy access by water to Westminster, was a desirable retreat for the learned members of this infant legal society; and we accordingly find, that very soon after the dissolution of the religio-military order of Knights Templars, the professors of the common law of England mustered in considerable strength in the Temple.
In the sixth year of the reign of Edward the Third, (A. D. 1333,) when the lawyers had just established themselves in the convent of the Temple, and had engrafted upon the old stock of Knights Templars their infant society for the study of the practice of the common law, the judges of the Court of Common Pleas were made KNIGHTS,[579] being the earliest instance on record of the grant of the honour of knighthood for services purely civil, and the professors of the common law, who had the exclusive privilege of practising in that court, assumed the title or degree of FRERES SERJENS or FRATRES SERVIENTES, so that knights and serving-brethren, similar to those of the antient order of the Temple, were most curiously revived and introduced into the profession of the law.
It is true that the word serviens, serjen, or serjeant, was applied to the professors of the law long before the reign of Edward the Third, but not to denote a privileged brotherhood. It was applied to lawyers in common with all persons who did any description of work for another, from the serviens domini regis ad legem, who prosecuted the pleas of the crown in the county court, to the serviens or serjen who walked with his cane before the concubine of the Patriarch in the streets of Jerusalem.[580] The priest who worked for the Lord was called serjens de Dieu, and the lover who served the lady of his affections serjens d’amour.[581] It was in the order of the Temple that the word freres serjens or fratres servientes signified an honorary title or degree, and denoted a powerful privileged class of men. The fratres servientes armigeri or freres serjens des armes, of the chivalry of the Temple, were of the rank of gentlemen. They united in their own persons the monastic and the military character, they were allotted one horse each, they wore the red cross of the order of the Temple on their breasts,[582] they participated in all the privileges of the brotherhood, and were eligible to the dignity of Preceptor. Large sums of money were frequently given by seculars who had not been advanced to the honour of knighthood, to be admitted amongst this highly-esteemed order of men.
The freres serjens of the Temple wore linen coifs, and red caps close over them.[583] At the ceremony of their admission into the fraternity, the Master of the Temple placed the coif upon their heads, and threw over their shoulders the white mantle of the Temple; he then caused them to sit down on the ground, and gave them a solemn admonition concerning the duties and responsibilities of their profession.[584] They were warned that they must enter upon a new life, that they must keep themselves fair and free from stain, like the white garment that had been thrown around them, which was the emblem of purity and innocence; that they must render complete and perfect obedience to their superiors; that they must protect the weak, succour the needy, reverence old men, and do good to the poor.
The knights and serjeants of the common law, on the other hand, have ever constituted a privileged fraternity, and always address one another by the endearing term brother. The religious character of the antient ceremony of admission into this legal brotherhood, which took place in church, and its striking similarity to the antient mode of reception into the fraternity of the Temple, are curious and remarkable.