Whatever the exact history of their lineage, the trained lawyers who were summoned to attend and advise the King in Council did, undoubtedly, become a recognized Order, styled Servientes Regis ad Legem—King’s Serjeants-at-Law. From their ranks the Judges were always supposed to be chosen. The old formula at Westminster, when a new Serjeant approached the Judges, was, ‘I think I see a brother.’ Down to the time of the abolition of the Order, a lawyer, when nominated a Judge, first had to get himself admitted a Serjeant, and to enter the Order of the Coif. This was always an expensive step.
Fortescue enlarges upon the cost which attended the ceremonies, when one of the persons ‘pitched upon by the Lord Chief Justice with the advice and consent of all the Judges’ was summoned in virtue of the King’s Writ to take upon him the state and degree of a Serjeant-at-Law.
His own bill for the gold rings he was obliged to present—fidei symbolo—on such an occasion to the Princes, Dukes, Archbishops and Judges who were present at the ‘sumptuous feast, like that at a Coronation, lasting seven days, which the new-created Serjeants were called upon to give,’ amounted to £50. There is record of a Serjeants’ Feast held in the Inner Temple, 1555, which cost over £660. These feasts were held at first at Ely Place, Lambeth Palace, or St. John’s Priory at Clerkenwell. Afterwards they took place in the Hall of the Inn of which the new Serjeant had been a Student. The whole House contributed to the expense of this degree. The elaborate ceremonies which attended the creation of a new Serjeant-at-Law are given at length by Dugdale (chapter xli. et seq.). It would be out of place to recount them here.
It has been humorously, though not quite accurately, observed that the Bar ‘went into mourning for Queen Anne, and has remained in mourning ever since.’ The sombre robes now worn by the English Bar may well be thought to symbolize the dignity of the law and the gravity of the profession, as the ‘spotless ermine’ typifies the integrity and independence of the Judges. But, as was the case with the hoods and gowns of other degrees in other Universities, or the black felze of a gondola at Venice, brilliancy and splendour of colour was the original note, and dulness was the result of restriction. The robes which the Serjeants wore varied from time to time, and with different occasions.
In the seventeenth century Dugdale observes that their robes still in some degree resembled ‘those of the Justices of either Bench, and were of murrey, black furred with white, and scarlet. But the robe which they usually wear at their Creation only is of murrey and mouse-colour,’ with a suitable hood and the coif.
Arrangements were made about 1635 between the Judges and Serjeants, in accordance with which gowns of black cloth were to be worn for term-time; violet cloth for Court or holidays; scarlet in procession to St. Paul’s, or when dining in state at the Guildhall or attending the Sovereign’s presence at the House of Lords, and black silk for trials at Nisi Prius. But the fashions and colours were always changing. The violet gown, which superseded the mustard and murrey worn in Court during term-time, gave occasion for Jekyll’s witty rhyme, when a dull Serjeant was wearying the Court with a prosy argument:
‘The Serjeants are a grateful race;
Their dress and language show it;
Their purple robes from Tyre we trace;
Their arguments go to it.’
It was the militant Chief Justice Willes who, ten years after the ’45, first endeavoured to secure the abolition of the exclusive right of the Serjeants to practise in the Court of Common Pleas. But their hour had not yet come. In 1834 a mandate was obtained from William IV. abolishing the privilege of the Serjeants, but this was set aside by the Privy Council as being defective in form. At length doom fell upon the old Order of the Coif, in the shape of an Act of Parliament, 1846, which threw open the Common Pleas to all counsel indiscriminately. The last Queen’s Serjeants to be appointed were Serjeants Byles, Channel, Shee, and Wrangham, in 1857. By the Judicature Act of 1873, which consolidated the three Courts of Law at Westminster (See Chapter I.) into the High Court of Justice, the Judges were no longer required to receive the coif on their nomination to the bench. The knell of the Serjeants’ doom had now rung. Five years later their Inn in Chancery Lane and the Brotherhood were dissolved.
When the mere pillars of St. Paul’s had ceased to be regarded as satisfactory ‘chambers,’ the Serjeants, like the law-apprentices, took possession of Inns for the purposes of practice and residence. These Inns remained independent bodies, and never became, like the Inns of Chancery, subject to the Inns of Court.
Scrope’s Inn, adjoining the Palace of the Bishops of Ely, and opposite the Church of St. Andrew in Holborn, was the first abode of the Serjeants. Its site was long marked by Scrope’s Court in Holborn. It took its name from the Le Scropes, who rose to eminence under Edward I. Two brothers, Sir Henry and Sir Geoffrey, both became Chief Justice of King’s Bench, in 1317 and 1324 respectively. Richard Le Scrope, son of the former, was created Baron Scrope of Bolton, and was twice Chancellor of England. He died in 1403, whilst in residence at his Inn. Scrope’s Inn would thus naturally be a centre round which the trained professors of the law would congregate, as round Lincoln’s Inn and Grey’s Inn, to help in the transaction of the business of the Justice of King’s Bench. It then became an Inn for Judges and Serjeants-at-Law, and so continued until, in 1498, it was abandoned. For the lawyers were concentrating upon the southern end of Chancellor’s Lane and Fleet Street. The Serjeants took up their residence in Serjeants’ Inn (Fleet Street) at least as early as the reign of Henry VI., and probably much earlier (Dugdale). This Inn is connected with the Inner Temple by a passage past the little garden once in the possession of Sir Edward Coke, and afterwards known as the ‘Benchers’ Garden.’ But the principal entrance is from Fleet Street, through a pair of handsome iron gates, in which are wrought the arms of the Inn, a dove and a serpent.