After over 200 years of survival as an obsolete office, Readerships have been revived again to perform their proper functions. ‘A council of eight Benchers, representing all the Inns of Court, was appointed to frame lectures “open to the members of each society,” and five Readerships were established in several branches of legal science (1852). Attendance at these lectures was made compulsory, unless the candidate preferred submitting to an examination in Roman and English Law and Constitutional History. Three years
INTERIOR OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE HALL
The date of its erection (1570) is in the stained-glass window on the right. In this Hall Queen Elizabeth may have danced with Sir Christopher Hatton, and here Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night’ was first performed (see [pp. 75-78]).
later, a Royal Commission advised the establishment of a preliminary and final examination for all Bar students, together with the formation of a Law University with power to confer degrees in Law. The suggestions of the Commission were only partially acted upon, and then not till 1870, when Lord Chancellor Westbury succeeded in getting a preliminary examination in Latin and English subjects adopted and the final examination made obligatory.’[11]
And it is pleasant to note, too, that about the same time (1875) the custom of the ancient mootings, so useful for promoting ready address and sound knowledge of the Law among the aspirants to the Bar, was revived at Gray’s Inn.
The discipline which the Inns of Court enforced upon their students corresponded in general to that exercised by an Oxford or Cambridge College.
Fines and ‘putting out of Commons’ were the usual forms of punishment, though the power of imprisoning ‘gentlemen of the House’ for wilful misdemeanour and disobedience ‘was sometimes exercised by the Masters of the Bench.’[12]
Attendance at Divine Service was insisted upon, and the wearing of long beards forbidden. A beard of over three weeks’ growth was subject to a fine of 20s. A student’s gown and a round cap must be worn in Hall and in Church, and gentlemen of these Societies were forbidden to go into the City in boots and spurs, or into Hall with any weapon except daggers. They were forbidden to keep Hawkes, or to ill-treat the Butlers. They were not allowed to play shove-groat. In the reign of Elizabeth, by an order of the Judges for all the Inns of Court, the wearing of a sword or buckler, of a beard above a fortnight’s growth, or of great hose, great ruffs, any silk or fur, was equally forbidden, and no Fellow of these Societies was allowed to go into the City or suburbs ‘otherwise than in his gown according to the ancient usage of the gentlemen of the Inns of Court,’ upon penalty of expulsion for the third transgression. The wearing of gowns of a sad colour was enjoined by Philip and Mary, and long hair, or curled, was forbidden as surely as white doublets and velvet. These are echoes of the ordinary sumptuary laws of the period.