This passage has been cited for the special purpose of exhibiting the close affinity between the Universities and the Law, for which, it will be generally conceded, it is admirably suited. It is necessary, however, that it should be pointed out that the learned Coke was writing at and of a period when the system was fullblown. In the early period when "hostels" for apprentices of the law began to be, no distinction obtained into Inns of Court and Inns of Chancery. These apprentices were, originally, just what the term implies, but their importance became greater until their representative is now the ordinary barrister-at-law.
In the year 1292—a date of some significance for us, not only in the immediate context, but with reference to other portions of the work—the King (Edward I.) promulgated an ordinance "De Attornatis et Apprenticiis" in which he enjoined on John de Metingham and his fellows that they should, at their discretion, "provide and ordain from every county certain attorneys and lawyers of the best and most apt for their learning and skill, who might do service to his court and that people, and those so chosen only, and no other, should follow his court and transact the affairs therein, the said King and his council deeming the number of seven score sufficient for that employment, but leaving it to the discretion of the judges to add to or diminish the number, as they should see fit" (Dugdale's Tr.).
Serjeant Pulling is somewhat perplexed concerning the precise position of the apprenticii ad legem at the time of this edict. He, however, hazards the conjecture that "by the apprentices were meant the advanced students, or learners of the law, who, as pupils or assistants to the Serjeants of the Coif, had obtained an insight into practice, and perhaps also there were included the more irregular followers of the law—the dilettante practitioners and Cleri Causidici, who continued to follow the law in the secular courts in spite of repeated prohibitions and objections."
With the foundation and growth of the Inns of Court, the apprentices—the better sort at least—obtained full recognition as practitioners; and at the close of the fourteenth century their reputation had become so considerable that the great apprentices had formed themselves into a distinct order, in which they stood next to serjeants-at-law, the gradation being as follows:
| (i) | Serjeants-at-law. |
| (ii) | Nobiliores, or great apprentices. |
| (iii) | Other apprentices who followed the law. |
| (iv) | Apprentices of less estate, and attorneys. |
The term "apprentice-at-law" yielded to apprenticius ad barros, and that again to "utter-barrister," corresponding to the modern "barrister-at-law." Not all the students admitted at an inn were "called" to the bar, the truth being that only a small proportion received that distinction. In 1596 an arrangement was made by the Judges and Benchers of the four Inns of Court, by which it was agreed:
"That hereafter none shall be admitted to the Barr but only such as be at the least seven years' continuance, and have kept the exercises within the House and abroad in Inns of Chancery, according to the orders of the House:
"Item, that there be in one year only four Utter-Barristers called in any Inne of Court (that is to say) in Easter Term, two, and, in Michaelmas Term, two," etc.
Again, certain orders, made for the better government of the Inns of Court and Chancery in 1624 provided that not more than eight members of any one inn should be called to the Bar in any one year, and that no Utter-Barristers, except such as had been Readers in Houses of Chancery, should begin to practise publicly at any bar at Westminster until they had been three years at the bar.
As regards the Inns of Court, their precise origin cannot be clearly ascertained. We hear of them in the reign of Edward III., mention being made in the Year Book of 1354 of "les apprentices en Hostells." In the opinion of Lord Mansfield they were at the outset "voluntary societies," for they "are," he says, "not corporations and have no charter from the Crown." Serjeant Pulling holds that the smaller houses were hired by the apprentices, and then by lease or purchase possession became permanent. The greater houses, he thinks, had a similar history. This belief is borne out by what happened in the case of the Temple. In 1324, when the King granted the Knights Hospitallers the New Temple, the latter let the Temple to "divers apprentices of the law that came from Thaveis Inn in Holborn." This was evidently in existence at the time. How long it had existed prior to 1324 cannot be stated, but in his will dated 1348, and enrolled in the Court of Hustings of the City of London, John Tavye, citizen and armourer, devised to his wife Alicia "illud hospitium, in quo apprenticii legis habitare solebant." In all probability, therefore, the existence of the inn did not go back farther than the lifetime of the armourer. The notice seems to show also that the inns received their names not from Serjeants, as fathers of the apprentices, but from the actual owners.