A Book About Lawyers

by John Cordy Jeaffreson

Noblemen sent their sons to it in order that they might acquire the style and learning and accomplishments of polite society. A proportion of the students were encouraged to devote themselves to the study of the law and to attend sedulously the sittings of Judges in Westminster Hall; but the majority of well-descended boys who inhabited the Inns of Chancery were heirs to good estates, and were trained to become their wealth rather than to increase it—to perfect themselves in graceful arts, rather than to qualify themselves to hold briefs. The same was the case in the Inns of Court, which were so designated—not because they prepared young men to rise in courts of law, but because they taught them to shine in the palaces of kings. It is a mistake to suppose that the Inns of Court contain at the present time a larger proportion of idle members, who have no intention to practise at the bar, than they contained under the Plantagenets and Tudors. On the contrary, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the number of Templars who merely played at being lawyers, or were lawyers only in name, was actually as well as relatively greater than the merely nominal lawyers of the Temple at the present time. For several generations, and for two centuries after Sir John Fortescue wrote the 'De Laudibus,' the Inns-of-Court man was more busied in learning to sing than in learning to argue a law cause, more desirous to fence with a sword than to fence with logic.

"Notwithstanding," runs Mulcaster's translation of the 'De Laudibus,'[23] "the same lawes are taught and learned, in a certaine place of publique or common studie, more convenient and apt for attayninge to the knowledge of them, than any other university. For theyr place of studie is situate nigh to the Kinges Courts, where the same lawes are pleaded and argued, and judgements by the same given by judges, men of gravitie, auncient in yeares, perfit and graduate in the same lawes. Wherefore, euerie day in court, the students in those lawes resorte by great numbers into those courts wherein the same lawes are read and taught, as it were in common schooles. This place of studie is far betweene the place of the said courts and the cittie of London, which of all thinges necessarie is the plentifullest of all cities and townes of the realme. So that the said place of studie is not situate within the cittie, where the confluence of people might disturb the quietnes of the studentes, but somewhat severall in the suburbes of the same cittie, and nigher to the saide courts, that the studentes may dayelye at their pleasure have accesse and recourse thither without weariness."

Setting forth the condition and pursuits of law-students in his day, Sir John Fortesque continues; "For in these greater inns, there can no student bee mayntayned for lesse expenses by the yeare than twentye markes. And if hee have a servaunt to wait uppon him, as most of them have, then so much the greater will his charges bee. Nowe, by reason of this charge, the children onely of noblemenne doo studye the lawes in those innes. For the poore and common sorte of the people are not able to bear so great charges for the exhibytion of theyr chyldren. And Marchaunt menne can seldome finde in theyr heartes to hynder theyr merchaundise with so greate yearly expenses. And it thus falleth out that there is scant anye man founde within the realme skilfull and cunning in the lawes, except he be a gentleman borne, and come of noble stocke. Wherefore they more than any other kinde of men have a speciall regarde to their nobility, and to the preservation of their honor and fame. And to speake upryghtlye, there is in these greater innes, yea, and in the lesser too, beside the studie of the lawes, as it were an university or schoole of all commendable qualities requisite for noble men. There they learn to sing, and to exercise themselves in all kinde of harmonye. There also they practice daunsing, and other noblemen's pastimes, as they use to do, which are brought up in the king's house. On the working dayes, the most of them apply themselves to the studye of the lawe, and on the holye dayes to the studye of holye Scripture;[24] and out of the tyme of divine service, to the reading of Chronicles. For there indeede are vertues studied, and vices exiled. So that, for the endowment of vertue, and abandoning of vice, Knights and Barrons, with other states and noblemen of the realme, place their children in those innes, though they desire not to have them learned in the lawes, nor to lieue by the practice thereof, but onely uppon their father's allowance. Scant at anye tyme is there heard among them any sedition, chyding, or grudging, and yet the offenders are punished with none other payne, but onely to bee amooved from the compayne of their fellowshippe. Which punishment they doo more feare than other criminall offendours doo feare imprisonment and yrons: For hee that is once expelled from anye of those fellowshippes is never received to bee a felowe in any of the other fellowshippes. And so by this means there is continuall peace; and their demeanor is lyke the behaviour of such as are coupled together in perfect amytie."

Any person familiar with the Inns of Court at the present time will see how closely the law-colleges of Victoria's London resemble in many important particulars the law-colleges of Fortescue's period. After the fashion of four centuries since young men are still induced to enter them for the sake of honorable companionship, good society, and social prestige, rather than for the sake of legal education. After the remarks already made with regard to musical lawyers in a previous section of this work, it is needless to say that Inns of Court men are not remarkable for their application to vocal harmony; but the younger members are still remarkable for the zeal with which they endeavor to master the accomplishments which distinguish men of fashion and tone. If the nominal (sometimes they are called 'ornamental') barristers of the fifteenth century liked to read the Holy Scriptures, the young lawyers of the nineteenth century are no less disposed to read their Bibles critically, and argue as to the merits of Bishop Colenso and his opponents. Moreover, the discipline described by Fortescue is still found sufficient to maintain order in the inns.

Writing more than a century after Fortescue, Sir John Ferne, in his 'Blazon of Gentrie, the Glory of Generosity, and the Lacy's Nobility,' observes: "Nobleness of blood, joyned with virtue, compteth the person as most meet to the enterprize of any public service; and for that cause it was not for nought that our antient governors in this land, did with a special foresight and wisdom provide, that none should be admitted into the Houses of Court, being seminaries sending forth men apt to the government of justice, except he were a gentleman of blood. And that this may seem a truth, I myself have seen a kalendar of all those which were together in the society of one of the same houses, about the last year of King Henry the Fifth, with the armes of their House and family marshalled by their names; and I assure you, the self same monument doth both approve them all to be gentlemen of perfect descents and also the number of them much less than now it is, being at that time in one house scarcely three score."[25]

This passage from an author who delighted to magnify the advantages of generous descent, has contributed to the very general and erroneous impression that until comparatively recent times the members of the English bar were necessarily drawn from the highest ranks of society; and several excellent writers on the antiquities of the law have laid aside their customary caution and strengthened Ferne's words with inaccurate comment.

Thus Pearce says of the author of the 'Glory of Generositie'—"He was one of the advocates for excluding from the Inns of Court all who were not 'a gentleman by blood,' according to the ancient rule mentioned by Fortescue, which seems to have been disregarded in Elizabeth's time." Fortescue nowhere mentions any such rule, but attributes the aristocratic character of the law-colleges to the high cost of membership. Far from implying that men of mean extraction were excluded by an express prohibition, his words justify the inference that no such rule existed in his time.

Though Inns-of-Court men were for many generations gentlemen by birth almost without a single exception, it yet remains to be proved that plebeian birth at any period disqualified persons for admission to the law-colleges. If such a restriction ever existed it had disappeared before the close of the fifteenth century—a period not favorable to the views of those who were most anxious to remove the barriers placed by feudal society between the gentle and the vulgar. Sir John More (the father of the famous Sir Thomas) was a Judge in the King's Bench, although his parentage was obscure; and it is worthy of notice that he was a successful lawyer of Fortescue's period. Lord Chancellor Audley was not entitled to bear arms by birth, but was merely the son of a prosperous yeoman. The lowliness of his extraction cannot have been any serious impediment to him, for before the end of his thirty-sixth year he was a sergeant. In the following century the inns received a steadily increasing number of students, who either lacked generous lineage or were the offspring of shameful love. For instance, Chief Justice Wray's birth was scandalous; and if Lord Ellesmere in his youth reflected with pride on the dignity of his father, Sir Richard Egerton, he had reason to blush for his mother. Ferne's lament over the loss of heraldric virtue and splendor, which the inns had sustained in his time, testifies to the presence of a considerable plebeian element amongst the members of the law-university. But that which was marked in the sixteenth was far more apparent in the seventeenth century. Scroggs's enemies were wrong in stigmatizing him as a butcher's son, for the odious chief justice was born and bred a gentleman, and Jeffreys could boast a decent extraction; but there is abundance of evidence that throughout the reigns of the Stuarts the inns swarmed with low-born adventurers. The career of Chief Justice Saunders, who, beginning as a "poor beggar boy," of unknown parentage, raised himself to the Chiefship of the King's Bench, shows how low an origin a judge might have in the seventeenth century. To mention the names of such men as Parker, King, Yorke, Ryder, and the Scotts, without placing beside them the names of such men as Henley, Harcourt, Bathurst, Talbot, Murray, and Erskine, would tend to create an erroneous impression that in the eighteenth century the bar ceased to comprise amongst its industrious members a large aristocratic element.

The number of barristers, however, who in that period brought themselves by talent and honorable perseverance into the foremost rank of the legal profession in spite of humble birth, unquestionably shows that ambitious men from the obscure middle classes were more frequently than in any previous century found pushing their fortunes in Westminster Hall. Lord Macclesfield was the son of an attorney whose parents were of lowly origin, and whose worldly means were even lower than their ancestral condition. Lord Chancellor King's father was a grocer and salter who carried on a retail business at Exeter; and in his youth the Chancellor himself had acted as his father's apprentice—standing behind the counter and wearing the apron and sleeves of a grocer's servitor. Philip Yorke was the son of a country attorney who could boast neither wealth nor gentle descent. Chief Justice Ryder was the son of a mercer whose shop stood in West Smithfield, and grandson of a dissenting minister, who, though he bore the name, is not known to have inherited the blood of the Yorkshire Ryders. Sir William Blackstone was the fourth son of a silkman and citizen of London. Lords Stowell and Eldon were the children of a provincial tradesman. The learned and good Sir Samuel Romilly's father was Peter Romilly, jeweller, of Frith Street, Soho. Such were the origins of some of the men who won the prizes of the law in comparatively recent times. The present century has produced an even greater number of barristers who have achieved eminence, and are able to say with honest pride that they are the first gentlemen mentioned in their pedigrees; and so thoroughly has the bar become an open profession, accessible to all persons[26] who have the means of gentlemen, that no barrister at the present time would have the bad taste or foolish hardihood to express openly his regret that the members of a liberal profession should no longer pay a hurtful attention to illiberal distinctions.

According to Fortescue, the law-students belonging at the same time to the Inns of Court and Chancery numbered at least one thousand eight hundred in the fifteenth century; and it may be fairly inferred from his words that their number considerably exceeded two thousand. To each of the ten Inns of Chancery the author of the 'De Laudibus' assigns "an hundred students at the least, and to some of them a much greater number;" and he says that the least populous of the four Inns of Court contained "two hundred students or thereabouts." At the present time the number of barristers—together with Fellows of the College of Advocates, and certificated special pleaders and conveyancers not at the bar—is shown by the Law List for 1866 to be somewhat more than 4800.[27] Even when it is borne in mind how much the legal business of the whole nation has necessarily increased with the growth of our commercial prosperity—it being at the same time remembered, upon the other hand, how many times the population of the country has doubled itself since the wars of the Roses—few persons will be of opinion that the legal profession, either by the number of its practitioners or its command of employment, is a more conspicuous and prosperous power at the present time than it was in the fifteenth century.