"Whoe'er has drawn a special plea
Has heard of old Tom Tewkesbury,
Deaf as a post, and thick as mustard,
He aim'd at wit, and bawl'd and bluster'd
And died a Nisi Prius leader—
That genius was my special pleader—
That great man's office I attended,
By Hawk and Buzzard recommended
Attorneys both of wondrous skill,
To pluck the goose and drive the quill.
Three years I sat his smoky room in,
Pens, paper, ink, and pounce consuming;
The fourth, when Epsom Day begun,
Joyful I hailed th' auspicious sun,
Bade Tewkesbury and Clerk adieu;
(Purification, eighty-two)
Of both I wash'd my hands; and though
With nothing for my cash to show,
But precedents so scrawl'd and blurr'd,
I scarce could read a single word,
Nor in my books of common-place
One feature, of the law could trace,
Save Buzzard's nose and visage thin,
And Hawk's deficiency of chin,
Which I while lolling at my ease
Was wont to draw instead of pleas.
My chambers I equipt complete,
Made friends, hired books, and gave to eat;
If haply to regale my friends on,
My mother sent a haunch of ven'son,
I most respectfully entreated
The choicest company to eat it;
To wit, old Buzzard, Hawk, and Crow;
Item, Tom Thornback, Shark, and Co.
Attorneys all as keen and staunch
As e'er devoured a client's haunch.
And did I not their clerks invite
To taste said ven'son hash'd at night?
For well I knew that hopeful fry
My rising merit would descry,
The same litigious course pursue,
And when to fish of prey they grew,
By love of food and contest led,
Would haunt the spot where once they fed.
Thus having with due circumspection
Formed my professional connexion,
My desks with precedents I strew'd,
Turned critic, danc'd, or penn'd an ode,
Suited the ton, became a free
And easy man of gallantry;
But if while capering at my glass,
Or toying with a favorite lass,
I heard the aforesaid Hawk a-coming,
Or Buzzard on the staircase humming,
At once the fair angelic maid
Into my coal-hole I convey'd;
At once with serious look profound,
Mine eyes commencing with the ground,
I seem'd like one estranged to sleep,
'And fixed in cogitation deep,'
Sat motionless, and in my hand I
Held my 'Doctrina Placitandi,'
And though I never read a page in't,
Thanks to that shrewd, well-judging agent,
My sister's husband, Mr. Shark,
Soon got six pupils and a clerk.
Five pupils were my stint, the other
I took to compliment his mother."
Having fleeced pupils, and worked as a special pleader for a time, Mr. Surrebutter is called to the bar; after which ceremony his action towards 'the inferior branch' of the profession is not more dignified than it was whilst he practised as a Special Pleader.
It appears that in Mr. Surrebutter's time (circa 1780) it was usual for a student to spend three whole years in the same pleader's chambers, paying three hundred guineas for the course of study. Not many years passed before students saw it was not to their advantage to spend so long a period with the same instructor, and by the end of the century the industrious student who could command the fees wherewith to pay for such special tuition, usually spent a year or two in a pleader's chambers, and another year or two in the chambers of an equity draughtsman, or conveyancer. Lord Campbell, at the opening of the present century, spent three years in the chambers of the eminent Special Pleader, Mr. Tidd, of whose learning and generosity the biographer of the Chancellors makes cordial and grateful acknowledgment. Finding that Campbell could not afford to pay a second hundred guineas for a second year's instruction, Tidd not only offered him the run of his chambers without payment, but made the young Scotchman take back the £105 which he had paid for the first twelve months.
In his later years Lord Campbell delighted to trace his legal pedigree to the great pleader and 'pupillizer' of the last century, Tom Warren. The chart ran thus: "Tom Warren had for pupil Sergeant Runnington, who instructed in the mysteries of special pleading the learned Tidd, who was the teacher of John Campbell." With honest pride and pleasant vanity the literary Chancellor maintained that he had given the genealogical tree another generation of forensic honor, as Solicitor General Dundas and Vaughan Williams, of the Common Pleas Bench, were his pupils.
Though Campbell speaks of Tom Warren as "the greater founder of the special pleading race," and maintains that "the voluntary discipline of the special pleader's office" was unknown before the middle of the last century, it is certain that the voluntary discipline of a legal instructor's office or chambers was an affair of frequent occurrence long before Warren's rise. Roger North, in his 'Discourse on the Study of the Laws,' makes no allusion to any such voluntary discipline as an ordinary feature of a law-student's career; but in his 'Life of Lord Keeper Guildford' he expressly informs us that he was a pupil in his brother's chambers. "His lordship," writes the biographer, "having taken that advanced post, and designing to benefit a relation (the Honorable Roger North), who was a student in the law, and kept him company, caused his clerk to put into his hands all his draughts, such as he himself had corrected, and after which conveyances had been engrossed, that, by a perusal of them, he might get some light into the formal skill of conveyancing. And that young gentleman instantly went to work, and first numbered the draughts, and then made an index of all the clauses, referring to that number and folio; so that, in this strict perusal and digestion of the various matters, he acquired, not only a formal style, but also apt precedents, and a competent notion of instruments of all kinds. And to this great condescension was owing that little progress he made, which afterwards served to prepare some matters for his lordship's own perusal and settlement." Here then is a case of a pupil in a barrister's chambers in Charles II.'s reign; and it is a case that suffers nothing from the fact that the teacher took no fee.
In like manner, John Trevor (subsequently Master of the Rolls and Speaker of the Commons) about the same time was "bred a sort of clerk in old Arthur Trevor's chamber, an eminent and worthy professor of the law in the Inner Temple." On being asked what might be the name of the boy with such a hideous squint who sate at a clerk's desk in the outer room, Arthur Trevor answered, "A kinsman of mine that I have allowed to sit here, to learn the knavish part of the law." It must be observed that John Trevor was not a clerk, but merely a "sort of a clerk" in his kinsman's chamber.
In the latter half of the seventeenth century, and in the earlier half of the eighteenth century, students who wished to learn the practice of the law usually entered the offices of attorneys in large practice. At that period, the division between the two branches of the profession was much less wide than it subsequently became; and no rule or maxim of professional etiquette forbade Inns-of-Court men to act as the subordinates of attorneys and solicitors. Thus Philip Yorke (Lord Hardwicke) in Queen Anne's reign acted as clerk in the office of Mr. Salkeld, an attorney residing in Brook Street, Holborn, whilst he kept his terms at the Temple; and nearly fifty years later, Ned Thurlow (Lord Thurlow), on leaving Cambridge, and taking up his residence in the Temple, became a pupil in the office of Mr. Chapman, a solicitor, whose place of business was in Lincoln's Inn. There is no doubt that it was customary for young men destined the bar thus to work in attorneys' offices; and they continued to do so without any sense of humiliation or thought of condescension, until the special pleaders superseded the attorneys as instructors.
[29] The mention of 'the Hardwicke' brings a droll story to the writer's mind. Some few years since the members of that learned fraternity assembled at their customary plate of meeting—a large room in Anderton's Hotel, Fleet Street—to discuss a knotty point of law about anent Uses. The master of young men was strong; and amongst them—conspicuous for his advanced years, jovial visage, red nose, and air of perplexity—sate an old gentleman who was evidently a stranger to every lawyer present. Who was he? Who brought him? Was there any one in the room who knew him? Such were the whispers that floated about, concerning the portly old man, arrayed in blue coat and drab breeches and gaiters, who took his snuff in silence, and watched the proceedings with evident surprise and dissatisfaction. After listening to three speeches this antique, jolly stranger rose, and with much embarrassment addressed the chair. "Mr. President," he said—"excuse me; but may I ask,—is this 'The Convivial Rabbits?'" A roar of laughter followed this enquiry from a 'convivial rabbit,' who having mistaken the evening of the week, had wandered into the room in which his convivial fellow-clubsters had held a meeting on the previous evening. On receiving the President's assurance that the learned members of a law-debating society were not 'convivial rabbits,' the elderly stranger buttoned his blue coat and beat a speedy retreat.