(Harley MS. British Museum, 978.)
There is another side to the connection of London with literature. It was in London that modern English poetry began. Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London, the descendant of a long line of Londoners; Gower lived much in London; Occleve was a Londoner; Lydgate knew London well, and lived much in the City. If we were permitted to choose poets to grace the mediæval life of London, we could not select four about whom the City could more fitly pride herself than this illustrious company.
LYDGATE AT WORK
From MS. in British Museum. Harl. 2278.
Just as colleges increased and multiplied at Oxford and Cambridge for students in Divinity and Arts, so they increased in London, that great University for Lawyers. There were Inns of Court and Chancery Inns, and an Inn of Serjeants. Here lived the students of law, “of their own private maintenance as being altogether fed either by their places or their practice, or otherwise by their proper revenue, or exhibition of parents or friend: for that the younger sort were either gentlemen or the sons of gentlemen or of other more wealthy persons. There were six of such colleges. Four of them were Inns of Court, viz. the Inner and Middle Temple, Lincoln’s Inn, and Gray’s Inn. Nine were houses of Chancery, viz. Clifford’s Inn, Dane’s Inn, Furnival’s Inn, Barnard’s Inn, Staple Inn, Clement’s Inn, New Inn, Chester’s Inn, and one other whose site is unknown. There was a Serjeants’ Inn in Fleet Street, another in Chancery Lane, and a third called Scroop’s Inn over against St. Andrew’s Church, Holborn. The Serjeants’ Inns were only for Judges and Serjeants. The difference between the Houses of Court and the Houses of Chancery was that the former were set apart for students and graduates of Law only, while the latter received the officers, attorneys, solicitors, and clerks who followed the Court of King’s Bench or Common Pleas. Some young students, however, entered a House of Chancery first, and then, after having performed the exercises of that House, removed to an Inn of Court, where they studied for seven years: frequented “readings, meetings, boltings, and other learned exercises,” including small pleadings before a mock Court, and then, but only by the general consent of the Benchers, who have always been extremely jealous of admission, were called to the upper Bar, with permission to practise in the Courts, and in their chambers. After fourteen or fifteen years at the least, the barrister might hope to be elected a Bencher. From the Benchers were chosen Readers for each House; from the Benchers also were elected the Serjeants, and from the Serjeants the Judges.
This observance dates from the time when ecclesiastics ceased to be judges, and when the legal machinery of the country was framed and ordered. The origin of the Serjeants is the small body of servants—“serjeants”—of the King, who were learned at law and were kept in the pay of the King to plead his cases. Some of these serjeants were Italian canonists. There was a great body of ecclesiastical lawyers. The temporal lawyer grew gradually. He was an attorney, that is, he represented some one, or he was a pleader who was allowed to speak on behalf of a client. It was in the reign of Henry III. that ecclesiastics ceased to be judges. One supposes that the ecclesiastical lawyer, the canonist, continued to exist and to find plenty of employment. (See Appendix VIII.)
§ III. The Physician
