of course into the hands of laymen: who entertained upon their parts a most hearty aversion to the civil law (n), and made no scruple to profess their contempt, nay even their ignorance (o) of it, in the most public manner. But still The study would as the balance of learning was greatly on the side of the have been lost. clergy, and as the common law was no longer taught, as formerly, in any part of the kingdom, it must have been subjected to many inconveniences, and perhaps would have been gradually lost and overrun by the civil, (a suspicion well justified from the frequent transcripts of Justinian to be met with in Bracton and Fleta,) had it not been for a peculiar incident, which happened at a very critical time, and contributed greatly to its support. the court of The incident which I mean was the fixing the court of But for fixing common pleas, the grand tribunal for disputes of property, Common Pleas to be held in one certain spot; that the seat of ordinary at Westminjustice might be permanent and notorious to all the (n) Fortesc. de Luud. LL. c. 25. (0) This remarkably appeared in the case of the Abbot of Torun, M. 22 Edw. III. 24. who had caused a certain prior to be summoned to answer at Avignon for erecting an oratory contra inhibitionem novi operis; by which words Mr. Selden, (in Flet. 8. 5.) very justly understands to be meant the title de novi operis nuntiutione both in the civil and canon laws, (Ff. 39. 1. C. 8. 11. and Decretal. not Extrav.5.32.) whereby the erection of any new buildings in prejudice of more ancient ones was prohibited. Skipwith the king's serjeant, and after wards Chief Baron of the Exchequer, declares them to be flat nonsense; "in ceux parola, contra inihibitionem novi operis, ny ad pas entendment:" and Justice Schardelow mends the matter but little by informing him, that they signify a restitution in their law for which reason he very sagely resolves to pay no sort of regard to But them. "Ceo n'est que un restitution en lour ley, pur que a ceo n'avomus regard, &c." [The ignorance of these judges in matters not immediately pertinent to the practical discharge of their proper functions, may not render them less venerable in the student's view. The masonry of jurisprudence is not the labour of a day; its work is of many hands; some will be more adroit than others in selecting and adjusting its materials. Decoration may, indeed, distinguish a building, but not add to its utility. The triumphant though coarse repudiation mentioned in the note, of the justice's inhibition against creating a nuisance, found in the civil and canon law, may not in these more gentle times be imitated; yet of some foolish laws, if men were to speak pithily, censure would not be expressed in more courtly terms than in those used by Skepwith, B. and Scherdelow, J.] ster. nation. Formerly that, in conjunction with all the other [*23] superior courts, was held before the king's capital justiciary of England, in the aula regis, or such of his palaces wherein his royal person resided; and removed, with his household, from one end of the kingdom to the other. This was found to occasion great inconvenience to the suitors; to remedy which it was made an article of the great charter of liberties, both that of King John and King Henry the Third (p), that "common pleas should no longer follow the king's court, but be held in some certain place:" in consequence of which they have ever since been held (a few necessary removals in times of the The professors plague excepted) in the palace of Westminster only. This pal law became brought together the professors of the municipal law, who before were dispersed about the kingdom, and formed them into an aggregate body; whereby a society was established of persons, who, (as Spelman (q) observes,) addicting themselves wholly to the study of the laws of the land, and no longer considering it as a mere subordiWho raised the nate science for the amusement of leisure hours, soon raised common law to those laws to that pitch of perfection, which they suddenly attained under the auspices of our English Justinian, King Edward the First. of the munici a society: the perfection mentioned: Established a now called the cery, where ex In consequence of this lucky assemblage, they naturally new university: fell into a kind of collegiate order, and, being excluded from Oxford and Cambridge, found it necessary to estaBought houses, blish a new university of their own. This they did by inns of the purchasing at various times certain houses (now called Court of Chan- the inns of court and of chancery) between the city of Westminster, the place of holding the king's courts, and performed and the city of London; for advantage of ready access to the one, and plenty of provisions in the other (r). Here exer'cises were performed, lectures read, and degrees were at length conferred in the common law, as at other universities in the canon and civil. ercises were degrees conferred. (p) C. 11. (1) Glossar. 334. The degrees were those of () Fortesc. c 48. barristers (first styled apprentices (s) from apprendre, to *learn) who answered to our bachelors: as the state and [*24 ] degree of a serjeant (t), servientis ad legem, did to that of doctor. the crown. in London: The crown seems to have soon taken under its protection Protected by this infant seminary of common law; and, the more effec- Law schools tually to foster and cherish it, King Henry the Third, in prohibited withthe nineteenth year of his reign, issued out an order directed to the mayor and sheriffs of London, commanding that no regent of any law schools within that city should, for the future, teach law therein (u). The word law, or leges, being a general term, may create some doubt, at this distance of time, whether the teaching of (s) Apprentices or barristers seem to have been first appointed by an ordinance of King Edward the First in parliament, in the 20th year of his reign. (Spelm. Gloss. 37. Dugdale, Orig. Jurid. 55.) end voluit ligamenta coifæ suæ solvere, [Who then was desirous of untying the strings with which his coif was fastened, in order that he might openly exhibit the clerical tonsure. But he was not suffered to do so. The officers, however, seized him, not by the strings which held his coif, but by the throat, and carried him to prison.] And hence Sir H. Spelman conjectures, (Glossar. 335,) that coifs were intro (t) The first mention which I have met with in our law books of serjeants or countors, is in the statute of Westm, 1. 3 Edw. I. c. 29. and in Horn's Mirror, c. 1. § 10. c. 2. § 5. c. 3. § 1. in the same reign. But M. Paris, in his life of John II. Abbot of St. Alban's, which he wrote in 1255, 39 Henry III. speaks of advocates at the common law, or countors, (quos banci narratores vulgariter appellamus,)—duced to hide the tonsure of such rene[whom, countors, as we vulgarly style advocates,] as of an order of men well known. And we have an example of the antiquity of the coif in the same author's History of England, A. D. 1259, in the case of one William de Bussy; who, being called to account for his great knavery and malpractices, claimed the benefit of his orders or clergy, which till then remained an entire secret; and to that gade clerks, as were still tempted to canon. (u) Ne aliquis scholas regens de legibus in eadem civitate de cætero ibidem leges doceat. [The royal interference confirms the observation as to feudal antipathy to civil law.] Why. cery for the der, students. the civil law, or the common, or both, is hereby restrained. But in either case it tends to the same end. If the civil law only is prohibited, (which is Mr. Selden's (w) opinion,) it is then a retaliation upon the clergy, who had excluded the common law from their seats of learning. If the municipal law be also included in the restriction, (as Sir Edward Coke (x) understands it, and which the words seem to import,) then the intention is evidently this; by preventing private teachers, within the walls of the city, to collect all the common lawyers into the one public university, which was newly instituted in the suburbs. [*25 ] *In this juridical university (for such it is insisted to Inns of chan- have been by Fortescue (y) and Sir Edward Coke) (z) younger, inns of there are two sorts of collegiate houses; one called inns of court for the el- chancery, in which the younger students of the law were usually placed, "learning and studying (says Fortescue,) (a) the originals, and, as it were, the elements of the law; who, profiting therein, as they grew to ripeness, so were they admitted into the greater inns of the same study, called the inns of court." And in these inns of both kinds, he goes on to tell us, the knights and barons, with other grandees and noblemen of the realm, did use to place their children, though they did not desire to have them thoroughly learned in the law, or to get their living by its practice: and that in his time there were about two thousand students at these several inns, all of whom he informs us were filii nobilium, or gentlemen born. Of what rank and numbers in Fortescue's time. Influence of the monks prevent ed the study of the common law at the universities. Hence it is evident, that (though under the influence of the monks our universities neglected this study, yet) in the time of Henry the Sixth it was thought highly necessary, and was the universal practice, for the young nobility and gentry to be instructed in the originals and elements of the laws. But by degrees this custom has fallen into disuse; so that, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, Sir creased in the Reasons. Edward Coke (b) does not reckon above a thousand stu-Numbers dedents, and the number at present is very considerably less. reign of Queen Which seems principally owing to these reasons: first, Elizabeth. because the inns of chancery being now almost totally filled by the inferior branch of the profession, are neither commodious nor proper for the resort of gentlemen of any rank or figure; so that there are very rarely (15) any young students entered at the inns of chancery: secondly, because in the inns of court all sorts of regimen and academical superintendance, either with regard to morals or studies, are found impracticable, and therefore entirely neglected lastly, because persons of birth and fortune, after having finished their usual courses at the universities, have seldom leisure or resolution sufficient to enter upon a new scheme of study at a new place of instruction. Wherefore few gentlemen now resort to the inns of court, but such for whom the knowledge of practice is absolutely necessary; such, I mean, as are intended for the profession: the rest of our gentry (not to say our nobility also) having usually retired to their estates, or visited foreign kingdoms, or entered upon public life, without any instruction in the laws of the land, and indeed with hardly any (b) 3 Rep. pref. (15) The inns of court are, the Inner Temple, Middle Temple, Lincoln's Inn, and Gray's Inn, from which societies alone, students are called to the bar. The inns of chancery are, Clifford's Inn, Clement's Inn, Lion's Inn, New Inn, Furnival's Inn,* Thavies' Inn, Staple's Inn, and Barnard's Inn. These are subordinate to the inns of court, the three first belong to Furnival's Inn has ceased to exist as a law society. The buildings becoming much dilapidated and out of repair, the whole were pulled down; the Inner Temple, the fourth to the and, with the garden, have given place [*26 ] Only gentle men intending to practice re sort to the inns of court. |