A Book About Lawyers Part 15

[28] In the seventeenth century, lawyers usually called their clients and the non-legal public 'Lay Gents.'

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

STUDENT LIFE IN OLD TIME.

From statements made in previous chapters, it may be seen that in ancient times the Law University was a far more conspicuous feature of the metropolis than it has been in more modern generations. In the fifteenth century the law students of the town numbered about two thousand; in Elizabethan London their number fluctuated between one thousand and two thousand; towards the close of Charles II.'s reign they were probably much less than fifteen hundred; in the middle of the eighteenth century they do not seem to have much exceeded one thousand.

Thus at a time when the entire population of the capital was considerably less than the population of a third-rate provincial town of modern England, the Inns of Court and Chancery contained more undergraduates than would be found on the books of the Oxford Colleges at the present time.

Henry VIII.'s London looked to the University for mirth, news, trade.

During vacations there was but little stir in the taverns and shops of Fleet Street; haberdashers and vintners sate idle; musicians starved; and the streets of the capital were comparatively empty when the students had withdrawn to spend their holidays in the country. As soon as the gentlemen of the robe returned to town all was brisk and merry again. As the town grew in extent and population, the social influence of the university gradually decreased; but in Elizabethan London the _eclat_ of the inns was at its brightest, and during the reigns of Elizabeth's two nearest successors London submitted to the Inns-of-Court men as arbiters of all matters pertaining to taste--copying their dress, slang, amus.e.m.e.nts, and vices. The same may be said, with less emphasis, of Charles II.'s London. Under the 'Merry Monarch' theatrical managers were especially anxious to please the inns, for they knew that no play would succeed which the lawyers had resolved to d.a.m.n--that no actor could achieve popularity if the gallants of the Temple combined to laugh him down--that no company of performers could retain public favor when they had lost the countenance of law-colleges. Something of this power the young lawyers retained beyond the middle of the last century.

Fielding and Addison caught with nervous eagerness the critical gossip of the Temple and Chancery Lane, just as Congreve and Wycherly, Dryden and Cowley had caught it in previous generations. Fashionable tradesmen and caterers for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the public made their engagements and speculations with reference to the opening of term. New plays, new books, new toys were never offered for the first time to London purchasers when the lawyers were away. All that the 'season' is to modern London, the 'term' was to old London, from the accession of Henry VIII. to the death of George II., and many of the existing commercial and fashionable arrangements of a London 'season' maybe traced to the old-world 'term.'

In olden time the influence of the law-colleges was as great upon politics as upon fashion. Sheltering members of every powerful family in the country they were centres of political agitation, and places for the secret discussion of public affairs. Whatever plot was in course of incubation, the inns invariably harbored persons who were cognisant of the conspiracy. When faction decided on open rebellion or hidden treason, the agents of the malcontent leaders gathered together in the inns, where, so long as they did not rouse the suspicions of the authorities and maintained the bearing of studious men, they could hire a.s.sa.s.sins, plan risings, hold interviews with fellow-conspirators, and nurse their nefarious projects into achievement. At periods of danger therefore spies were set to watch the gates of the hostels, and mark who entered them. Governments took great pains to ascertain the secret life of the collegians. A succession of royal directions for the discipline of the inns under the Tudors and Stuarts points to the jealousy and constant apprehensions with which the sovereigns of England long regarded those convenient lurking-places for restless spirits and dangerous adversaries. Just as the Student-quarter of Paris is still watched by a vigilant police, so the Inns of Court were closely watched by the agents of Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell, of Burleigh and Buckingham.

During the troubles and contentions of Elizabeth's reign Lord Burleigh was regularly informed concerning the life of the inns, the number of students in and out of town, the parentage and demeanor of new members, the gossip of the halls, and the rumors of the cloisters. In proportion as the political temper and action of the lawyers were deemed matters of high importance, their political indiscretions and misdemeanors were promptly and sometimes ferociously punished. An idle joke over a pot of wine sometimes cost a witty barrister his social rank and his ears. To promote a wholesome fear of authority in the colleges, government every now and then flogged a student at the cart's tail in Holborn, or pilloried a sad apprentice of the law in Chancery Lane, or hung an ancient on a gibbet at the entrance of his inn.

The anecdote-books abound with good stories that ill.u.s.trate the political excitability of the inns in past times, and the energy with which ministers were wont to repress the first manifestations of insubordination. Rushworth records the adventure of four young men of Lincoln's Inn who throw aside prudence and sobriety in a tavern hard by their inn, and drank to "the confusion of the Archbishop of Canterbury."

The next day, full of penitence and head-ache, the offenders were brought before the council, and called to account for their scandalous conduct; when they would have fared ill had not the Earl of Dorset done them good service, and privately instructed them to say in their defence, that they had not drunk confusion to the archbishop but to the archbishop's _foes_. On this ingenious representation, the council supposed that the drawer--on whose information the proceedings were taken--had failed to catch the last word of the toast; and consequently the young gentlemen were dismissed with a 'light admonition,' much to their own surprise and the informer's chagrin.

Of the political explosiveness of the inns in Charles II.'s time Narcissus Luttrell gives the following ill.u.s.tration in his diary, under date June 15 and 16, 1681:--"The 15th was a project sett on foot in Grayes Inn for the carrying on an addresse for thankes to his majestie for his late declaration; and was moved that day in the hall by some at dinner, and being (as is usual) sent to the barre messe to be by them recommended to the bench, but was rejected both by bench and barr; but the other side seeing they could doe no good this way, they gott about forty together and went to the tavern, and there subscribed the said addresse in the name of the truelye loyall gentlemen of Grayes Inn. The chief sticklers for the said addition were Sir William Seroggs, Jun., Robert Fairebeard, Capt. Stowe, Capt. Radcliffe, one Yalden, with others, to the number of 40 or thereabouts; many of them sharpers about town, with clerks not out of their time, and young men newly come from the university. And some of them went the 17th to Windsor, and presented the said addresse to his majesty: who was pleasd to give them his thanks and confer (it is said) knighthood on the said Mr. Fairebeard; this proves a mistake since. The 16th was much such another addresse carried on in the Middle Temple, where several Templars, meeting about one or two that afternoon in the hall for that purpose, they began to debate it, but they were opposed till the hall began to fill; and then the addressers called for Mr. Montague to take the chaire; on which a poll was demanded, but the addressers refused it, and carried Mr.

Montague and sett him in the chaire, and the other part pulled him out, on which high words grew, and some blows were given; but the addressers seeing they could doe no good with it in the hall, adjourned to the Divill Tavern, and there signed the addresse; the other party kept in the hall, and fell to protesting against such illegall and arbitrary proceedings, subscribing their names to a greater number than the addressers were, and presented the same to the bench as a grievance."

Like the King's Head Tavern, which stood in Chancery Lane, the Devil Tavern, in Fleet Street, was a favorite house with the Caroline Lawyers.

Its proximity to the Temple secured the special patronage of the templars, whereas the King's Head was more frequented by Lincoln's-Inn men; and in the tavern-haunting days of the seventeenth century those two places of entertainment saw many a wild and dissolute scene. Unlike Chattelin, who endeavored to satisfy his guests with delicate repasts and light wines, the hosts of the Devil and the King's Head provided the more substantial fare of old England, and laid themselves out to please roysterers who liked pots of ale in the morning, and were wont to drink brandy by the pint as the clocks struck midnight. Nando's, the house where Thurlow in his student-period used to hold nightly disputations with all comers of suitable social rank, was an orderly place in comparison with these more venerable hostelries; and though the Mitre, c.o.c.k, and Rainbow have witnessed a good deal of deep drinking, it may be questioned if they, or any other ancient taverns of the legal quarter, encouraged a more boisterous and reckless revelry than that which const.i.tuted the ordinary course of business at the King's Head and the Devil.

In his notes for Jan. 1681-2, Mr. Narcissus Luttrell observes--"The 13th, at night, some young gentlemen of the Temple went to the King's Head Tavern, Chancery Lane, committing strange outrages there, breaking windowes, &c., which the watch hearing of came to disperse them; but they sending for severall of the watermen with halberts that attend their comptroller of the revells, were engaged in a desperate riott, in which one of the watchmen was run into the body and lies very ill; but the watchmen secured one or two of the watermen." Eleven years later the diarist records: "Jan. 5. One Batsill, a young gentleman of the Temple, was committed to Newgate for wounding a captain at the Devil Tavern in Fleet Street on Sat.u.r.day last." Such ebullitions of manly spirit--ebullitions pleasant enough to the humorist, but occasionally productive of very disagreeable and embarra.s.sing consequences--were not uncommon in the neighborhood of the Inns of Court whilst the Christmas revels were in progress.

A tempestuous, hot-blooded, irascible set were these gentlemen of the law-colleges, more zealous for their own honor than careful for the feelings of their neighbors. Alternately warring with sharp tongues, sharp pens, and sharp swords they went on losing their tempers, friends, and lives in the most gallant and picturesque manner imaginable. Here is a nice little row which occurred in the Middle Temple Hall during the days of good Queen Bess! "The records of the society," says Mr. Foss, "preserve an account of the expulsion of a member, which is rendered peculiarly interesting in consequence of the eminence to which the delinquent afterwards attained as a statesman, a poet, and a lawyer.

Whilst the masters of the bench and other members of the society were sitting quietly at dinner on February 9, 1597-8, John Davis came into the hall with his hat on his head, and attended by two persons armed with swords, and going up to the barrister's table, where Richard Martin was sitting, he pulled out from under his gown a cudgel 'quem vulgariter vocant a bastinado,' and struck him over the head repeatedly, and with so much violence that the bastinado was shivered into many pieces. Then retiring to the bottom of the hall, he drew one of his attendants'

swords and flourished it over his head, turning his face towards Martin, and then turning away down the water steps of the Temple, threw himself into a boat. For this outrageous act he was immediately disbarred and expelled the house, and deprived for ever of all authority to speak or consult in law. After nearly four years' retirement he pet.i.tioned the benchers for his restoration, which they accorded on October 30, 1601, upon his making a public submission in the hall, and asking pardon of Mr. Martin, who at once generously forgave him." Both the princ.i.p.als in this scandalous outbreak and subsequent reconciliation became honorably known in their profession--Martin rising to be a Recorder of London and a member of parliament; and Davies acting as Attorney General of Ireland and Speaker of the Irish parliament, and achieving such a status in politics and law that he was appointed to the Chief Justiceship of England, an office, however, which sudden death prevented him from filling.

Nor must it be imagined that gay manners and lax morals were less general amongst the veterans than amongst the youngsters of the bar.

Judges and sergeants were quite as p.r.o.ne to levity and G.o.dless riot as students about to be called; and such was the freedom permitted by professional decorum that leading advocates habitually met their clients in taverns, and having talked themselves dry at the bars of Westminster Hall, drank themselves speechless at the bars of Strand taverns--ere they reeled again into their chambers. The same habits of uproarious self-indulgence were in vogue with the benchers of the inns, and the Doctors of Doctors' Commons. Hale's austerity was the exceptional demeanor of a pious man protesting against the wickedness of an impious age. Had it not been for the shortness of time that had elapsed since Algernon Sidney's trial and sentence, John Evelyn would have seen no reason for censuring the loud hilarity and drunkenness of Jeffreys and Withings at Mrs. Castle's wedding.

In some respects, however, the social atmosphere of the inns was far more wholesome in the days of Elizabeth, and for the hundred years following her reign, than it is at present. Sprung in most cases from legal families, the students who were educated to be working members of the bar lived much more under the observation of their older relations, and in closer intercourse with their mothers and sisters than they do at present. Now-a-days young Templars, fresh from the universities, would be uneasy and irritable under strict domestic control; and as men with beards and five-and-twenty years' knowledge of the world, they would resent any attempt to draw them within the lines of domestic control.

But in Elizabethan and also in Stuart London, law-students were considerably younger than they are under Victoria.

Moreover, the usage of the period trained young men to submit with cheerfulness to a parental discipline that would be deemed intolerable by our own youngsters. During the first terms of their eight, seven, or at least six years of pupilage, until they could secure quarters within college walls, students frequently lodged in the houses or chambers of near relations who were established in the immediate vicinity of the inns. A judge with a house in Fleet Street, an eminent counsel with a family mansion in Holborn, or an office-holder with commodious chambers in Chancery Lane, usually numbered amongst the members of his family a son, or nephew, or cousin who was keeping terms for the bar. Thus placed under the immediate superintendence of an elder whom he regarded with affection and pride, and surrounded by the wholesome interests of a refined domestic circle, the raw student was preserved from much folly and ill-doing into which he would have fallen had he been thrown entirely on his own resources for amus.e.m.e.nt.

The pecuniary means of Inns-of-Court students have not varied much throughout the last twelve generations. In days when money was scarce and very precious they of course lived on a smaller number of coins than they require in these days when gold and silver are comparatively abundant and cheap; but it is reasonable to suppose that in every period the allowances, on which the less affluent of them subsisted, represent the amounts on which young men of their respective times were just able to maintain the figure and style of independent gentlemen. The costly pageants and feasts of the inns in old days must not be taken as indicative of the pecuniary resources of the common run of students; for the splendor of those entertainments was mainly due to the munificence of those more wealthy members who by a liberal and even profuse expenditure purchased a right to control the diversions of the colleges.

Fortescue, speaking of his own time, says: "There can no student bee mayntayned for lesse expenses by the yeare than twentye markes. And if hee haue a seruant to waite uppon him, as most of them haue, then so much the greater will his charges bee." Hence it appears that during the most patrician period of the law university, when wealthy persons were accustomed to maintain ostentatious retinues of servants, a law-student often had no private personal attendant. An ordinance shows that in Elizabethan London the Inns-of-Court men were waited upon by laundresses or bedmakers who served and took wages from several masters at the same time. It would be interesting to ascertain the exact time when the "laundress" was first introduced into the Temple. She certainly flourished in the days of Queen Bess; and Roger North's piquant description of his brother's laundress is applicable to many of her successors who are looking after their perquisites at the present date.

"The housekeeper," says Roger, "had been formerly his lordship's laundress at the Temple, and knew well her master's brother so early as when he was at the writing-school. She _was a phthisical old woman, and could scarce crawl upstairs once a day_." This general employment of servants who were common to several masters would alone prove that the Inns-of-Court men in the seventeenth century felt it convenient to husband their resources, and exercise economy. Throughout that century sixty pounds was deemed a sufficient income for a Temple student; and though it was a scant allowance, some young fellows managed to push on with a still more modest revenue. Simonds D'Ewes had 60 per annum during his student course, and 100 a year on becoming an utter-barrister. "It pleased G.o.d also in mercy," he writes, "after this to ease me of that continual want or short stipend I had for about five years last past groaned under; for my father, immediately on my call to the bar, enlarged my former allowance with forty pounds more annually; so as, after this plentiful annuity of one hundred pounds was duly and quarterly paid me by him, I found myself easyd of so many cares and discontents as I may well account that the 27th day of June foregoing the first day of my outward happiness since the decease of my dearest mother." All things considered, a bachelor in James I.'s London with a clear income of 100 per annum was on the whole as well off for his time as a young barrister of the present day would be with an annual allowance of 250 or 300. Francis North, when a student, was allowed only 60 per annum; and as soon as he was called and began to earn a little money, his parsimonious father reduced the stipend by 10; but, adds Roger North, "to do right to his good father, he paid him that fifty pounds a year as long as he lived, saying he would not discourage industry by rewarding it, when successful, with less." George Jeffreys, in his student-days, smarted under a still more galling penury, for he was allowed only 50 a year, 10 being for his clothes, and 40 for the rest of his expenditure. In the following century the nominal incomes of law-students rose in proportion as the wealth of the country increased and the currency fell in value. In George II.'s time a young Templar expected his father to allow him 150 a year, and on encouragement would spend twice that amount in the same time. Henry Fielding's allowance from General Fielding was 200 per annum; but as he said, with a laugh, he had too feeling and dutiful a nature to press an affectionate father for money which he was totally unable to pay. At the present time 150 per annum is about the smallest sum on which a law-student can live with outward decency; and 250 per annum the lowest amount on which a chamber barrister can live with suitable dignity and comfort. If he has to maintain the expenses of a distant circuit Mr. Briefless requires from 100 to 200 more. Alas! how many of Mr. Briefless's meritorious and most ornamental kind are compelled to shift on far less ample means!

How many of them periodically repeat the jest of poor A----, who made this brief and suggestive official return to the Income Tax Commissioners--"I am totally dependent on my father, who allows me--nothing!"

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

READERS AND MOOTMEN.

Romantic eulogists of the Inns of Court maintain that, as an instrument of education, the law-university was nearly perfect for many generations after its consolidation. That in modern time abuses have impaired its faculties and diminished its usefulness they admit. Some of them are candid enough to allow that, as a school for the systematic study of law, it is under existing circ.u.mstances a deplorably deficient machine; but they unite in declaring that there _was_ a time when the system of the combined Colleges was complete and thoroughly efficacious. The more cautious of these eulogists decline to state the exact limits of the period when the actual condition of the university merited their cordial approval, but they concur in pointing to the years between the accession of Henry VII. and the death of James I., as comprising the brightest days of its academical vigor and renown.

It is however worthy of observation that throughout the times when the legal learning and discipline of the colleges are described to have been admirable, the system and the students by no means won the approbation of those critical authorities who were best able to see their failings and merits. Wolsey was so strongly impressed by the faulty education of the barristers who practised before him, and more especially by their total ignorance of the principles of jurisprudence, that he prepared a plan for a new university which should be established in London, and should impart a liberal and exact knowledge of law. Had he lived to carry out his scheme it is most probable that the Inns of Court and Chancery would have become subsidiary and subordinate establishments to the new foundation. In this matter, sympathizing with the more enlightened minds of his age, Sir Nicholas Bacon was no less desirous than the great cardinal that a new law university should be planted in town, and he urged on Henry VIII. the propriety of devoting a certain portion of the confiscated church property to the foundation and endowment of such an inst.i.tution.

On paper the scheme of the old exercises and degrees looks very imposing, and those who delight in painting fancy pictures may infer from them that the scholastic order of the colleges was perfect. Before a young man could be called to the bar, he had under ordinary circ.u.mstances to spend seven or eight years in arguing cases at the Inns of Chancery, in proving his knowledge of law and Law-French at moots, in sharpening his wits at case-putting, in patient study of the Year-Books, and in watching the trials of Westminster Hall. After his call he was required to spend another period in study and academic exercise before he presumed to raise his voice at the bar; and in his progress to the highest rank of his profession he was expected to labor in educating the students of his house as a.s.sistant-reader, single-reader, double-reader.

The gravest lawyers of every inn were bound to aid in the task of teaching the mysteries of the law to the rising generation.

The old ordinances a.s.sumed that the law-student was thirsting for a knowledge of law, and that the veterans were no less eager to impart it. During term law was talked in hall at dinner and supper, and after these meals the collegians argued points. "The cases were put" after the earlier repast, and twice or thrice a week moots were "brought in" after the later meal. The students were also encouraged to a.s.semble towards the close of each day and practise 'case-putting' in their gardens and in the cloisters of the Temple or Lincoln's Inn. The 'great fire' of 1678-9 having destroyed the Temple Cloisters, some of the benchers proposed to erect chambers on the ground, to and fro upon which law-students had for generations walked whilst they wrangled aloud; but the Earl of Nottingham, recalling the days when young Heneage Finch used to put cases with his contemporary students, strangled the proposal at its birth, and Sir Christopher Wren subsequently built the Cloisters which may be seen at the present day.

But there is reason to fear that at a very early period in their history the Inns of Court began to pay more attention to certain outward forms of instruction than to instruction itself. The unbia.s.sed inquirer is driven to suspect that 'case-putting' soon became an idle ceremony, and 'mooting' a mere pastime. Gentlemen ate heartily in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and it is not easy to believe that immediately after a twelve o'clock dinner benchers were in the best possible mood to teach, or students in the fittest condition for learning. It is credible that these post-prandial exercitations were often enlivened by sparkling quips and droll occurrences; but it is less easy to believe that they were characterised by severe thought and logical exactness. So also with the after-supper exercises. The six o'clock suppers of the lawyers were no light repasts, but hearty meals of meat and bread, washed down by '_green pots_' of ale and wine. When 'the horn' sounded for supper, the student was in most cases better able to see the truth of knotty points than when in compliance with etiquette he bowed to the benchers, and asked if it was their pleasure to hear a moot. It seems probable that long before 'case-puttings' and 'mootings' were altogether disused, the old benchers were wont to wink mischievously at each other when they prepared to teach the boys, and that sometimes they would turn away from the proceedings of a moot with an air of disdain or indifference. The inquirer is not induced to rate more highly the intellectual effort of such exercises because the teachers refreshed their exhausted powers with bread and beer as soon as the arguments were closed.

When such men as c.o.ke and Francis Bacon were the readers, the students were entertained with lectures of surpa.s.sing excellence; but it was seldom that such readers could be found. It seems also that at an early period men became readers, not because they had any especial apt.i.tude for offices of instruction, or because they had some especial fund of information--but simply because it was their turn to read. Routine placed them in the pulpit for a certain number of weeks; and when they had done all that routine required of them, and had thereby qualified themselves for promotion to the rank of sergeant, they took their seats amongst the benchers and ancients with the resolution not to trouble themselves again about the intellectual progress of the boys.

Soon also the chief teacher of an Inn of Court became its chief feaster and princ.i.p.al entertainer; and in like manner his subordinates in office, such as a.s.sistant readers and readers elect, were required to put their hands into their pockets, and feed their pupils with venison and wine as well as with law and equity. It is amusing to observe how little Dugdale has to say about the professional duties of readers--and how much about their hospitable functions and responsibilities. Philip and Mary ordered that no reader of the Middle Temple should give away more than fifteen bucks during his readings; but so greatly did the cost of readers' entertainments increase in the following century, that Dugdale observes--"But the times are altered; there being few summer readers who, in half the time that heretofore a reading was wont to continue, spent so little as threescore bucks, besides red deer; some have spent fourscore, some an hundred."

Just as readers were required to spend more in hospitality, they were required to display less learning. Sound lawyers avoided election to the readers' chairs, leaving them to be filled by rich men who could afford to feast the n.o.bility and gentry, or at least by men who were willing to purchase social _eclat_ with a lavish outlay of money. Under Charles II.

the 'readings' were too often nothing better than scandalous exhibitions of mental incapacity: and having sunk into disrepute, they died out before the accession of James II.

The scandalous and beastly disorder of the Grand Day Feasts at the Middle Temple, during Francis North's tenure of the reader's office, was one of the causes that led to the discontinuance of Reader's Banquets at that house; and the other inns gladly followed the example of the Middle Temple in putting an end to a custom which had ceased to promote the dignity of the law. Of this feast, and his brother's part in it, Roger North says: "He (_i.e._ Francis North) sent out the officers with white staves (for so the way was) and a long list to invite; but he went himself to wait upon the Archbishop of Canterbury, Sheldon; for so also the ceremony required. The archbishop received him very honorably and would not part with him at the stairshead, as usually had been done; but, telling him he was no ordinary reader, went down, and did not part till he saw him past at his outward gate I cannot much commend the extravagance of the feasting used at these readings; and that of his lordship's was so terrible an example, that I think none hath ventured since to read publicly; but the exercise is turned into a revenue, and a composition is paid into the treasury of the society. Therefore one may say, as was said of Cleomenes, that, in this respect, his lordship was _ultimus herorum_, the last of the heroes. And the profusion of the best provisions, and wine, was to the worst of purposes--debauchery, disorder, tumult, and waste. I will give but one instance; upon the grand day, as it was called, a banquet was provided to be set upon the table, composed of pyramids, and smaller services in form. The first pyramid was at least four feet high, with stages one above another. The conveying this up to the table, through a crowd, that were in full purpose to overturn it, was no small work: but, with the friendly a.s.sistance of the gentlemen, it was set whole upon the table. But, after it was looked upon a little, all went, hand over hand, among the rout in the hall, and for the most part was trod under foot. The entertainment the n.o.bility had out of this was, after they had tossed away the dishes, a view of the crowd in confusion, wallowing one over another, and contending for a dirty share of it."

It would, however, be unfair to the ancient exercises of 'case-putting'

and 'mooting' not to bear in mind that by habituating successful barristers to take personal interest in the professional capabilities of students, they helped to maintain a salutary intercourse betwixt the younger and older members of the profession. So long as 'moots' lasted, it was the fashion with eminent counsel to accost students in Westminster Hall, and gossip with them about legal matters. In Charles II.'s time, such eminent barristers as Sir Geoffrey Palmer daily gave practical hints and valuable suggestions to students who courted their favor; find accurate legal scholars, such as old 'Index Waller,' would, under judicious treatment, exhibit their learning to boys ambitious of following in their steps. Chief Justice Saunders, during the days of his pre-eminence at the bar, never walked through Westminster Hall without a train of lads at his heels. "I have seen him," says Roger North, "for hours and half-hours together, before the court sat, stand at the bar, with an audience of students over against him, putting of cases, and debating so as suited their capacities, and encouraged their industry.

And so in the Temple, he seldom moved without a parcel of youths hanging about him, and he merry and jesting with them."

Long after 'moots' had fallen into disuse, their influence in this respect was visible in the readiness of wigged veterans to extend a kindly and useful patronage to students. Even so late as the close of the last century, great black-letter lawyers used to accost students in Westminster Hall, and give them fair words, in a manner that would be misunderstood in the present day. Sergeant Hill--whose reputation for recondite legal erudition, resembled that of '_Index_ Waller,' or Maynard, in the seventeenth century--once accosted John Scott, as the latter, in his student days, was crossing Westminster Hall. "Pray, young gentleman," said the black-letter lawyer, "do you think herbage and pannage rateable to the poor's rate?" "Sir," answered the future Lord Eldon, with a courteous bow to the lawyer, whom he knew only by sight, "I cannot presume to give any opinion, inexperienced and unlearned as I am, to a person of your great knowledge, and high character in the profession." "Upon my word," replied the sergeant, eyeing the young man with unaffected delight, "you are a pretty sensible young gentleman; I don't often meet with such. If I had asked Mr. Burgess, a young man upon our circuit, the question, he would have told me that I was an old fool. You are an extraordinary sensible young gentleman."

The period when 'readings,' 'mooting,' and 'case-putting' fell into disuse or contempt, is known with sufficient accuracy. Having noticed the decay of readings, Sir John Bramston writes, in Charles II.'s reign, "At this tyme readings are totally in all the Inns of Court layd aside; and to speak truth, with great reason, for it was a step at once to the dignity of a sergeant, but not soe now." Marking the time when moots became farcical forms, Roger North having stated that his brother Francis, when a student, was "an attendant (as well as exerciser) at the ordinary moots in the Middle Temple and at New Inn," goes on to say, "In those days, the moots were carefully performed, and it is hard to give a good reason (bad ones are prompt enough) why they are not so now." But it should be observed, that though for all practical purposes 'moots'

and 'case-puttings' ceased in Charles II.'s time, they were not formally abolished. Indeed, they lingered on throughout the eighteenth century, and to the present time--when vestiges of them may still be observed in the usages and discipline of the Inns. Before the writer of this page was called to the bar by the Masters of the Society of Lincoln's Inn, he, like all other students of his time, had to go through the form of putting a case on certain days in the hall after dinner. The ceremony appeared to him alike ludicrous and interesting. To put his case, he was conducted by the steward of the inn to the top of the senior bar table, when the steward placed an open MS. book before him, and said, "Read that, sir;" whereupon this deponent read aloud something about "a femme sole," or some such thing, and was still reading the rest of the MS., kindly opened under his nose by the steward, when that worthy officer checked him suddenly, saying, "That will do, sir; you have _put_ your case--and can sign the book." The book duly signed, this deponent bowed to the a.s.sembled barristers, and walked out of the hall, smiling as he thought how, by an ingenious fiction, he was credited with having put an elaborate case to a college of profound jurists, with having argued it before an attentive audience, and with having borne away the laurels of triumph. Recently this pleasant mockery of case-putting has been swept away.

In Roger North's 'Discourse on the Study of the Laws,' and 'Life of the Lord Keeper Guildford,' the reader may see with clearness the course of an industrious law-student during the latter half of the seventeenth century, and it differs less from the ordinary career of an industrious Temple-student in our time, than many recent writers on the subject think.

Under Charles II., James II., and William III. the law-student was compelled to muster the barbarous Law-French; but the books which he was required to read were few in comparison with those of a modern Inns-of-Court man. Roger North mentions between twenty and thirty authors, which the student should read in addition to Year-Books and more recent reports; and it is clear that the man who knew with any degree of familiarity such a body of legal literature was a very erudite lawyer two hundred years since. But the student was advised to read this small library again and again, "common-placing" the contents of its volumes, and also "common-placing" all new legal facts. The utility and convenience of common-place books were more apparent two centuries since, than in our time, when books of reference are always published with good tables of contents and alphabetical indexes. Roger North held that no man could become a good lawyer who did not keep a common-place book. He instructs the student to buy for a common-place register "a good large paper book, as big as a church bible;" he instructs him how to cla.s.sify the facts which should be entered in the work; and for a model of a lucid and thoroughly lawyer-like common-place book he refers "to Lincoln's Inn library, where the Lord Hale's common-place book is conserved, and that may be a pattern, _instar omnium_."

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

PUPILS IN CHAMBERS.

But the most important part of an industrious law-student's labors in olden time, was the work of watching the practice of Westminster Hall.

In the seventeenth century, the constant succession of political trials made the King's Bench Court especially attractive to students who were more eager for gossip than advancement of learning; but it was always held that the student, who was desirous to learn the law rather than to catch exciting news or hear exciting speeches, ought to frequent the Common Pleas, in which court the common law was said to be at home. At the Common Pleas, a student might find a seat vacant in the students'

benches so late as ten o'clock; but it was not unusual for every place devoted to the accommodation of students in the Court of King's Bench, to be occupied by six o'clock, A.M. By dawn, and even before the sun had begun to break, students bent on getting good seats at the hearing of an important cause would a.s.semble, and patiently wait in court till the judges made their appearance.