early as the nineteenth year of Edward IV. Lyon's Inn was an Inn of Chancery in the time of Henry V.

One alone (New Inn) was attached to the Middle Temple. Of this Inn, Dugdale, with a reference to Stow, observes— "This house having been formerly a common hostelry or inne for travaillers and other; and from the sign of the blessed Virgin, called our Lady Inne, became first an hostel for students of the law (as the tradition is) upon the removal of the students of the law from an old Inn of Chauncery called St. George his Inne, situate near Seacole Lane, a little south from St. Sepulchre's Church, without Newgate." In the previous century, the Middle Temple had possessed another Inn of Chancery called Strand Inn; but in the third year of Edward VI. this nursery was pulled down by the Duke of Somerset, who required the ground on which it stood for the site of Somerset House.

Lincoln's Inn had for dependent schools Furnival's Inn and Thavies Inn-the latter of which hostels was inhabited by law-students in Edward III.'s time. Of Furnival's Inn (originally Lord Furnival's town mansion, and converted into a law-school in Edward VI.'s reign) Dugdale says: "After which time the Principall and Fellows of this Inne have paid to the society of Lincoln's Inne the rent of iii vis iiid as an yearly rent for the same, as may appear by the accompts of that house; and by speciall order there made, have had these following priviledges: first (viz. 10 Eliz.) that the utter-barristers of Furnivall's Inne, of a yeares continuance, and so certified and allowed by the Benchers of Lincoln's Inne, shall pay no more than four marks apiece for their admittance into that society. Next (viz. in 11 Eliz.), that every fellow of this inne, who hath been allowed an utter-barrister here, and that hath mooted here two vacations at the Utter Bar, shall pay no more for their admissions into the Society of Lincoln's Inne than xiii iiiid, though all utter-barristers of any other Inne of Chancery (excepting Thavyes Inne) should pay xx3, and that every inner-barrister of this house, who hath mooted here one vacation at the Inner Bar, should pay for his admission into this House but xx", those of other houses (excepting Thavyes Inne) paying xxvi viiid." From this passage (to which reference will

be made in a subsequent chapter of this work), it appears that the students of the Inns of Chancery were divided into ranks corresponding with the various ranks of Inns of Court Men; and that their scholastic orations and exercises imitated the speeches and proceedings of Westminster Hall.

The subordinate seminaries of Gray's Inn, in Dugdale's time, were Staple Inn and Barnard's Inn. Originally the Exchange of the London woollen merchants, Staple Inn was a law-school as early as Henry V.'s time. It is probable that Barnard's Inn became an academy for law-students in the reign of Henry VI.

THU

CHAPTER LIX.

LAWYERS AND GENTLEMEN.

HUS planted in the fourteenth century beyond the confines of the City, and within easy access of Westminster Hall, the Inns of Court and Chancery formed an university, which soon became almost as powerful and famous as either Oxford or Cambridge. For generations they were spoken of collectively as the law-university, and though they were voluntary societies —in their nature akin to the club-houses of modern London— they adopted common rules of discipline, and an uniform system of instruction. Students flocked to them in abundance; and whereas the students of Oxford and Cambridge were drawn from the plebeian ranks of society, the scholars of the lawuniversity were invariably the sons of wealthy men and had usually sprung from gentle families. Whilst the colleges on the banks of the Isis and Cam sheltered or drew within the shadow of their walls a vast multitude of indigent, ragged, low-born scholars, the colleges on the banks of the Thames were frequented by the flower of England's youth, and entertained no pupil who had not the port and position of a gentleman. To be a law-student was to be a stripling of quality. The law-university enjoyed the same patrician prestige and éclat that now belong to the more aristocratic houses of the old universities.

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 the sword than to fence with logic.

"Notwithstanding," runs Mulcaster's translation of the 'De Laudibus,"*"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 citties 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

* This charming book was written during the author's exile, which began in 1463.

without weariness." The perfect tranquillity of the law-colleges, when they stood in the green fields, skirted by their own whispering groves, and withdrawn from the hum of the busy town, is in pleasant contrast with the almost unintermittent tumult which now-a-days tries the nerves of their residents.

Setting forth the condition and pursuits of law-students in his day, Sir John Fortescue continues: "For in these greater innes, there can no student bee mayntayned for lesse expenses by the yeare then 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 beare 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 thus it 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 a 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 to, beside the studie of the lawes, as it were an university or schoole of al commendable qualities requisite for noble men. There they learn to sing, and to exercise themselves in all kinde of harmonye. There also they practise daunsing, and other noblemen's pastimes, as they use to doo, 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 holy Scripture ;* 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 chil

* This passage is one of several passages in Pre-reformation English literature which certify that the Bible was much more widely and carefully read by lettered and studious laymen, in times prior to the rupture between England and Rome, than many persons are aware, and some violent writers like to acknowledge.