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''Bencher''. Also called a master of the bench, a senior lawyer who had given one or more readings at his inn. Benchers helped to govern the inns and called students to the bar to graduate.
''Bencher''. Also called a master of the bench, a senior lawyer who had given one or more readings at his inn. Benchers helped to govern the inns and called students to the bar to graduate.


==== ''Barrister''. Graduate of an inn of court. A law student graduated on being "called to the bar"—a reference to the wood bar at an inn's moots (debates on hypothetical cases). ====
''Barrister''. Graduate of an inn of court. A law student graduated on being "called to the bar"—a reference to the wood bar at an inn's moots (debates on hypothetical cases).
 
'''Lower Branch'''
'''Lower Branch'''


Revision as of 09:28, 5 January 2016

This article offers a comprehensive and descriptive list of each piece included in Age of Lawyers, one of the Exhibitions at the Folger.

This exhibition was arranged into four sections: Legal Lives; The Great Courts; Law and Communities; and The King and the Law.

Legal Lives

Learning the Law

Many law students became lawyers and judges. Others, however, were young gentlemen with no plan of practicing law. They sought legal knowledge instead for social polish, advancement, and the practical skills needed to serve at court or manage an estate. Both the future lawyers and their fellow students were confronted by a challenging, technical field. Typically, a student started out at about 18 at one of the residential Inns of Chancery, where he learned basic property law and how to draft writs and pleadings. After three years or so, atabout 21, those who aspired to higher professional status—and could afford it—joined one of the four Inns of Court, graduating after several years when senior lawyers "called them to the bar."

Items Included
  • Wenceslaus Hollar. The Prospect of London and Westminster taken from Lambeth. Call number: MAP L85c no.2 copy 2.

The Inns of Court (Case 1)

Both lawyers and law students lived, studied, and worked at the Inns of Chancery and Inns of Court. With so many relatively young students in residence, the inns buzzed at times with song, dance, masques, pageants, rich dinners, and Christmas festivities. A century earlier, in 1470, Sir John Fortescue called them as much an "academy of manners" as a law school. Senior lawyers, who governed their own inns, saw themselves as part of the community. When the courts were not in session, for example, they gave lectures, called readings.

Items Included

Life at the "Third University" (Case 2)

Law students often studied for a year or two at one of England's only two universities, Oxford and Cambridge, before they started their legal education. By Shakespeare's day, the Inns of Court and Chancery were sometimes called the "third university"—a term meant as an admiring metaphor, rather than literally. Students at the inns, as in any era, had to find their footing. The letters shown here discuss trouble finding a place to stay and the timeless need for more money from home.

Reading, Notes, and Study (Case 3)

Learning the common law was, in large part, an oral tradition. Students attended the central Westminster courts and took notes—in "law French"—on how the cases were argued and the court's reasoning. At the inns, readings or lectures were heard in person, and legal debates called moots were organized over hypothetical cases. But students also spent time with Year Books, unofficial records of past cases organized by the years of a monarch's reign. Other books, too, were considered worthy of study; in keeping with the legal culture of the time, some were printed and others were only in manuscript. Students kept "commonplace books" of key points or lines of argument as well.

Items Included
  • Francis Bacon 1561-1626. The learned reading of Sir Francis Bacon, one of her Majesties learned counsell at law, upon the Statute of Uses: being his double reading to the Honourable Society of Grayes Inne. Published for the common good. London: 1642. Call number: B301 copy 3 Bd.w. STC 20889.5; Displayed: title page.
  • John Perkins. A profitable booke of Master Iohn Perkins felow of the Inner Temple treating of the lawes of Engla[n]d. London: Richard Tottell, August 31, 1581. Call number: STC 19637 copy 2; Displayed: 121a
  • John Rastell. An exposition of certaine difficult and obscure words, and termes of the lawes of this realme, newly set forth and augmented, both in Frenche and English, for the helpe of such yong students, as are desirous to attaine to the knowledge of the same. London: Richard Tottel, 1592. Call number: STC 20708 copy 2; Displayed: folio 112v-113r.
  • Sir Henry Finch. Nomotechnia, viz. the art of law or a description of the common lawes of England according to the rules of art together with all the cheife and principall statutes comeinge in their places whereby the common law is inlarged abridged or any way altered from the beginneinge of Magna Charta made 9 H. 3 to the end of the fourtyeth yeare of her late maties. most gratious raygne. Manuscript, 1607. Call number: V.a.320, Folio 2; Displayed: folio 2r.

A Multiplicity of Lawyers

In Shakespeare's time, the English legal profession was divided between two broad groups of lawyers, each permitted to perform certain functions. Barristers, who completed their studies in an inn of court, made up the "upper branch," able to argue in court and provide expert opinions. Lawyers in the "lower branch" studied at an inn of chancery, then clerked for a legal practitioner, becoming solicitors or attorneys. Such practitioners were more likely to work directly with clients. A solicitor did not argue in court, but could retain a barrister for the client.

Upper Branch

Serjeant at law. The top legal rank below the attorney general. Only serjeants could address the Court of Common Pleas or become justices of Common Pleas or King's Bench

Bencher. Also called a master of the bench, a senior lawyer who had given one or more readings at his inn. Benchers helped to govern the inns and called students to the bar to graduate.

Barrister. Graduate of an inn of court. A law student graduated on being "called to the bar"—a reference to the wood bar at an inn's moots (debates on hypothetical cases).

Lower Branch

Attorney. A lawyer who worked with clients, advising them on topics such as litigation, estate management, and finances

Solicitor. Similar to an attorney, but for the Court of Chancery. An attorney could also be a solicitor.

Proctor. Similar to an attorney or solicitor, but for the ecclesiastical (church) courts

A Wide Variety of Roles (Case 4)

Much as they do today, lawyers in Elizabethan and Jacobean times took on a great variety of work, from helping to settle disputes, to providing guidance to clients, to advocating for them in court. Lawyers helped in property negotiations and did legal research that could verge on antiquarian or historical study. Many also served as judges, justices of the peace, and members of Parliament. The documents in this case provide a small sampling of a working lawyer's diversity of tasks.

Items Included

Literary Lawyers (Case 5)

Bright minds interested in words and language offered a fertile ground for poetry and other literature at the Inns of Court. John Donne, for example, a one-time law student, wrote poems about the experience and used legal terms in many of his later works. Players once performed Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors for the holidays at Gray's Inn.

Items Included
  • Gesta Grayorum. London: W. Canning, 1688. Call number: C444 copy 1; Displayed; pages 22-23.
  • John Donne. Poems, by J.D. VVith elegies on the authors death. London: Miles Flesher, 1633. Call number: STC 7045.2 copy 1; Displayed: page 325.
  • Copy of John Donne’s Satyres I and II. Manuscript, 1590s. Call number: X.d.580; Displayed: front cover.
  • William Shakespeare. Mr. VVilliam Shakespeares comedies, histories, & tragedies : published according to the true originall copies. London: Isaac Iaggard and Ed. Blount, 1623. Call number: STC 22273 Fo.1 no.47; Displayed; title page for The Comedy of Errors.
  • Justice’s handbook. Manuscript, ca. 1575. Call number: V.a.247; Displayed: [and 6th leaves].