Littell's Living Age/Volume 179/Issue 2318/Some Customs of Inns of Court

The Inns of Court are not so much a place of residence as formerly, except for the younger members. The gloomy chamber, filled with dirty papers and parchments, has given place to a modern residence with an office in the Temple; and society would be as much astonished to find a barrister making a morning call in black silk gown and powdered wig as to see the lord chief justice carry a fan with a long handle, after the fashion of other days. At one time the clergy were the only lawyers, and when the inns were established members were regarded as the servants of the crown. Students were instructed not only in law, but in “all such other exercises as might make them the more serviceable to the king’s court,” such as dancing, singing playing and divinity. Four times a year the bar was called upon to dance for the edification of royalty. The fact that members of the inns were held to be servants of the crown is still felt. It is an article of Magna Charta that justice shall not be sold, and a king’s servant could not receive payment for aiding a subject to secure the benefit of law. Even at the present day a barrister cannot recover by an action at law any fee to which he may be morally entitled. Formerly the money was dropped, as if secretly, into the hood of the gown; whereas now a member of the bar adopts the more open method of refusing to go into court until his clerk has received the fee marked upon his brief. That no secret is made of payment may be inferred from an anecdote told of an eminent counsel — Judge “What brings you here to-day, Mr. L—?” Mr. L—: “Twenty guineas, my lord.” A queens counsellor can never hold a brief against the crown without special permission — that is, he cannot defend a prisoner in any criminal or civil proceedings undertaken by the police or the State. Nor is any barrister permitted to hold direct communication with his client; he must receive his instructions from a solicitor, who acts as an intermediary. “Youth eats his way to the bar.” This curious custom of ”eating dinners" is a survival of an old legal way of insisting that students should be resident at the Inns of Court. Before a man can be called to the bar, he must keep twelve terms, of which there are four each year. In other words, he must eat six dinners in hall every term, or seventy-two dinners altogether, recording his presence before grace and remaining until the concluding thanks are given. Members of universities have the numbers of their dinners reduced by one-half. At these dinners the benchers sit at a high table apart from barristers and students. The messes are usually made up of four men, arranged, at some inns, in order of seniority; and the custom of taking wine together is still adhered to. Queen Mary appears to have been the first to give attention to the dress of students at law. She regulated their hose; while her successor, Elizabeth, insisted upon beards, ruffs, and curled hair, and forbade the wearing of swords. The black gown is a relic of the ecclesiastic element that once prevailed in courts of law; and the horsehair wig, which a reforming chancellor may, one day, sweep away, is a survival of the time when men were ashamed to wear their own hair.