Etherege at Clement's Inn

Abstract

BOTH GILDON AND OLDYS' report that Sir George Etherege, in his younger years, studied the law, and Oldys specifies that he studied, for a while, the Municipal Laws, at one of the Inns of in London. The surviving records of Lincoln's Inn, Gray's Inn, the Middle Temple, and the Inner Temple are relatively abundant, but no evidence that was a member of any of the four Inns of Court has yet been found. Nevertheless, it is clear that knew a good deal of law: his plays abound in references to it, and in his letters from Ratisbon between 1685 and 1689 he analyzes, in technical language and with considerable assurance, a number of legal problems arising at the Diet. One wonders how he came by this legal knowledge, and part of the answer is already known. In 1654, when was about 18, his grandfather, concerned about the future of his fatherless grandchildren, began to place them where they might earn their own livings. George, the oldest grandson, was articled to George Gosnold, a prominent lawyer with a wide practice in Beaconsfield and in London. This was standard procedure in the mid-seventeenth century; young men who wished to learn the practice of the common law, as distinguished from the jurisprudence taught at Oxford and Cambridge, were commonly apprenticed to experienced lawyers. An articled clerk was bound to serve his master for a specified period, often seven years, in return for being instructed in his profession. The clerk lived in his master's house, ate at his table, and was treated as a son of the family. In 1656 the signature Etherege on Beaconsfield leases, bonds, and indentures shows that Gosnold's clerk was acting as witness to Gosnold's signature.2 If imitation be a mark of respect, these signatures indicate that was on good terms with his master, for he imitates Gosnold's handwriting in close detail, especially the abbreviation Geo: which used consistently in later life, the broad rounded capital