Inns Of Court Research Articles

Pre-Raphaelites Re-viewed edited by Marcia Pointon (review)

106Victorian Review in Victorian England is a tremendously valuable contribution to the understanding of an important aspect of Victorian EngUsh society. There can be no argument with the author ' s concluding comment that "there is a need for greater interest to be taken in the legal system—the laws themselves, who operates them, and who benefits from their operation" (268). Notes 1.The English legal profession was then characterized by two major "branches* which operated in effect as distinct professions providing related legal services. The Bar ("barrister's branch") was the socially more exclusive of the two, enjoyed a monopoly of superior court practice, and was governed by four "Inns of Court" in London. The so-called "lower branch" of the legal profession consisted of attorneys (also called solicitors), was much less socially exclusive, much larger, and provided the vast bulk of legal services throughout the country. 2.I am grateful to Dr. Barry Wright for sensitizing me to this. Of course there are many stopping points short of simplistic conspiracy theories but, as Wright's extraordinary scholarship illustrates, elements of instrumentalism and deliberate elite manipulation of law routinely intrude in times of perceived crisis. WES PUE University ofManitoba Marcia Pointon, ed. Pre-Raphaelites Re-viewed. Manchester UP, 1989. viii + $49.95 US (cloth); $18.95 US (paper). The word play in the title of Marcia Pointon's essay collection PreRaphaelites Re-viewed holds out an engaging offer. In this set of eight closely focused articles, written by British and American scholars in the fields of Uterature and art history, we are asked to take a new look at famiUar terrain, the art, the writings, and the ethos of the Pre-RaphaeUte movement. Few would argue with this proposition. Despite the vast extant Uterature on the movement—and few movements have been so meticulously documented—the discourse has tended to be redundant, telling and retelling the same story of youth, rebeUion, and romanticism, all in the cause of a purer British art. Although the story still pleases, as Reviews107 any undergraduate instructor will attest, it has ceased to inform and enlighten. A further problem with Pre-Raphaelite scholarship is its legacy of personalization and bias. From the beginning, the original seven Brothers wrote about and promoted one another, sought out "friendly" critics and endured, especially in the first years, some of the most vituperative criticism ever sent to press. The list of primary biographers—Wüliam Michael Rossetti, Ford Madox Hueffer, Georgiana Burne-Jones, Amy Woolner, Diana Holman Hunt, to name only a few----reads like a guest list for a family reunion. Each writer offers his or her own version of the same story, placing their father/uncle/grandfather at the center of the circle, then sets the familiar facts in motion around them. Even works conceived as a corrective—notably Jan Marsh's The Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood (1985)—must ultimately travel the same worn road; trying to balance the story unfortunately tells us the story again. Pointon ' s coUection appears at the end of a decade that saw a new analytical perspective on the Pre-Raphaelite movement The retrospective exhibition at the Tate Gallery (1984) and its comprehensive catalogue The Pre-Raphaelites played down the anecdotes and put forth the solid information on sources and provenance needed to work with the pictures at a deeper level of analytical engagement The essay coUection published in conjunction with the exhibition—Pre-Raphaelite Papers (ed. Leslie Parris, 1984)—advanced an approach of closer reading and broader contextual integration. These volumes broke ground for the innovative analyses that foUowed—by Deborah Cherry and Griselda PoUack, by Lynda Nead, and, most significantly by Jan Marsh and Pamela Gerrish Nunn. In common with the efforts of Pointon and her contributing authors, these scholars all seek to apply new, or at least alternative and less biased, modes of interpretation to the production of the PreRaphaelites , leading to deeper and wider understanding of the works in their broad Victorian context A part of a series published by Manchester University Press on "Cultural Politics," Pre-Raphaelites Re-viewed adheres to the observation that "texts" are "as inseparable from the conditions of their production and reception in history...

Gentlemen and Barristers. The Inns of Court and the English Bar 1680–1730. By David Lemmings. [Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1990. xiv, 259, (Appendices) 36, (Bibliography) 14 and (Index) 13pp. Hardback £35.00 net

Gentlemen and Barristers. The Inns of Court and the English Bar 1680–1730. By David Lemmings. [Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1990. xiv, 259, (Appendices) 36, (Bibliography) 14 and (Index) 13pp. Hardback £35.00 net]. - Volume 50 Issue 1

IV The Undergraduate Account Book of John and Richard Newdigate, 1618–1621

Introduction 151The Oxford and Temple Account 154The Newdigates and the education of the gentleman 156Editorial Practice 160Part I: Oxford 161Part II: Inner Temple 217The Oxford and Temple Book is one of a series of account books kept for and by the Newdigates of Arbury Hall, between Coventry and Nuneaton in Warwickshire, from 1608 to 1642, and now surviving among the family papers deposited at Warwickshire Record Office. All the accounts detail receipts from rents and farming, interest and borrowing, and expenditure on estate, household and personal items, but that kept between 1618 and 1621, printed here, also records the expenses of two brothers at university and the inns of court, of two family marriages and related settlements and of wardship and suing for livery of estates.

Reform of the criminal law the Inns of Court, London, England July 26?29, 1987

Reform of the criminal law the Inns of Court, London, England July 26?29, 1987

The Reformation in Microcosm?: Benchers at the Inns of Court, 1530-1580

The Reformation in Microcosm? Benchers at the Inns of Court, 1530-1580 In recent years the scope of Reformation history has been truly enlarged from central policies and religious doctrines of particular people to implementation throughout the countryside and adherence of the populace at large. Various studies have stressed thefitfulnessof protestant appeal and the restiience of traditiond religion within society, across the country and over time. In general these works indicate an inverse relationship between protestant and catholic adherence from the centre outwards until later in 'Elton's century'. While this depiction of the English Reformation might be closer to the complex truth, its treatment is by and large qualitative, impressionistic and twodim ensiond.1 The purpose of this paper is to provide a case-study of reformation at the centre - London, amongst a professional elite - masters of the bench, at a particular institution - the Inns of Court, using a specific method - quantitative prosopography.2 Most members of the four Inns were gentlemen below the bar or barristers (76.8% and 16.5% in 1574),3 whose response to reform can only be divined by example and impression.4 Those lawyers who had generally continued for over twenty years when cdled to the bench as masters and governors of their societies may be treated more quantitatively: their names recur in minutes; most held office outside the Inns; many left persond and public records. As dispensers of the law, servants of the Crown and rulers of the countryside, this body of influentid gentlemen, justices, officials, parliamentarians, councillors and prospective judges obviously confronted the religious issues of the day. In investigating their position, severd assumptions have been made. Most 'See D.M. Palliser, Popular Reactions to the Reformation during the Years of Uncertainty, 1530-1570, in Church and Society in England: Henry VIII to James I, Felicity Heal and Rosemary O'Day, eds., London, 1977, Ch. 2; Christopher Haigh, The Recent Historiography of the English Reformation, Historical Journal 25, 1982, 995-1005; Patrick Collinson, The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society, 1559-1625, Oxford, 1982; JJ. Scarisbrick, The Reformation and the English People, Oxford, 1984; Rosemary O'Day, The Debate on the English Reformation, London, 1986. 2 See Wilfrid R. Prest, The Inns of Court under Elizabeth I and the Early Stuarts, 1590-1640, London, 1972; Walter C. Richardson, A History of the Inns of Court, Baton Rouge, 1977. 3 Public Record Office (hereafter P.R.O.), SP12/95, f.201, Census of Inns of Court, May 1574. 4 See m y Reform, Repression and Unrest at the Inns of Court, 1518-1558, Historical Journal 20, 1977, 783-801. 34 RM. Fisher benchers were men of property who composed wills of some religious connotation in committing their souls, bodies and possessions; despite the common difficulty of determining authorship, the usefulness of wills in this case-study can be assumed since lawyers formulated their own.5 Another assumption is that masters not only held religious views but usually developed them before reaching the bench at middle age; many were obviously dfected from youth.6 A third assumption is that the religious disposition of benchers cannot be assessed independently of their actions, careers and connections; consequently the approach here is heavily prosopographical. A further assumption underlies the classifying, counting and tabulating of lawyers as either reformed or traditiond in religious orientation - that thisrepresentsthe overall course of reformation at the Inns, even if the evidence is lacking for some individuals or some injustice is done to others. Findly, it is assumed that since each reign attempted its own religious solutions, the termind years for the early Reformation are 1547, 1553 and 1558, followed by 1569 and 1580 for the Elizabethan settlement; there is little sign of reformed activity amongst benchers before 1530, and the period dter 1580 has its own momentum. On this basis it is possible to plot the religious orientation of 361 benchers for five regnd periods between 1530 and 1580.7 1 Gray's Inn, 1530-1558 For Henry's period, 20 of the 39 benchers of Gray's Inn left some evidence of religious disposition.8 Edward Hall was certdnly a protestant dbeit a Registered wills at the Public...

The Inns of Court and Chancery. By W. J. Loftie, B.A., F.S.A. [Southampton: Ashford Press Publishing. New York: Oceana Publications Inc. 1893, reprinted 1985. viii, 88 and (Index) 1 page. Illustrated. Hardback £24·95 net.

The Inns of Court and Chancery. By W. J. Loftie, B.A., F.S.A. [Southampton: Ashford Press Publishing. New York: Oceana Publications Inc. 1893, reprinted 1985. viii, 88 and (Index) 1 page. Illustrated. Hardback £24·95 net.] - Volume 44 Issue 3

The Student Body of the Inns of Court under the Later Stuarts

The Student Body of the Inns of Court under the Later Stuarts

The Law as a Sex-Typed Profession

The English legal profession is, overwhelmingly, a male profession. Less than one lawyer in ten is a woman. In October 1980 there were 447 practising women barristers, 9.7% of the total, and in the year 1979/80 The Law Society issued 3,700 practising certificates to women, who comprised 9.8% of all practising solicitors.[1] The senior levels of the profession are almost exclusively a male preserve. There were in 1980 just nine women amongst the 537 Benchers (members of the governing bodies) of the four Inns of Court.[2] In the same year three of the 96 Court of Appeal and High Court judges were women,[3] eight of the 308 circuit judges, 15 of the 411 Recorders and 13 out of a total of 720 Queen's Counsel. This massive under-representation of women in the highest ranks of the barristers' branch of the profession is not wholly because there are few senior women barristers, though a high proportion of women are relatively junior in point of call. Kennedy has shown that, in 1976, only 21% of women with more than 15 years practice since being called to the Bar had received a judicial appointment, compared with 53% of men of over 15 years call.[4]

The Reformation of Clergy at the Inns of Court 1530-1580

The Reformation of Clergy at the Inns of Court 1530-1580

Privy Council Coercion and Religious Conformity at the Inns of Court, 1569–84

From Henry's divorce to Elizabeth's accession, the most striking religious changes at the Inns of Court were external. As the Reformation progressed, church and chapel were stripped of their medieval ornamentation, in form as in fabric. Despite this outward transformation, there was remarkable continuity in personnel. Change occurred more by the natural process of admission, promotion, retirement and death than by compulsion. This did not mean that there was no regulation whatsoever. Members of the Inns were among those expected to obey the law—whether renouncing the Pope, acknowledging the Supremacy or maintaining uniformity. Nevertheless it is difficult to establish the extent to which religious observance was actually practised at the Inns. Bartlett Green of the Middle Temple, who was burnt for heresy in 1556, testified that he had not heard Mass during Mary's reign. Richard Allington, a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, was so engrossed in the worship of mammon that he fearfully confessed before his deathbed audience in 1561 to have ‘never wentte to churche atte tyme of commone prayere'. In 1569, several other members of the legal societies admitted they had rarely attended church since Elizabeth's accession, including Walter Norton of Gray's Inn, ‘by reason of his busines and clientes causes’. Despite the legal requirement, there is no sign of any campaign to enforce religious observance at the Inns or to coerce the legal profession as a whole.

Etherege at Clement's Inn

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

A History of the Inns of Court: With Special Reference to the Period of the Renaissance

A History of the Inns of Court: With Special Reference to the Period of the Renaissance

The Origins of Divinity Lectureships at the Inns of Court, 1569–1585

Following the Reformation, the Inns of Court established a tradition of preaching inferior to none. The wealth and influence of-these centres of legal and genteel education attracted such noted preachers and divines as Richard Alvey, Thomas Gataker Jr., John Donne, Richard Sibbes and John Preston. In an age of religious disputation, their activities could easily provoke controversy. At the Temple in 1585 to 1586 the celebrated clash took place between Richard Hooker and Walter Travers. In subsequent years the puritan proclivities of William Crashawe and the Laudian pretensions of Paul Micklethwaite produced similar debate. Considering the prominence of their office, the parallel expansion of London preacherships and the attention given to events after 1585, the earlier development of divinity lectureships at the Inns of Court deserves particular treatment.

Elizabethan Popish Recusancy in the Inns of Court. By Geoffrey de C. Parmiter. (Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, Special Supplement, 11). Pp. viii + 60. London: University of London Institute of Historical Research, 1976. £3.

Elizabethan Popish Recusancy in the Inns of Court. By Geoffrey de C. Parmiter. (Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, Special Supplement, 11). Pp. viii + 60. London: University of London Institute of Historical Research, 1976. £3. - Volume 29 Issue 2

Reform, Repression and Unrest at the Inns of Court, 1518–1558

In 1546 the members of Lincoln's Inn beheld a most peculiar sight in their communal hall. The traditional midsummer light of St John had been replaced with the ridiculous head of a horse. Three young members were charged by the benchers. Two who refused to confess were expelled from the house and imprisoned in the Fleet by the lord chancellor, Thomas Wriothesley, and Sir Roger Cholmley, the chief baron of the Exchequer and a former bencher. The other culprit, who confessed and made humble suit to the bench, was merely excluded from commons. After the inevitable petitions, all were forgiven ‘their said lewd and nowghtie mysdemeanours’ and shortly remitted into the house.

Elizabethan Popish Recusancy in the Inns of Court. By Geoffrey de C. Parmiter. London: Special Supplement No. 11 to the Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 1976. ix + 60 pp. £2.00.

Elizabethan Popish Recusancy in the Inns of Court. By Geoffrey de C. Parmiter. London: Special Supplement No. 11 to the Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 1976. ix + 60 pp. £2.00. - Volume 46 Issue 3

Students of the Common Law 1590-1615: Lives and Ideas at the Inns of Court

Students of the Common Law 1590-1615: Lives and Ideas at the Inns of Court

Ruggle's Ignoramus and Humanistic Criticism of the Language of the Common Law

According to contemporary observers, George Ruggle's Ignoramus, first staged at Cambridge in March 1614, enjoyed an immense success, or notoriety, both at the university and at “Whitehall while it sent shockwaves through the Inns of Court and infuriated Sir Edward Coke, Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench. The comedy was apparently conceived as an attack upon Francis Brackyn, Recorder of Cambridge and constant adversary of the university, but because of its brilliant and merciless satire of legal jargon, the play achieved a universality which aided James I and the civilian lawyers in their jurisdictional struggles against Coke and the common law bench.

The Early Constitution of Gray's Inn

Most writing on the early history of the Inns of Court reflects an assumption which was very clearly stated by Sir Frederick Pollock,On the whole then the constitution of the Inns of Court was settled about the middle of the fourteenth century on the lines which in all cssentials are much the same at this day. The only considerable formal change was that two centuries later the original governing committee of the Bench gave way to a single principal officer, the Treasurer.

:The Inns of Court under Elizabeth I and the Early Stuarts, 1590-1640

:<i>The Inns of Court under Elizabeth I and the Early Stuarts, 1590-1640</i>