Volume II 1603-1660 - The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple

INTRODUCTION. lv
found, were to be ejected from the building. In November, 1614, a
set of rules and regulations for the inns of court and of chancery were
promulgated by the privy council and the judges, and were discussed P. 83-85
and adopted by the benchers. They provided, among other things,
that the inns should be searched for strangers, twice in each Michaelmas
term, once in every other term, and once in every vacation : that
a fellow not taking the communion should be ipso facto expelled :
that inasmuch as the institution of these societies was chiefly for the
profession, and secondly, for the education of the sons and youth of
riper years of the nobility and gentlemen of the realm, and in no sort
for the lodging or abode of gentlemen of the country, which, if it
should be suffered would disparage the societies and turn them from
nospicia to diversaria (from colleges to taverns), no knight or gentleman
should be allowed to lodge there unless he were an utter
barrister : that no common attorney or solicitor, they being ministerial
persons of an inferior nature, should be admitted to the four
houses of court : that no society should call more than eight to the
bar in any one year : that no barrister should practise publicly at Westminster
until he had been three years at the bar, unless he had been
a reader : and that there was a settled and constant resolution to see
these orders enforced. In February, 1616-17, certain orders, having P. 10I
reference to the calling of students to the bar,' which had recently been
passed were repealed, and it was ordered that the former practice
should be continued. According to this a student must have been
eight years a member of the house, have attended moots, and have
duly partaken of the holy communion. " And if any man should
procure letters or messages from any great persons to the treasurer
or benchers of the house to be called to the bar, he should for ever
after be disabled to receive that degree within this house." Notwithstanding,
however, the stringency of these orders, the benchers, on P. 120
the i5th October, 1620, called no less than twenty-six gentlemen to
the bar, and reserved the rights of two others, and on the following
6th November they called seventeen more. A rule of professional
etiquette, not recognized at the present day, was enforced in 1611.
About that time a suit was brought against Sir Julius Czesar, knight,
privy counsellor, chancellor of the exchequer, and a bencher of this
house. Mr. Lowe and Mr. Badger, two utter barristers, members of
These are not in the Records.