INTRODUCTION

In 1300, there were three main types of function undertaken by legal representatives in court: advocacy, personal substitution, and excusing absence. An advocate spoke for his client in the client or attorney's presence and his pleadings could be ‘disavowed’ or repudiated, whereas the attorney substituted for his client, his words and actions being as binding as the client's own, and an essoiner excused the absences of both the litigant and his attorney.

The one place in the city in which legal representatives were definitely not permitted to appear, certainly by the later fourteenth century, was the Inner Chamber; and the only types of cases in which they were definitely never permitted to act formally for their clients were those heard and determined according to merchant law or conscience. It is likely enough that legal representatives had never appeared in such cases, and that it was the increase and formalisation of the activities of the Mayor's Court which made it necessary to clarify the situation, rather than any change in practice. The explanation given for the restriction in 1390, that the mayor and aldermen wished ‘to examine [the parties in such cases] … and put questions to them [on oath] and to use other means of eliciting the truth … without any counsel or any other form of plea’, probably does accurately reflect their motivation.