1. Blackstone, W., Commentaries on the Laws of England (London, 1765-1769), 1:3 (read 25 Oct. 1758).Google Scholar

2. For a brief summary of traditional legal literature, see Lobban, M., The Common Law and English Jurisprudence, 1760-1850 (Oxford, 1991), chap. 1, esp. 6–11Google Scholar.

3. Fortescue, J., De Laudibus Legum Anglie, ed. Chrimes, S. B. (Cambridge, 1949), 117–21Google Scholar; The Pension Book of Clement's Inn, ed. Carr, C. (London: Selden Society, 1960), xvii–xxiGoogle Scholar; Ives, E. W., The Common Lawyers of Pre-Reformation England (Cambridge, 1983), 36–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. Among two fifty-name samples from barristers called in the triennia 1719-21 and 1769-71, only two called in 1719-21 and two in 1769-71 had attended an inn of chancery. For the source of this information, see Lemmings, D., Professors of the Law: A History of English Barristers in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, forthcoming)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. Commentaries, 1:31.

6. A Treatise on the Study of the Law (London, 1797), iii–iv.Google Scholar

7. Commentaries, 1:27 (citing Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, book 5).

8. For a full account of the difficulties that confronted the barristers and the common law courts in the eighteenth century, see Lemmings, Professors of the Law.

9. Holdsworth, W., A History of English Law (London, 1922-1972), 6:487–93Google Scholar. For a modern account, see Lemmings, D., Gentlemen and Barristers: The Inns of Court and the English Bar, 1680-1730 (Oxford, 1990), 75–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. See Brooks, C., “Interpersonal Conflict and Social Tension: Civil Litigation in England, 1640-1830,” in The First Modern Society, ed. Beier, A. L., Cannadine, D., and Rosenheim, J. (Cambridge, 1989), 367–72Google Scholar; Lemmings, Professors of the Law, esp. chap. 3.

11. Lemmings, Gentlemen and Barristers, esp. chaps. 2-4.

12. Among modern studies, see, for example, Brand, P., The Origins of the English Legal Profession (Oxford, 1992)Google Scholar; Ives, E. W., The Common Lawyers of P re-Reformation England (Cambridge, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baker, J. H., The Legal Profession and the Common Law: Historical Essays (London, 1986)Google Scholar; Prest, W. R., The Inns of Court under Elizabeth and the Early Stuarts (London, 1972)Google Scholar and The Rise of the Barristers: A Social History of the English Bar, 1590-1640 (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar; Lemmings, Professors of the Law.

13. Lucas, P., “Blackstone and the Reform of the Legal Profession,” English Historical Review 27 (1962): 456–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar. David Lieberman's recent treatment is a little more balanced, although his emphasis on legislation inevitably entails rather slight notice of professional legal education (The Province of Legislation Determined: Legal Theory in Eighteenth-Century Britain [Cambridge, 1989], 63–65Google Scholar).

14. Maitland, F. W., “Outlines of English Legal History, 560-1600,” in The Collected Papers of Frederic William Maitland, ed. Fisher, H. A. L. (Cambridge, 1911), 2:484–85Google Scholar.

15. The Letter Book of John Watts, ed. Barck, D. C. (New York Historical Society 61, New York, 1928), 13Google Scholar: Watts to Sir William Baker, New York, 22 Jan. 1762.

16. Ibid., 245-46: Watts to Colonel John Young, New York, 18 Apr. 1764.

17. E.g., Legal Papers of John Adams, ed. Wroth, L. K. and Zobel, H. B. (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), 1:lix–lxii, lxix-lxxGoogle Scholar. See the classic “anglicization” argument of Murrin, J. M. (“The Legal Transformation: The Bench and Bar of Eighteenth-Century Masachusetts,” in Colonial America: Essays in Politics and Social Development, ed. Katz, S. N. [Boston, Mass., 1971], 415–49Google Scholar).

18. Pole, J. R., “Reflections on American Law and the American Revolution,” William & Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 50 (1993): 123–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Greene, J. P., “From the Perspective of Law: Context and Legitimacy in the Origins of the American Revolution,” South Atlantic Quarterly 85 (1986): 58–59Google Scholar; Nelson, W. E., Americanization of the Common Law (Cambridge, Mass., 1975), esp. 14–15Google Scholar.

19. See Greene, J. P., “William Knox's Explanation of the American Revolution,” William & Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 30 (1973): 299.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20. Ramsey, D., The History of the American Revolution (Philadelphia, 1789), 1:134Google Scholar.

21. Hale, M., “Considerations Touching the Amendment or Alteration of Lawes,” in A Collection of Tracts Relative to the Law of England, ed. Hargrave, F. (London, 1787), 284.Google Scholar

22. Proposals Humbly Offer'd to the Parliament, for Remedying the Great Charge, and Delay of Suits at Law, and in Equity, 3d ed. (London, 1724), 1, 14Google Scholar. First published in two editions in 1707 and reprinted, the author remarking, “The Grievance in these last 17 Years is much increased, and still growing, and calls for a speedy Stop to be put to it” (2).

23. Popular criticism of law and lawyers is remarkably perennial. Weber even suggested that all law has a formal “rationality” that is bound to conflict with litigants’ expectations. See Sugarman, D., In the Spirit of Weber: Law, Modernity and “The Peculiarities of the English” (Madison, Wis., Institute for Legal Studies, 2d ser., no. 9, 1987), 8Google Scholar.

24. Winder, W. H., “The Courts of Requests,” Law Quarterly Review 52 (1936): 369–94Google Scholar; Public General Acts 9 & 10 Victoria, 695-744: 9 & 10 Viet. c. 95.

25. Hutton, W[illiam], Courts of Requests: their Nature, Utility, and Powers described, with a variety of Cases, Determined in that of Birmingham (Birmingham, 1787), 7, 9Google Scholar.

26. Commentaries, 1:10. For contextualization and exemplification of Blackstone's concern about the contemporary “swelling” of the statute book, and the importance of conforming legislation to common law principles, see Lieberman, The Province of Legislation Determined, esp. 13-28 and chap. 2.

27. Commons Journals, 21:236-37, 274, 313, 622-24.

28. Commons Journals, 26:368-69, 414-15, 421, 425-26, 555, 584; ibid., 29:433-34,707; ibid., 34:72; ibid., 36:671; ibid., 41:623. See also Brooks, “Interpersonal Conflict and Social Tension,” 372-74.

29. Statutes at Large, 5:505-10; 2 Geo. 2, c. 23; The Parliamentary History of England, ed. Cobbett, W. [to 1812] and Hansard, T. C. [1812-1820] (London, 1806-1820), 8:1071–78Google Scholar; Report of the Lords Commissioners appointed to make a survey of the different courts in England, Wales, and Berwick-upon Tweed,—as to the Court of Chancery: Dated 8 November 1740 (Parliamentary Papers, House of Commons, 1814-1815), 1–5.Google Scholar

30. Statutes at Large, 5:575; 4 Geo. 2, c. 26; Winder, “Courts of Requests,” 369-93.

31. Parliamentary History, 8:859 (House of Commons debate, 4 Mar. 1731).

32. Commentaries, 3:82. For lawyers’ opposition to turning law proceedings into the vernacular, see ibid., 3:322-23; Foss, Edward, The Judges of England (London, 1848-1869), 8:78–79Google Scholar.

33. Hutton, W., A Dissertation on Juries; with a Description of the Hundred Court: as an Appendix to the Court of Requests (Birmingham, 1789), 9–10, 44.Google Scholar

34. The Gentleman's Magazine: or, Monthly Intelligencer 1 (1731): 19, 98-99, 104-5, 118, 213-14Google Scholar; ibid. 2 (1732): 899-900, 1015-16, 1045-47.

35. “A Multiplicity of Laws a Grievance” Gentleman's Magazine 1 (1732): 899-900. (“The Decay of Trade, and the Taxes, are Burdens the Nation has long borne as dependent on foreign Causes and Powers; but there is a third Grievance, which is absolutely in our own Power to redress, and that is, our Laws and Courts of Justice. Let any one reflect on the almost infinite Number of Laws. Rules, and Orders of courts, forms, Precedents, &c, all are as strong as Acts of Parliament in the Decisions of our Courts. It is computed, that in Britain there are at least 50,000 belonging to the Law, each of whom, one with another, make yearly his Business £100. To which, if the Client's Charges and Loss of Time in attending be added, [which may be computed at a Million a Year] here's a Charge on the Nation of Six Millions a Year.”)

36. The Gentleman's Magazine, and Historical Chronicle 20 (1750): 215–19.Google Scholar

37. Brooks, “Interpersonal Conflict,” 361-64.

38. Lemmings, Gentlemen and Barristers, 10, and Professors of the Law, chap. 3. Cf. Lucas, P., “A Collective Biography of Students and Barristers of Lincoln's Inn, 1680-1804: A Study in the ‘Aristocratic Resurgence’ of the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of Modern History 46 (1974): 227–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for an analysis of Lincoln's Inn which misleadingly emphasizes concern about the social origins of barristers.

39. Commentaries, 1:31-32.

40. Letters on Various Subjects, Literary, Political, and Ecclesiastical, to and from William Nicholson D.D., ed. Nichols, J. (London, 1809), 1:140–41Google Scholar (Evelyn to Nicholson, 10 Nov. 1699).

41. Kearney, H., Scholars and Gentlemen (London, 1970), esp. chaps. 1 and 2Google Scholar; Stone, L., “The Educational Revolution in England, 1560-1640,” Past and Present 28 (1964): 41–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “The Size and Composition of the Oxford Student Body,” in The University in Society, ed. Stone, L. (Princeton, N.J., 1974), 1:24Google Scholar; Prest, W. R., The Rise of the Barristers: a Social History of the English Bar (Oxford, 1986), 110–13Google Scholar.

42. Campbell, R., The London Tradesman (London, 1747), 74Google Scholar.

43. Among the fifty-case samples of men called in 1719-21 and 1769-71, twenty-five (50 percent) of the first group and thirty of the second (60 percent) had matriculated at Oxford or Cambridge. The 1719-21 sample included five (10 percent) who took a degree, while sixteen (32 percent) of the 1769-71 group were graduates. For overall matriculation figures at Oxford and Cambridge, 1700-1799, see Cannon, J., Aristocratic Century: The Peerage of Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1984), 45 (table 7)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44. Prest, Rise of the Barristers, 112; Lemmings, Gentlemen and Barristers, 94.

45. Of the 2,041 MPs elected in the period 1715-54, 914, or 46 percent, had “attended” Oxford or Cambridge, and another 82, or 4 percent, had attended another university in Scotland or Europe (Sedgwick, R., The House of Commons 1715-1754 [London, 1970], 1:139Google Scholar). “Approximately two-fifths” of the MPs returned to each parliament between 1754 and 1790 had been to some university (Namier, L. and Brooke, J., The House of Commons, 1754-1790 [London, 1964], 1:111)Google Scholar.

46. A Calendar of the Inner Temple Records, ed. Inderwick, F. A. and Roberts, R. A. (London, 1896-1936), 5:142–43Google Scholar.

47. Bennett, G. V., “University, Society and Church 1688-1714,” in The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 5, The Eighteenth Century, ed. Sutherland, L. S. and Mitchell, L. G. (Oxford, 1986), 380–81Google Scholar. Cf. Cannon, Aristocratic Century, 55. It should be noted that the extra residence requirement for the MA was largely abrogated at Oxford in the course of the century, while doctorates did not necessarily require extra residence, and the DCL could be achieved by commuting an MA to BCL and then undertaking three “wall lectures” (Sutherland, L. S., “The Curriculum,” in History of the University of Oxford, 5:484, 490)Google Scholar.

48. The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, ed. Sprigge, T. L. S. et al. (London and Oxford, 1968-1994), 1:17–112Google Scholar, and espec. 113-17: Bentham to Thomas Gwatkin, 7 Apr. 1767.

49. [Raithby, J.], The Study and Practice of the Law Considered (London, 1798), 274Google Scholar.

50. Gibbon, E., Memoirs of my Life, ed. Radice, B. (Harmonds worth, 1984), chap. 3Google Scholar; The Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. Bowring, J. (Edinburgh, 1838-1843), 10:41Google Scholar (“I took to reading Greek of my own fancy; but there was no encouragement: we just went to the foolish lectures of our tutors, to be taught something of logical jargon”).

51. Gascoigne, J., Cambridge in the Age of Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1988), 6–23Google Scholar; National Library of Wales (hereafter NLW), Aberystwyth, Panton MSS, NLW2063B, 1-172: notebook endorsed “P. Panton Aul: Trinit: Cantab:” and “Jan. 1744/5.” At one end (3-129) are notes on civil law, etc., some from lectures. Panton was called at Lincoln's Inn, 1749.

52. [Raithby], Study and Practice of the Law, 274; Commentaries, 1:36.

53. Bentham, Works, 10:45.

54. Letter Book of John Watts, 13.

55. See James Clitherow's memoir of Blackstone in the preface to Blackstone, W., Reports of Cases determined in the several Courts of Westminster-Hall from 1747 to 1779 (London, 1781), 1:xvii–xviiiGoogle Scholar. Holdsworth, , History of English Law, 12:94–95Google Scholar. See also Viner's will in ibid., 739-40.

56. Chambers, R., A Course of Lectures on the English Law delivered at the University of Oxford, 1767-1773, ed. Curley, T. M. (Oxford, 1986), 1:11–27Google Scholar.

57. Wooddeson, R., A Systematical View of the Laws of England (Dublin, 1792)Google Scholar. For a rather slight history of the early Vinerian chair, see Hanbury, H. G., The Vinerian Chair and Legal Education (Oxford, 1958), chaps. 1-5Google Scholar. Unfortunately, neither Hanbury, Holdsworth (History of English Law, 12:91-101), nor Barton, J. L., “Legal Studies” (The History of the University of Oxford, 5:593–605Google Scholar), essays a serious account of Chambers and Wooddeson as Vinerian lecturers, and there is no full account of the Downing chair, founded at Cambridge in 1800.

58. The joint regulations of 1762 were simply the culmination of a long policy of dispensations to university men, which dated from the late seventeenth century (Lemmings, Gentlemen and Barristers, 20, 22).

59. See [Wynne, Edward], Eunomus: or Dialogues concerning the Law and Constitution of England. With an Essay on Dialogue (London, 1768-1772), 2:20–21, 260Google Scholar. Wynne's book is an extended defense of common law against the continuing charge that it was neither liberal nor moral.

60. See below, 251-52.

61. The mean age at admission to the inns among the 1719-21 sample was 19.5 years, while that of the 1769-71 sample was 17.3 years. Blackstone, Commentaries, 1:27-28; Holdsworth, History of English Law, 12:739 (Viner's will, 1755).

62. Rowland, K. M., The Life of Charles Carroll of Carrollton (New York, 1898), 1:53–54Google Scholar (Charles Carroll jun. to his father, 7 Jan. 1763).

63. Fortescue, De Laudibus, 116-17; Le Tierce Part des Reportes del Edward Coke (London, 1697)Google Scholar, preface (“all together do make the most famous University for profession of Law only, or of any one Human Science that is in the World”); W. R. Prest, The Inns of Court, 115. See also Baker, J. H., An Introduction to English Legal History, 3d ed. (London, 1990), 184Google Scholar. For the educational “system” of the late fifteenth-century inns, see Ives, E. W., The Common Lawyers of Pre-Reformation England (Cambridge, 1983), chap. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Recent evidence suggests that they may have existed as educational institutions from the mid-fourteenth century (Baker, J. H., The Third University of England: The Inns of Court and the Common Law Tradition [London, Selden Society, 1990]Google Scholar).

64. Baker, J. H., The Legal Profession and the Common Law (London, 1986), chaps. 2-4,Google Scholar and The Third University of England; Prest, Inns of Court, chap. 6; Lemmings, Gentlemen and Barristers, 78-89; The Learned Reading of Sir Francis Bacon, one of Her Majesty's Learned Counsel at Law, upon the Statute of Uses (London, 1642)Google Scholar; The Reading of that Famous and Learned Gentleman, Robert Callis… upon the Statute of 23 H.8, Cap.5, of Sewers (London, 1647)Google Scholar. For Coke's point, see Coke on Litt. (Coke, E., The First Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England, ed. Hargrave, F. and Butler, C., 19th ed. [London, 1832]), 280bGoogle Scholar.

65. For the complex story of the demise of the inns’ educational apparatus after 1660, see Lemmings, Gentlemen and Barristers, 75-92.

66. North, R., The Lives of the Right Hon. Francis North, Baron Guilford; The Hon. Sir Dudley North; and the Hon. and Rev. Dr. John North, ed. Jessopp, A. (London, 1890), 1:39Google Scholar; The Diary of Dudley Ryder, 1715-16, ed. Matthews, W. (London, 1939), 258Google Scholar. See also North, , Lives, 1:29Google Scholar; North, R., A Discourse on the Study of the Laws (London, 1824 [written c. 1709]), 1–2Google Scholar.

67. The papers of Lord Chief Justice Lee (called Middle Temple, 1710) include notes of a reading on conveyancing given by Serjeant Thomas Carthew at New Inn in the early 1690s (Yale, Beinecke Library, Lee Papers, Box 18, File 4: “The reading of Serjt. Carthew,” Michaelmas 3 William & Mary). The inns of court sent lecturers to their satellite inns of chancery, and it appears that these notes must have been taken by a student who attended. For the substantive decline of the inns of court exercises, see Lemmings, Gentlemen and Barristers, 89-92; Middle Temple Library, London, MS Orders of Parliament H(8), 60-61.

68. British Library (hereafter BL), Add. MSS 41,843, ff. 57-58: accounts ofWynne at the Middle Temple, Nov.-Dec. 1717.

69. Northumberland County Record Office, Newcastle, Ridley (Blagdon) MSS, ZR1 32/1/1.

70. Wynne paid for exercises at the time of his call in May 1718 (BL, Add. MSS 41,843, f. 62). See also Master Worsley's Book on the History and Constitution of the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, ed. Ingpen, A. R. (London, 1910), 131–36, 209-12Google Scholar.

71. Advice to a Certain Lord High Chancellor, twelve judges, 600 barristers, 700 English and 800 Irish students of the law, and 30,000 attornies! (Dublin, 1792), 23Google Scholar. See also Treatise on the Study of the Law, iv: “They [i.e., the students] did not then, as now, eat their way to the bar; and other certificates were required, besides those of having regularly and decorously swallowed their mutton.”

72. The Pension Book of Gray's Inn, ed. Fletcher, R. J. (London, 1901-1910), 2:274, 284, 287, 288, 291, 293-94, 309, 312, 340Google Scholar.

73. Wallace, J. W., The Reporters (Boston, Mass., 1882), 350Google Scholar; Holdsworth, , History of English Law, 11:306Google Scholar; Winfleld, P. H., The Chief Sources of English Legal History (Cambridge, Mass., 1925), 331CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dictionary of National Biography (hereafter DNB), 15:1127. In 1770, a barrister of this name appeared three times in the equity side of the Exchequer, and once in the Exchequer of Pleas, but this might have been John Pickering, called at Lincoln's Inn in 1766.

74. Sullivan, F. S., An Historical Treatise on the Feudal Law, and the Constitution and Laws of England; with a Commentary on Magna Charta, and neccessary illustrations of many of the English Statutes, in a Course of Lectures, read in the University of Dublin (Dublin, 1772)Google Scholar. Sullivan's editor said of the work: “in no other performance has he seen so just, so easy, and so comprehensive a view of the origin and progress of the English constitution and laws. At the same time that this work is sufficiently systematical, even for lawyers, the order of history, by which he has been principally guided, makes it peculiarly adapted to the use of gentlemen and scholars.” For Sullivan, see DNB, 12:162.

75. Browne's General Law List for the Year 1798 (London, 1798), 37Google Scholar.

76. DNB, 14:542.

77. The Records of the Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn: the Black Books, ed. Baildon, W. P. et al. (London, 1897-1977), 4:66–68.Google Scholar

78. Nolan, , Syllabus of a Course of Lectures (London, 1796), iii-viii, 1–84Google Scholar.

79. Lincoln's Inn Black Books, 4:77. Cf. Mackintosh, J., A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations; Introductory to a Course of Lectures on that Science, Commenced in Lincoln's Inn Hall, on Wednesday, Feb. 13, 1799 (Dublin, 1799), 4Google Scholar.

80. BL, Add. MSS 52,451 (Mackintosh papers, xvi, part B), ff. 28-29: Mackintosh to Burke, 10 Dec. 1796. Cf. Discourse, 38-39, where he speaks of Burke with “profound veneration.”

81. Thorne, R. G., The House of Commons, 1790-1820 (London, 1986), 4:498–99Google Scholar; DNB, 12:616-21.

82. Lincoln's Inn Black Books, 4:71.

83. Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations, 4-52.

84. BL, Add. MSS 52,451, ff. 34-35v: fragment, Mackintosh to George Moore, endorsed 25 Apr. 1799.

85. See Discourse, esp. 25: “Writers on particular questions of public law are not within the scope of my observations.… I speak only of a system.”

86. Lemmings, Gentlemen and Barristers, 31-42, 63-70, 236-37.

87. Treatise on the Study of the Law, iv. See also Bridgeman, R. W., Reflections on the Study of the Law (London, 1804), 7–8Google Scholar: “the ancient seminaries of juridical learning established in London are almost forgotten, and it is indeed lamentable to observe, that they are not known to common observers as places set apart for profound study and patriotic erudition.”

88. Ruggles, T., The Barrister: or, Strictures on the Education Proper for the Bar, 2d ed. (London, 1818 [first published 1791]), 36Google Scholar; Raithby, , The Study and Practice of the Law Considered (London, 1798), 316Google Scholar. Raithby was called at Lincoln's Inn in 1800; he subsequently became a commissioner of bankrupts and helped to edit the Statutes at Large (DNB, 16:629).

89. Advice to a Certain Lord High Chancellor, 16.

90. Sandon Hall, Harrowby MSS, Ryder diary, 1715-16; Diary of Dudley Ryder, 9-12.

91. See the accounts of William Wynne, detailing expenditure on his chamber in the Middle Temple, 1715-18 (BL, Add. MSS 41,483). Lemmings, Gentlemen and Barristers, 52-57.

92. Northumberland County Record Office, Newcastle, Ridley (Blagdon) MSS, ZR1 32/1/1-3: Ridley's diaries for 1772-74.

93. Ibid.; see also Sandon Hall, Harrowby MSS, Ryder diary, 1715-16; Diary of Dudley Ryder; BL, Add. MSS 41,843, ff. 49-53: accounts of William Wynne at the Middle Temple, 1715-18.

94. Cumbria County Record Office, Carlisle, Hudleston papers D/Hud/10/2/1: letters and papers concerning Andrew Hudleston junior's residence in London as a law student, 1751-56 (especially A. H. sen. to A. H. jun., 22 Nov. 1756).

95. Ibid., D/Hud/10/2/2 (especially letters of A. H. sen., 21 Feb., 9 Mar., and 11 Dec. 1770).

96. Lemmings, Gentlemen and Barristers, 95-98.

97. Cumbria County Record Office, D/Hud/10/2/1: Hudleston to Baynes, 5 Mar. 1751.

98. Cumbria County Record Office, Hudleston papers, D/Hud/10/2/1, including agreement between Andrew Hudleston sen. and Richard Baynes of Gray's Inn gen., for taking Andrew Hudleston jun. into his chambers for three years, at premium of £63 (18 May 1751).

99. Yorke, P. C., The Life and Correspondence of Philip Yorke Earl of Hardwicke (Cambridge, 1913), 1:53–55Google Scholar. Hardwicke was lord chief justice of King's Bench, 1733-37, and lord chancellor, 1737-56;-Parker was lord chief baron of the Exchequer, 1742-72; and Strange was master of the rolls, 1750-54.

100. Yale, Beinecke Library, Eardley-Wilmot MSS, box A-Ea: part copy “Extract from a Letter of Wilmot to a young Man of 18 on the Study of the Law, he being Clerk to a Solicitor—18 Apr. 97.”

101. Commentaries, 1:32.

102. NLW MS 9070E/59: Nathaniel Cole to Samuel Buckley, 14 Aug. 1736.

103. For elite snobbery about the “servile” regime of an attorney's clerk, see Lemmings, Gentlemen and Barristers, 98. Cf. Barry, J., “Bourgeois Collectivism? Urban Association and the Middling Sort,” in The Middling Sort of People: Culture, Society and Politics in England, 1550-1800, ed. Barry, J. and Brooks, C. (Basingstoke, 1994), 96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

104. NLW MS 9070E/59: Cole to Buckley, 1736; Holdsworth, History of English Law, 6:445-46.

105. Lives of Eminent English Judges of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, ed. Welsby, W. N. (London, 1846), 443Google Scholar. Other celebrated judges who were pupils of special pleaders included Sir Joseph Yates, Sir Vicary Gibbs, and Lord Ellenborough. See Townshend, W. C., The Lives of Twelve Eminent Judges of the Last and Present Century (London, 1846), 1:3, 241, 306Google Scholar; Ruggles, The Barrister, 15-16.

106. Treatise on the Study of the Law, 59. John Dunning (in a letter dated 1779) also advised, “It is usual to acquire some insight into real business, under an eminent special pleader, previous to actual practice at the bar; this idea I beg leave strongly to second; and, indeed, I have known but a few great men who have not possessed this advantage” (ibid., 58-60).

107. Townshend, Lives of Twelve Eminent Judges, 1:241; Advice to a Certain Lord High Chancellor, 22.

108. Erskine was a pupil of Buller and of George Wood, later a baron of the Exchequer (Townshend, Lives of Twelve Eminent Judges, 1:404). Hardwicke wrote of his early legal study under Salkeld: “its notions are so bulky & ill shapen that when they once enter the Brain they jostle out every thing else” (BL, Add. MSS 35,584, f. 160).

109. Life of John, Lord Campbell, Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, ed. Hardcastle, M. S. (London, 1881), 1:148Google Scholar.

110. [Edward Wynne], Eunomus, 2:40-41.

111. Treatise on the Study of the Law, 58 note *; Commentaries, 1:3.

112. Phillips, W., Studii Legalis Ratio or Directions for the Study of the Law, 3d ed. (London, 1675), 97Google Scholar.

113. Campbell, London Tradesman, 75.

114. See “Lord Chief Justice Reeve's Instructions to his Nephew Concerning the Study of the Law,” in Collectanea Juridica, ed. Hargrave, F. (London, 1791-1792), 1:79–81Google Scholar. Reeve was lord chief justice of Common Pleas, 1736-37; a manuscript copy is at the National Library of Wales (NLW MS 9070E/62). See also NLW MS 9070E/59: Nathaniel Cole to Samuel Buckley, 14 Aug. 1736; and Yale, Beinecke Library, Eardley-Wilmot MSS, box AEa: part copy, Eardley-Wilmot to a law student, 18 Apr. 1797. A Treatise on the Study of the Law includes advice on preparatory and legal reading supposedly written by Mansfield (1-53), Dunning (55-65), and Thurlow (67-70), together with material taken from other publications. The principal published prescriptions for legal reading that I have used are: [Hale, M.] preface to Rolle, H., Un Abridgement des Plusieurs Cases et Resolutions del Common Ley (London, 1668)Google Scholar; North, A Discourse on the Study of the Laws; Wood, T., Some Thoughts Concerning the Study of the Laws of England, 2d ed. (London, 1727)Google Scholar; Jacob, G., The Student's Companion: or, the Reason of the Laws of England, 2d ed. (London, 1734)Google Scholar; Simpson, J., Reflections on the Natural and Acquired Endowments Requisite for the Study of the Law, and the Means to be Used in the Pursuit of it, 4th ed. (London, 1765)Google Scholar. Bridgeman, Reflections on the Study of the Law, plagiarizes Simpson.

115. “Instructions,” in Collectanea Juridica, 1:81.

116. For details of editions, etc., see Winfield, P. H., The Chief Sources of English Legal History (Cambridge, Mass., 1925)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Holdsworth, , History of English Law, vols. 5, 12Google Scholar.

117. NLW MS 9070E/59: Cole, 14 Aug. 1736.

118. Blackstone, W., An Analysis of the Laws of England, 3d ed. (Oxford, 1758), viGoogle Scholar.

119. Jacob, Student's Companion (1734), iv.

120. Winfield, The Chief Sources of English Legal History, 311 (actually commenting on legal literature before Littleton).

121. Simpson, Reflections, vi.

122. Sandon Hall, Staffordshire, Harrowby MSS, Ryder Diary, 1715-16, 2 (8 June 1715). See also Diary of Dudley Ryder, 30: “I am much concerned about the studying of the law. I don't seem to gain that knowledge and insight into it that might be expected from my time at it” (7 June 1715).

123. Simpson, Reflections, v-vi.

124. Annual Register 1767, 4th ed., second pagination (London, 1786), 287Google Scholar.

125. A Treatise on the Study of the Law, 61, 69.

126. Yale, Beinecke Library, Eardley-Wilmot MSS, box A-Ea: J. Eardley-Wilmot, 18 Apr. 1797.

127. Ruggles, The Barrister, 9.

128. Bentham, J., A Fragment on Government, ed. Burns, J. H. and Hart, H. L. A. (Cambridge, 1988), 23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

129. For a full account, see A. W. B. Simpson, “The Rise and Fall of the Legal Treatise,” in idem, Legal Theory and Legal History (London, 1987), 273-320. See also Milsom, S. F. C., “The Nature of Blackstone's Achievement,” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 1 (1981): 1–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Simpson seems to go too far, however, when he argues that post-Blackstonian treatises followed the method of the Commentaries. Where Blackstone explained common law by reference to natural law and customary rights in English society, most subsequent treatise writers were “scientific” in a more limited sense, in so far as they inferred principles from cases, in an empirical way. Their rational arrangements were certainly an improvement on what had existed previously, but their logic was essentially internal to the profession, in a way that Blackstone's was not. See below, and also Lobban, Common Law and English Jurisprudence, 44-45, 56-67.

130. Sullivan had been Royal professor of the common law in the University of Dublin. Although his lectures departed from Blackstone's model, he nevertheless self-consciously acknowledged the Vinerian professor's example as the inspiration for his own work (Historical Treatise, 10, 13-14).

131. Bayley, , Treatise on the Law of Bills of Exchange (London, 1789), iiiGoogle Scholar. Note also Kyd's, StewartTreatise on the Law of Bills of Exchange and Promissory Notes (Dublin, 1791)Google Scholar, preface: “a composition, which, without disgusting the professional reader, may be easily comprehended by men of business, and serve as an elementary treatise to the student… [with] under each division, an historical deduction of the opinions which have been held on the point immediately under discussion, and concluded with the law as settled by the latest decisions”; and Charles Abbot's Treatise of the Law Relative to Merchant Ships and Seamen, 14th ed. (1901 [1st ed. 1802]), xi: “In the composition of this Treatise, my object has been rather to arrange and illustrate principles, than to collect the decisions of Courts or the Acts of the Legislature.”

132. Powell, J. J., An Essay on the Law of Contracts and Agreements (London, 1790), i, iv–viGoogle Scholar. Cf. Simpson, “The Rise and Fall of the Legal Treatise,” 303; and Lobban, Common Law and English Jurisprudence, 44-45. For Powell, see DNB, 16:245, and his Treatise on the Law of Mortgages (London, 1785)Google Scholar; Essay on the Learning respecting the Creation and Execution of Powers (London, 1787)Google Scholar; Essay upon the Learning of Devises (London, 1788).Google Scholar See also Milsom, “The Nature of Blackstone's Achievement,” 9-12, who discusses some other late eighteenth-century “scientific” legal treatises, beginning with Charles Fearne's Essay on the Learning of Contingent Remainders and Executory Devises (1772). Fearne, a conveyancer, was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1774. See DNB, 6:1138-39.

133. A Treatise on the Study of the Law, 56.

134. North, Discourse, 32.

135. Harrowby MSS, Ryder Diary, 171 (28 Jan. 1716).

136. NLW MS 9070E/59: Cole, 14 Aug. 1736. For example, Nicholas Ridley seems to have attended regularly during term-time in the first half of 1772 and 1773. In 1772 he was there on 29 and 31 Jan., 3, 4, 7, 11 Feb., 7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 18,21, 22, 26 May, and 22 June (normally between about 11 A.M. and 1 or 2 P.M.). After being laid low by venereal disease in Hilary term 1773, he visited Westminster Hall on 3, 7, 11, 17, 18, 21, 24 May, and 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22 June. He was called to the baron 25 June and made his first motion in court on the 28th. (See Northumberland CRO, MS ZR1 32/1/1-2: diary for 1772-73.)

137. North, Discourse, 30-31.

138. For “everyday life” at Westminster and on circuit, see Lemmings, Professors of the Law, chap. 2. There is evidence of at least one London moot club maintained by some junior attorneys during the 1730s (Horwitz, H. and Bonfield, L., “The ‘Lower Branches’ of the Legal Profession: A London Society of Attorneys and Solicitors of the 1730s and Its ‘Moots,’” Cambridge Law Journal 49 [1990]: 461–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

139. Diary of Dudley Ryder, 363-64; Harrowby MSS, Ryder Diary, 435 and passim.

140. NLW MS 9070E/59: Cole, 14 Aug. 1736.

141. The Templar, May 1788, 164. More research into “professional” clubs of this kind is needed. Most of the literature on the development of metropolitan and other urban clubs and societies during the eighteenth century concentrates on the formation of middle-class public opinion and popular participation in politics. The lawyers’ clubs identified to date were mostly select groups organized for professional self-improvement and self-promotion, not collective expression, and they had no directly political purpose. Their spirit of polite but individualistic enterprise hardly supports the theory of “bourgeois collectivism” articulated recently by Jonathan Barry; and I am doubtful whether they represent the development of a bourgeois “public sphere” along the lines sketched by Habermas. See Money, J., “Taverns, Coffee Houses and Clubs: Local Politics and Popular Articulacy in the Birmingham Area, in the Age of the American Revolution,” Historical Journal 14 (1971): 15–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thale, M., “London Debating Societies in the 1790s,” Historical Journal 32 (1989): 57–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Morris, R. J., “Clubs, Societies and Associations,” in The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750-1950, ed. Thompson, F. M. L. (Cambridge, 1990), 3:395–443CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barry, “Bourgeois Collectivism?”; Habermas, J., The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. Burger, T. (Cambridge, 1992)Google Scholar. Cf. Harrowby MSS, Ryder Diary 1715-16, e.g., 133, 146, 219: 23 Nov. and 14 Dec. 1715,28 Mar. 1716.

142. [Rayner, J.], The History and Antiquities of the Four Inns of Court (London, 1780), vii–viiiGoogle Scholar. More positively, an admirer of Erskine as an example to the bar wrote: “Anew star has appeared in our legal hemisphere.… [He] has the natural gifts of quick parts, a brilliant imagination, and rapid elocution… his eloquence derives that dazzling lustre with which it is irradiated, from the aquirement of logical and rhetorical support and ornament” (Deinology: or the Union of Reason and Elegance: being Instructions to a Young Barrister [London, 1789], v–viGoogle Scholar).

143. Serjeant George Hill (called Middle Temple 1741, Serjeant 1772, d. 1808) was renowned both for his extensive knowledge of case law, which sometimes overwhelmed and confused him at the bar, and his careless dress (DNB, 9:844-45; Oldham, J., The Mansfield Manuscripts and the Growth of English Law in the Eighteenth Century [Chapel Hill, N.C., 1992], 1:80–82)Google Scholar. Kenyon (called Middle Temple 1756, chief justice of King's Bench 1788-1802, d. 1802) likewise acquired a reputation for parsimony and narrow legal learning (Foss, E., The Judges of England [London, 1848-1869], 8:313–15Google Scholar; Townshend, , Lives of Twelve Eminent Judges, 1:123Google Scholar; Kenyon, G. T., The Life of Lloyd, First Lord Kenyon [London, 1873], esp. 16, 20-21, 87, 136-37Google Scholar).

144. The mean age at call among the 1719-21 sample was 26.4 years, and that of the 1769-71 was 25.1 years.

145. [Rayner], History and Antiquities of the Four Inns of Court, vii. See also his An Inquiry into the Doctrine lately Propagated, Concerning Attachments of Contempt, the Alteration of Records, and the Court of Star Chamber (London, 1769)Google Scholar; and Readings on Statutes, chiefly those affecting the Administration of Public Justice in Criminal and Civil Cases, passed in the reign of… King George the Second (London, 1775)Google Scholar. In 1699 Evelyn, John complained of the “swarms and legions of obstreperous no-lawyers; as yearly emerge out of our London seminaries” (Letters to and from William Nicholson, 1:142)Google Scholar.

146. See Gordon, M. D., “The Vinerian Chair: an Atlantic Perspective,” in The Life of the Law, ed. Birks, P. (London, 1993), 194–209Google Scholar. Cf. Cairns, J. W., “Blackstone, an English Institutist: Legal Literature and the Rise of the Nation State,” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 4 (1984): 318–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Although Caims's European contextualization of Blackstone's lectures is welcome, it is difficult to accept his suggestion that they are to be interpreted principally as part of a general movement for “nationalisation” of legal systems via common law competition with civilian jurisdictions and Roman law. Blackstone certainly trumpeted the common law as a national badge of English liberties, but the achievement of its practical supremacy over rivals was mainly a seventeenth-century story, and the Civil Law was hardly a threat in England after 1700.

147. Only four of the forty-eight judges appointed from 1714 to 1760 had been called to the bar at Gray's Inn (Sir Thomas Bury, lord chief baron of Exchequer 1716-22, Sir Robert Raymond, lord chief justice of King's Bench 1725-33, Sir Thomas Clarke, master of the rolls 1754-64, and Sir Bernard Hale, baron of Exchequer 1725-29).

148. It has been suggested that Blackstone was more of an academic than a common lawyer (Simpson, “Rise and Fall of the Legal Treatise,” 296). But although he was a very active fellow of All Souls, and an academic Romanist, he attended the courts at Westminster until 1753, and when he retired to Oxford in 1753 he declared his intention “to pursue my profession” there (DNB, 2:595-602; Namier and Brooke, House of Commons, 1754-1790, 2:96; J. Clitherow memoir, in Reports, 1:x). There is a break in his reports of King's Bench between the end of Michaelmas 1750 and the beginning of Michaelmas 1756, initially occasioned by preparation of his lectures and “want of Leisure to revise such rough Notes as he might have taken” (ibid., xxix).

149. Commentaries, 1:31-33.

150. BL, Add. MSS 34,881 (Gibbon papers, vol. viii), ff. 216v, 217v (from Gibbon's abstract of the Commentaries). Gibbon certainly suspected Blackstone's defense of the “Old Common Law,” given its tendency to “obscurity, prolixity and an uncertainty which will at last render the priests of Themis the sole interpreters of her oracles,” and compared him with “the Clergy of all religions [who] have as constantly preferred the traditional to the written law; and perhaps from the same motives.” Half a century earlier, John Evelyn had written in a less restrained way of barristers as “those who, attracted by more sordid considerations, submitted to a fatigue that filled indeed their purses for the noise they made at Westminster, while their heads were empty even of that to which they seemed to devote themselves” (Letters to and from William Nicholson, 1:140).

151. Warwicks CRO, Newdigate MSS, CR136/B1488, Blackstone [to Sir Roger Newdigate], Middle Temple, 3 Jul. 1753. See ibid., B1482, B2988, for comments on practicing at the bar (“a Profession, the most liable of any to Temptations”), and a barrister who was an MP (“as good a sort of Man as you must expect to find in a Whig & a Lawyer”).

152. See Holdsworth, History of English Law, 12:739.

153. Campbell, London Tradesman, 74. Given his deep interest in and commitment to the law as a utilitarian science, it is difficult to accept the argument of Paul Lucas that Blackstone was concerned primarily to raise the social quality of barristers rather than reform legal education (Lucas, “Blackstone and the Reform of the Legal Profession,” esp. 461). This may spring from an overly literal reading of his flattering rhetorical address to the “gentlemen” of Oxford. Close attention to phrases in his introductory lecture such as “gentlemen of all stations and degrees” and “gentlemen of distinction or learning” suggests that Blackstone's ideal gentleman was highly educated, rather than high-born, which was appropriate for the son of a Cheapside tradesman who became a fellow of All Souls and a judge. (See Commentaries, 1:1-37; cf. Ruggles, The Barrister, 34-35.) It is also significant that the Vinerian lectures were held in the law vacations, “when few young gentlemen of fortune stay in the universities,” a timetabling policy that allowed serious law students to attend Westminster Hall (Sullivan, Historical Treatise, 14).

154. Commentaries, 1:30.

155. Ibid., 33.

156. For admissions, see Lemmings, Gentlemen and Barristers, 10. The number of men called to the bar rose from a mean of 24.2 in the decade 1760-69 to 42.4 during 1790-99.

157. After 1800 there was a broad increase in cases across King's Bench, Common Pleas, and the Exchequer, which seems to have begun around 1790 (Brooks, “Interpersonal Conflict,” 364).

158. “A card with Lincoln's Inn upon it is as genteel for a young man as Grosvenor Square” (Hardcastle, M. S., Life of John, Lord Campbell [London, 1881], 1:83Google Scholar: Campbell to his father, 25 Jan. 1801).

159. Twiss, H., The Public and Private Life of Lord Chancellor Eldon (London, 1844) 2:51–52Google Scholar.

160. See Lobban, Common Law and English Jurisprudence, chap. 3.

161. The reference is to the ideas and influence of Sir Edward Coke. For an accessible account, see Cromartie, A., Sir Matthew Hale, 1609-1676: Law, Religion and Natural Philosophy (Cambridge, 1995), chap. 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

162. For the bar's resistance to reform in the face of the virulent press campaign waged during the nineteenth century, see Sunderland, E. R., “The English Struggle for Procedural Reform,” Harvard Law Review 39 (1925-1926): 725–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Unfortunately, Sunderland also accepted the stereotypical view of Blackstone as an archconservative.

163. Parliamentary History, 14:20.

164. For an account of the larger social, economic, and political changes that seem to have undermined the importance of “the common law world” and the common law tradition of popular participation in lawful governance, see Lemmings, D., “Law: Popular Participation to Legislative Control,” in The Age of Romanticism and Revolution: An Oxford Companion to British Culture, ed. McCalman, I. (Oxford, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

165. Parliamentary History, 16:170-71 (Lords'debate, 24 Feb. 1766). For the growth of parliamentary absolutism in the eighteenth century, see Dickinson, H. T., “The Eighteenth-Century Debate on the Sovereignty of Parliament,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. 5th sen, 26 (1976): 189–210CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Koenigsberger, H. G., “Composite States, Representative Institutions and the American Revolution,” Historical Research 62 (1989): 149–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

166. For Parliament's contrasting accessibility and its growing consciousness of legislative sovereignty, see Langford, P., Public Life and the Propertied Englishman, 1689-1798 (Oxford, 1991), chap. 3Google Scholar.

167. Brooks, “Interpersonal Conflict,” 379-84; Horwitz, H. and Polden, P., “Continuity and Change in the Court of Chancery in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” Journal of British Studies 35 (1996): 24–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lemmings, Professors of the Law, chaps. 3, 5. For the social origins of litigation in Elizabethan and early Stuart times, see Brooks, C., Pettyfoggers and Vipers of the Commonwealth: The “Lower Branch” of the Legal Profession in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1986), 59–63, 92-93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Prest, Rise of the Barristers, 20-24.

168. Commentaries, 1:140.