PUPILS IN CHAMBERS.

But the most important part of an industrious law-student's labors in olden time, was the work of watching the practice of Westminster Hall. In the seventeenth century, the constant succession of political trials made the King's Bench Court especially attractive to students who were more eager for gossip than advancement of learning; but it was always held that the student, who was desirous to learn the law rather than to catch exciting news or hear exciting speeches, ought to frequent the Common Pleas, in which court the common law was said to be at home. At the Common Pleas, a student might find a seat vacant in the students' benches so late as ten o'clock; but it was not unusual for every place devoted to the accommodation of students in the Court of King's Bench, to be occupied by six o'clock, A.M. By dawn, and even before the sun had begun to break, students bent on getting good seats at the hearing of an important cause would assemble, and patiently wait in court till the judges made their appearance.

One prominent feature in the advocate's education must always be elocutionary practice. "Talk; if you can, to the point, but anyhow talk," has been the motto of Advocacy from time immemorial. Heneage Finch, who, like every member of his silver-tongued family, was an authority on matters pertaining to eloquence, is said to have advised a young student "to study all the morning and talk all the afternoon." Sergeant Maynard used to express his opinion of the importance of eloquence to a lawyer by calling law the "ars bablativa." Roger North observes—"He whose trade is speaking must not, whatever comes out, fail to speak, for that is a fault in the main much worse than impertinence." And at a recent address to the students of the London University, Lord Brougham urged those of his auditors, who intended to adopt the profession of the bar, to habituate themselves to talk about everything.

In past times law-students were proverbial for their talkativeness; and though the present writer has never seen any records of a Carolinian law-debating society, it is matter of certainty that in the seventeenth century the young students and barristers formed themselves into coteries, or clubs, for the practice of elocution and for legal discussions. The continual debates on 'mootable days,' and the incessant wranglings of the Temple cloisters, encouraged them to pay especial attention to such exercises. In Charles II.'s reign Pool's company, was a coterie of students and young barristers, who used to meet periodically for congenial conversation and debate. "There is seldom a time," says Roger North, speaking of this coterie, "but in every Inn of Court there is a studious, sober company that are select to each other, and keep company at meals and refreshments. Such a company did Mr. Pool find out, whereof Sergeant Wild was one, and every one of them proved eminent, and most of them are now preferred in the law; and Mr. Pool, at the latter end of his life, took such a pride in his company that he affected to furnish his chambers with their pictures." Amongst the benefits to be derived from such a club as that of which Mr. Pool was president, Roger North mentions "Aptness to speak;" adding: "for a man may be possessed of a book-case, and think he has it ad unguem throughout, and when he offers at it shall find himself at a loss, and his words will not be right and proper, or perhaps too many, and his expressions confused: when he has once talked his case over, and, his company have tossed it a little to and fro, then he shall utter it more readily, with fewer words and much more force."

These words make it clear that Mr. Pool's 'company' was a select 'law-debating society.' Far smaller as to number of members, something more festive in its arrangements, but not less bent on furthering the professional progress of its members, it was, some two hundred years since, all that the 'Hardwicke' and other similar associations are at the present.[29]

To such fraternities—of which the Inns of Court had several in the last century—Murray and Thurlow, Law and Erskine had recourse: and besides attending strictly professional clubs, it was usual for the students, of their respective times, to practise elocution at the coffee-houses and public spouting-rooms of the town. Murray used to argue as well as 'drink champagne' with the wits; Thurlow was the irrepressible talker of Nando's; Erskine used to carry his scarlet uniform from Lincoln's Inn Hall, to the smoke-laden atmosphere of Coachmakers' Hall, at which memorable 'discussion forum' Edward Law is known to have spoken in the presence of a closely packed assembly of politicians, idlers upon town, shop-men, and drunkards. Thither also Horne Tooke and Dunning used to adjourn after dining with Taffy Kenyon at the Chancery Lane eating-house, where the three friends were wont to stay their hunger for sevenpence halfpenny each. "Dunning and myself," Horne Tooke said boastfully, when he recalled these economical repasts, "were generous, for we gave the girl who waited on us a penny apiece; but Kenyon, who always knew the value of money, rewarded her with a halfpenny, and sometimes with a promise."

Notwithstanding the recent revival of lectures and the institution of examinations, the actual course of the law-student has changed little since the author of the 'Pleader's Guide,' in 1706, described the career of John Surrebutter, Esq., Special Pleader and Barrister-at-Law. The labors of 'pupils in chambers, are thus noticed by Mr. Surrebutter:—

"And, better to improve your taste,
Are by your parents' fondness plac'd
Amongst the blest, the chosen few
(Blest, if their happiness they knew),
Who for three hundred guineas paid
To some great master of the trade,
Have at his rooms by special favor
His leave to use their best endeavor,
By drawing pleas from nine till four,
To earn him twice three hundred more;
And after dinner may repair
To 'foresaid rooms, and then and there
Have 'foresaid leave from five till ten,
To draw th' aforesaid pleas again."

Continuing to describe his professional career, Mr. Surrebutter mentions certain facts which show that so late as the close of last century professional etiquette did not forbid special pleaders and barristers to curry favor with solicitors and solicitors' clerks by attentions which would now-a-days be deemed reprehensible. He says:—

"Whoe'er has drawn a special plea
Has heard of old Tom Tewkesbury,
Deaf as a post, and thick as mustard,
He aim'd at wit, and bawl'd and bluster'd
And died a Nisi Prius leader—
That genius was my special pleader—
That great man's office I attended,
By Hawk and Buzzard recommended
Attorneys both of wondrous skill,
To pluck the goose and drive the quill.
Three years I sat his smoky room in,
Pens, paper, ink, and pounce consuming;
The fourth, when Epsom Day begun,
Joyful I hailed th' auspicious sun,
Bade Tewkesbury and Clerk adieu;
(Purification, eighty-two)
Of both I wash'd my hands; and though
With nothing for my cash to show,
But precedents so scrawl'd and blurr'd,
I scarce could read a single word,
Nor in my books of common-place
One feature, of the law could trace,
Save Buzzard's nose and visage thin,
And Hawk's deficiency of chin,
Which I while lolling at my ease
Was wont to draw instead of pleas.
My chambers I equipt complete,
Made friends, hired books, and gave to eat;
If haply to regale my friends on,
My mother sent a haunch of ven'son,
I most respectfully entreated
The choicest company to eat it;
To wit, old Buzzard, Hawk, and Crow;
Item, Tom Thornback, Shark, and Co.
Attorneys all as keen and staunch
As e'er devoured a client's haunch.
And did I not their clerks invite
To taste said ven'son hash'd at night?
For well I knew that hopeful fry
My rising merit would descry,
The same litigious course pursue,
And when to fish of prey they grew,
By love of food and contest led,
Would haunt the spot where once they fed.
Thus having with due circumspection
Formed my professional connexion,
My desks with precedents I strew'd,
Turned critic, danc'd, or penn'd an ode,
Suited the ton, became a free
And easy man of gallantry;
But if while capering at my glass,
Or toying with a favorite lass,
I heard the aforesaid Hawk a-coming,
Or Buzzard on the staircase humming,
At once the fair angelic maid
Into my coal-hole I convey'd;
At once with serious look profound,
Mine eyes commencing with the ground,
I seem'd like one estranged to sleep,
'And fixed in cogitation deep,'
Sat motionless, and in my hand I
Held my 'Doctrina Placitandi,'
And though I never read a page in't,
Thanks to that shrewd, well-judging agent,
My sister's husband, Mr. Shark,
Soon got six pupils and a clerk.
Five pupils were my stint, the other
I took to compliment his mother."

Having fleeced pupils, and worked as a special pleader for a time, Mr. Surrebutter is called to the bar; after which ceremony his action towards 'the inferior branch' of the profession is not more dignified than it was whilst he practised as a Special Pleader.

It appears that in Mr. Surrebutter's time (circa 1780) it was usual for a student to spend three whole years in the same pleader's chambers, paying three hundred guineas for the course of study. Not many years passed before students saw it was not to their advantage to spend so long a period with the same instructor, and by the end of the century the industrious student who could command the fees wherewith to pay for such special tuition, usually spent a year or two in a pleader's chambers, and another year or two in the chambers of an equity draughtsman, or conveyancer. Lord Campbell, at the opening of the present century, spent three years in the chambers of the eminent Special Pleader, Mr. Tidd, of whose learning and generosity the biographer of the Chancellors makes cordial and grateful acknowledgment. Finding that Campbell could not afford to pay a second hundred guineas for a second year's instruction, Tidd not only offered him the run of his chambers without payment, but made the young Scotchman take back the £105 which he had paid for the first twelve months.

In his later years Lord Campbell delighted to trace his legal pedigree to the great pleader and 'pupillizer' of the last century, Tom Warren. The chart ran thus: "Tom Warren had for pupil Sergeant Runnington, who instructed in the mysteries of special pleading the learned Tidd, who was the teacher of John Campbell." With honest pride and pleasant vanity the literary Chancellor maintained that he had given the genealogical tree another generation of forensic honor, as Solicitor General Dundas and Vaughan Williams, of the Common Pleas Bench, were his pupils.

Though Campbell speaks of Tom Warren as "the greater founder of the special pleading race," and maintains that "the voluntary discipline of the special pleader's office" was unknown before the middle of the last century, it is certain that the voluntary discipline of a legal instructor's office or chambers was an affair of frequent occurrence long before Warren's rise. Roger North, in his 'Discourse on the Study of the Laws,' makes no allusion to any such voluntary discipline as an ordinary feature of a law-student's career; but in his 'Life of Lord Keeper Guildford' he expressly informs us that he was a pupil in his brother's chambers. "His lordship," writes the biographer, "having taken that advanced post, and designing to benefit a relation (the Honorable Roger North), who was a student in the law, and kept him company, caused his clerk to put into his hands all his draughts, such as he himself had corrected, and after which conveyances had been engrossed, that, by a perusal of them, he might get some light into the formal skill of conveyancing. And that young gentleman instantly went to work, and first numbered the draughts, and then made an index of all the clauses, referring to that number and folio; so that, in this strict perusal and digestion of the various matters, he acquired, not only a formal style, but also apt precedents, and a competent notion of instruments of all kinds. And to this great condescension was owing that little progress he made, which afterwards served to prepare some matters for his lordship's own perusal and settlement." Here then is a case of a pupil in a barrister's chambers in Charles II.'s reign; and it is a case that suffers nothing from the fact that the teacher took no fee.

In like manner, John Trevor (subsequently Master of the Rolls and Speaker of the Commons) about the same time was "bred a sort of clerk in old Arthur Trevor's chamber, an eminent and worthy professor of the law in the Inner Temple." On being asked what might be the name of the boy with such a hideous squint who sate at a clerk's desk in the outer room, Arthur Trevor answered, "A kinsman of mine that I have allowed to sit here, to learn the knavish part of the law." It must be observed that John Trevor was not a clerk, but merely a "sort of a clerk" in his kinsman's chamber.

In the latter half of the seventeenth century, and in the earlier half of the eighteenth century, students who wished to learn the practice of the law usually entered the offices of attorneys in large practice. At that period, the division between the two branches of the profession was much less wide than it subsequently became; and no rule or maxim of professional etiquette forbade Inns-of-Court men to act as the subordinates of attorneys and solicitors. Thus Philip Yorke (Lord Hardwicke) in Queen Anne's reign acted as clerk in the office of Mr. Salkeld, an attorney residing in Brook Street, Holborn, whilst he kept his terms at the Temple; and nearly fifty years later, Ned Thurlow (Lord Thurlow), on leaving Cambridge, and taking up his residence in the Temple, became a pupil in the office of Mr. Chapman, a solicitor, whose place of business was in Lincoln's Inn. There is no doubt that it was customary for young men destined the bar thus to work in attorneys' offices; and they continued to do so without any sense of humiliation or thought of condescension, until the special pleaders superseded the attorneys as instructors.