he schools, the scholars persevered in their study; and
if the king's mandate aimed at a complete discontinuance of legal
instruction, his policy was signally defeated.

Successive writers have credited Edward III.'s reign with the
establishment of Inns of Court; and it has been erroneously inferred
that the study of the Common Law not only languished, but was altogether
extinct during the period of nearly one hundred years that intervened
between Henry III.'s dissolution of the city schools and Edward III.'s
accession. Abundant evidence, however, exists that this was not the
case. Edward I., in the twentieth year of his reign, ordered his judges
of the Common Pleas to "provide and ordain, from every county, certain
attorneys and lawyers" (in the original "atturnatus et _apprenticiis_")
"of the best and most apt for their learning and skill, who might do
service to his court and people; and those so chosen, and no other
should follow his court, and transact affairs therein; the words of
which order make it clear that the country contained a considerable body
of persons who devoted themselves to the study and practice of the law."
So also in the Year-book, 1 Ed. III., the words, "et puis une apprentise
demand," show that lawyers holding legal degrees existed in the very
first year of Edward III.'s reign; a fact which justifies the inference
that in the previous reign England contained Common Law schools capable
of granting the legal degree of apprentice. Again Dugdale remarks, "In
20 Ed. III., in a _quod ei deforciat_ to an exception taken, it was
answered by Sir Richard de Willoughby (then a learned justice of the
_Common Pleas_) and William Skipwith, (afterwards also one of the
justices of that court), that the same was no exception amongst the
_Apprentices in Hostells or Inns_." Whence it is manifest that Inns of
Court were institutions in full vigor at the time when they have been
sometimes represented as originally established.

But after their expulsion from the city, there is reason to think that
the common lawyers made no attempt to reside in colleges within its
boundaries. They preferred to establish themselves on spots where they
could enjoy pure air and rural quietude, could surround themselves with
trees and lawns, or refresh their eyes with the sight of the silver
Thames. In the earliest part of the fourteenth century, they took
possession of a great palace that stood on the western outskirt of the
town, an