evidence that throughout the
reigns of the Stuarts the inns swarmed with low-born adventurers. The
career of Chief Justice Saunders, who, beginning as a "poor beggar boy,"
of unknown parentage, raised himself to the Chiefship of the King's
Bench, shows how low an origin a judge might have in the seventeenth
century. To mention the names of such men as Parker, King, Yorke, Ryder,
and the Scotts, without placing beside them the names of such men as
Henley, Harcourt, Bathurst, Talbot, Murray, and Erskine, would tend to
create an erroneous impression that in the eighteenth century the bar
ceased to comprise amongst its industrious members a large aristocratic
element.

The number of barristers, however, who in that period brought themselves
by talent and honorable perseverance into the foremost rank of the legal
profession in spite of humble birth, unquestionably shows that ambitious
men from the obscure middle classes were more frequently than in any
previous century found pushing their fortunes in Westminster Hall. Lord
Macclesfield was the son of an attorney whose parents were of lowly
origin, and whose worldly means were even lower than their ancestral
condition. Lord Chancellor King's father was a grocer and salter who
carried on a retail business at Exeter; and in his youth the Chancellor
himself had acted as his father's apprentice--standing behind the
counter and wearing the apron and sleeves of a grocer's servitor. Philip
Yorke was the son of a country attorney who could boast neither wealth
nor gentle descent. Chief Justice Ryder was the son of a mercer whose
shop stood in West Smithfield, and grandson of a dissenting minister,
who, though he bore the name, is not known to have inherited the blood
of the Yorkshire Ryders. Sir William Blackstone was the fourth son of a
silkman and citizen of London. Lords Stowell and Eldon were the children
of a provincial tradesman. The learned and good Sir Samuel Romilly's
father was Peter Romilly, jeweller, of Frith Street, Soho. Such were the
origins of some of the men who won the prizes of the law in
comparatively recent times. The present century has produced an even
greater number of barristers who have achieved eminence, and are able to
say with honest pride that they are the _first_ gentlemen mentioned in
their pedigrees; and so thoroughly has the bar become an open
profession, accessible to all persons[26] who have the means of
gentlemen, that no barrister at the present