a seruant to waite uppon him, as most of them haue, then so
much the greater will his charges bee." Hence it appears that during the
most patrician period of the law university, when wealthy persons were
accustomed to maintain ostentatious retinues of servants, a law-student
often had no private personal attendant. An ordinance shows that in
Elizabethan London the Inns-of-Court men were waited upon by laundresses
or bedmakers who served and took wages from several masters at the same
time. It would be interesting to ascertain the exact time when the
"laundress" was first introduced into the Temple. She certainly
flourished in the days of Queen Bess; and Roger North's piquant
description of his brother's laundress is applicable to many of her
successors who are looking after their perquisites at the present date.
"The housekeeper," says Roger, "had been formerly his lordship's
laundress at the Temple, and knew well her master's brother so early as
when he was at the writing-school. She _was a phthisical old woman, and
could scarce crawl upstairs once a day_." This general employment of
servants who were common to several masters would alone prove that the
Inns-of-Court men in the seventeenth century felt it convenient to
husband their resources, and exercise economy. Throughout that century
sixty pounds was deemed a sufficient income for a Temple student; and
though it was a scant allowance, some young fellows managed to push on
with a still more modest revenue. Simonds D'Ewes had L60 per annum
during his student course, and L100 a year on becoming an
utter-barrister. "It pleased God also in mercy," he writes, "after this
to ease me of that continual want or short stipend I had for about five
years last past groaned under; for my father, immediately on my call to
the bar, enlarged my former allowance with forty pounds more annually;
so as, after this plentiful annuity of one hundred pounds was duly and
quarterly paid me by him, I found myself easyd of so many cares and
discontents as I may well account that the 27th day of June foregoing
the first day of my outward happiness since the decease of my dearest
mother." All things considered, a bachelor in James I.'s London with a
clear income of L100 per annum was on the whole as well off for his time
as a young barrister of the present day would be with an annual
allowance of L250 or L300. Francis North, when a student, was allowed
only L60 per annum; and as soon as he was c