ghan 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