of property, received an
annual stipend, _pro connlio impenso et impendendo_, and
were treated as retainers. In Madox's Form. Anglican, there
is a form of a retainer during his life, of John de Thorp,
as counsel to the Earl of Westmoreland; and it appears by
the Household Book of Algernon, fifth Earl of
Northumberland, that, in the beginning of the reign of Henry
the Eighth, there was, in that family, a regular
establishment for two counsellors and their servants.

A proclamation was issued on the 6th of November, in the
twentieth year of the reign of James I. in which the voters
for members of Parliament are directed, "not to choose
curious and wrangling lawyers, who may seek reputation by
stirring needless questions."

A strong prejudice was at this time excited against lawyers.
In Aleyn's Henry VIII. (London, 1638,) we have the following
philippic against them:--

"A prating lawyer, (one of those which cloud
That honour'd science,) did their conduct take;
He talk'd all law, and the tumultuous crowd
Thought it had been all gospel that he spake.
At length, these fools their common error saw,
A lawyer on their side, but not the law."

Pride the drayman used to say, that it would never be well
till the lawyers' gowns, like the Scottish colours, were
hung up in Westminster Hall.

From Chaucer's character of the Temple Manciple, it would
appear that the great preferment which advocates in this
time chiefly aspired to, was to become steward to some great
man: he says,--"

"Of masters he had mo than thryis ten,
That were of law expert and curious,
Of which there were a dozen in that house,
Worthy to ben stuards of house and londe,
Of any lord that is in Englonde."

~246~~been employed as clerks to Pettifoggers, who obtain permission to
sue in their names; and persons who know no more of law than what they
have learned in Abbot's Park,{1} or on board the Fleet,{2} who assume
the title of Law Agents or Accountants, and are admirably fitted for
Agents in the Insolvent Debtor's Court under the Insolvent Act, to make
out Schedules, &c. Being up to all the arts and manouvres practised with
success for the liberation of themselves, they are well calculated to
become tutors of others, though they ge