prohibitions
and objections."

With the foundation and growth of the Inns of Court, the
apprentices--the better sort at least--obtained full recognition as
practitioners; and at the close of the fourteenth century their
reputation had become so considerable that the great apprentices had
formed themselves into a distinct order, in which they stood next to
serjeants-at-law, the gradation being as follows:

(i) Serjeants-at-law.
(ii) Nobiliores, or great apprentices.
(iii) Other apprentices who followed the law.
(iv) Apprentices of less estate, and attorneys.

The term "apprentice-at-law" yielded to _apprenticius ad barros_, and
that again to "utter-barrister," corresponding to the modern
"barrister-at-law." Not all the students admitted at an inn were
"called" to the bar, the truth being that only a small proportion
received that distinction. In 1596 an arrangement was made by the Judges
and Benchers of the four Inns of Court, by which it was agreed:

"That hereafter none shall be admitted to the Barr but only such as be
at the least seven years' continuance, and have kept the exercises
within the House and abroad in Inns of Chancery, according to the orders
of the House:

"_Item_, that there be in one year only four Utter-Barristers called in
any Inne of Court (that is to say) in Easter Term, two, and, in
Michaelmas Term, two," etc.

Again, certain orders, made for the better government of the Inns of
Court and Chancery in 1624 provided that not more than eight members of
any one inn should be called to the Bar in any one year, and that no
Utter-Barristers, except such as had been Readers in Houses of Chancery,
should begin to practise publicly at any bar at Westminster until they
had been three years at the bar.

As regards the Inns of Court, their precise origin cannot be clearly
ascertained. We hear of them in the reign of Edward III., mention being
made in the Year Book of 1354 of "les apprentices en Hostells." In the
opinion of Lord Mansfield they were at the outset "voluntary societies,"
for they "are," he says, "not corporations and have no charter from the
Crown." Serjeant Pulling holds that the smaller houses were hired by the
apprentices, and then by lease or purchase possession became permanent.
The greater houses, he thinks, had a similar history. This belief is
borne out by what happened in the case of the Temple. In 1324, when the
King granted the Knights Hospitallers the New Temple,