l attaches and the underlings of the courts had
gone into the business of acting as attorneys, of cheating their
clients, and of stirring up litigation. While statutes were directed
against their abuses, I cannot find that there was any English statute
forbidding lawyers to receive compensation for their services, although
the action of the Pope in forbidding his priests to study and practice
law in England may indicate some such abuses. It is certain that legal
services were not regarded as creating a debt due from the client to the
lawyer who had served him. By statute, now, attorneys and solicitors in
England are entitled to fixed fees for professional services. But in the
case of barristers, down to the present time, while they may demand a
retainer for their services in advance, they still cannot recover by
suit if the services are rendered without receiving it. This may
possibly be derived from the early Roman and Jewish view of the
professional relation and suggests the probability that early in English
history professional services were deemed to be gratuitous.

The grant of Magna Charta by King John, in response to the demand of the
Barons at Runnymede, gave birth to the Bar in its modern character.
Articles 17 and 18 of that instrument provided that Common Pleas should
not follow the court of the King, but should be held in a certain place,
and that trials upon certain writs should not be taken outside of their
proper counties. It provided further that the King or the Chief Justice
should send two justiciaries into each county, four times in the year,
to hold certain assizes within the county, with four knights of the
county, chosen by it, on the day, and at the place appointed. The 45th
article promised that the King would not make Justiciaries, Constables,
or Bailiffs excepting of such as knew the laws of the land and were well
disposed to observe them. The result of this provision by which Common
pleas courts came to be held at Westminster, while regular assizes were
held in the counties, was the establishment of the four Inns of Court,
so-called, Lincoln's Inn, the Inner and the Middle Temple, and Gray's
Inn, together with a number of others known as Chancery Inns, which
have of late years disappeared. Henry III took these Inns under his
especial protection and prohibited the study of law anywhere in London
save in the Inns of Court. They were the homes of the Bar, for within
their walls lawyers had their o