ffices, and there students of the law
received their education. In fact, they may be said to constitute the
foundation of the modern profession of the law in the English-speaking
race.

The Inns of Court were at first an aristocratic institution, and only
men of good blood were permitted to practice in them. Indeed, that was
the case in the early days in Rome. Pliny reports that no one could
become a _jurist consult_, an _advocatus_ or a _patronus_ except he be
of the Patrician class. But soon after the Empire began, this rule broke
down and the Roman Bar became open to all. So, too, in the English Bar
at first admission was controlled by the Benchers or governing bodies of
the Inns of Court and the students were chosen only from good families.
It was probably this that led to their unpopularity and to the
denunciation which they received in Wat Tyler's day, in the fourteenth
century, and from Jack Cade's followers whom Shakespeare makes wish to
kill all the lawyers in the next century. Their exclusive spirit passed
away, however, and while aristocratic class distinctions were rigidly
maintained in English society, the Bar became most democratic through
the avenue to positions of highest influence on the Bench and in
politics which it freely offered to able men from the people. And,
indeed, there is no part of English history that is so full of interest
as the stories of her great lawyers, who, beginning in the humblest
conditions of life, fought their way by real merit into positions of
control in the government and thus gave ability and strength to the
aristocracy of which they became a part.

In the three centuries or more after the establishment of the Inns of
Court, no division appeared in the profession of the law, and it was not
until about 1556 that the profession became separated into attorneys at
law and solicitors in chancery, on the one hand, and barristers on the
other. The former dealt directly with clients and performed the
preliminary work of drafting documents and preparing briefs, while the
latter, the barristers, drafted the pleadings and presented the causes
in court. A similar division of functions prevailed in the Roman Bar. I
shall have occasion later to comment on the advantages and disadvantages
of this division, but this summary reference is sufficient for my
present purpose in tracing the history of the Bar in England. During
this period, after the establishment of the Inns of Court, the
unp