Course:History 344 Nasty Families/Education/Inns of Court

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One option for educating the sons of gentry families in Stuart England was at the Inns of Court, which were the law schools of seventeenth-century England. It is not definitively known how these Inns of Court came to be organized, but it has been theorized that they started as informal groups of apprentices who rented out a hall or an inn in which to discuss the law.[1] Men who had already been become masters in the faculty of law (BN: Faculty where? A university?) were invited to speak at these inns. Eventually this system evolved from a “voluntary association” to “quasi-corporations of practicing master-lawyers.”[2] These Inns of Court differ from universities because of the organizational structure of each institution. Universities were officially codified while the Inns of Court remained customary societies.[3] (BN: Interesting. Could explain this more)

Inns of Court were important pieces of the legal community as they were the only institutions who had the right to call men to the Bar (the process of qualifying to practice the legal profession).[4] Men were not allowed to practice in the courts unless they had passed the Bar, so the Inns of Court essentially controlled who was able to practice law. (BN: "The Bar" or "Calling to the Bar" would be good topics for wikis under professions)

There were four Inns of Court in England: The Inner Temple, the Middle Temple, Lincoln’s Inn, and Gray’s Inn.[5] Any man, including gentry sons, who wished to enter any of these had three possible options: to come from an Inn of Chancery (preparatory schools of the Inns of Court), to come from a university, or to enter directly.[6] The typical way was to study first at Oxford or Cambridge and then enter an Inn of Court.[7] The typical age for a gentry son to begin study at an Inn of Court was between 19 and 20 years old.[8] This age was higher than the age of admission for universities or even to begin an apprenticeship, but this age makes sense because, as mentioned above, these men went to university first and then to law school. Regular entrance fees for the Inns of Court were ￡3 6s 8d. There was also a special admission which cost ￡6 13s 4d and there was certain exemptions from residency included in this, but special admission was only available to the sons of those already in the legal profession.[9] In order to maintain a living while attending the Inns of Court, a minimum of ￡40 was necessary in the early-Stuart period (this cost would include clothing and stationary supplies [10].(BN: More about Inns of Chancery would be good).

There were numerous steps that men had to take in order to become qualified to practice law. The first step at the Inns of Court was called clerk commoner. This was the bottom tier of the school and was concerned with learning the theories and fundamentals of the law. The second step was that of inner barrister. At this point students were not yet allowed to argue in the mock trials that were held by the Inns of Court. Their goal here was essentially memory work - they were required to repeat cases from memory. Students were also required to write out cases that had been argued by their superiors. Anywhere from five to eight years was invested as an inner barrister. From the pool of inner barristers, students were called to the Bar. At this point they were now called an utter barrister. They became like teaching assistants for the masters teaching at the Inns of Court. They were also allowed to argue in most courts. Students remained an utter barrister for three years. The next step in the process was to become a reader and then a Master of the Bench, also called benchers. Benchers were in charge of the law society, but one had to be a member of the Inn for around fifteen years before he was created a bencher. Should these men prove successful benchers, they might be chosen as a serjeant for the King which marked one’s culmination of his legal career.[11] (BN: Good stuff. Maybe some should be moved from here to the professions page, basically dividing the education of a lawyer to how you you were actually able to practice and moved from the Inns to the daily work).


  1. ↑ Phyllis Allen Richmond, "Early English Law Schools: The Inns of Court," American Bar Association Journal 48 (March 1962): 255, http://heinonline.org/ (accessed January 19, 2012).
  2. ↑ Malcolm Fooshee, "The English Inns of Court: Their Backgrounds and Beginnings," American Bar Association Journal 46 (June 1960): 620, http://heinonline.org/ (accessed January 19, 2012).
  3. ↑ Richmond, "Early English Law Schools," 259.
  4. ↑ Richmond, "Early English Law Schools," 255.
  5. ↑ Fooshee, "The English Inns of Court," 616.
  6. ↑ Richmond, "Early English Law Schools," 255.
  7. ↑ Patrick Wallis and Cliff Webb, "The Education and Training of Gentry Sons in Early Modern England," Social History 36, no. 1 (February 2011): 46, http://www.tandfonline.com/ (accessed January 19, 2012).
  8. ↑ Wallis and Web, "Education and Training," 48.
  9. ↑ Richmond, "Early English Law Schools," 255-256.
  10. ↑ Prest in C.W. Brooks, Pettyfogers and Vipers of the Commonwealth: The 'Lower Branch' of the Legal Profession in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 157
  11. ↑ Richmond, "Early English Law Schools," 256-257.
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