rs; to remedy which it was made an article
of the great charter of liberties, both that of king John and king
Henry the third[p], that "common pleas should no longer follow the
king's court, but be held in some certain place:" in consequence of
which they have ever since been held (a few necessary removals in
times of the plague excepted) in the palace of Westminster only. This
brought together the professors of the municipal law, who before were
dispersed about the kingdom, and formed them into an aggregate body;
whereby a society was established of persons, who (as Spelman[q]
observes) addicting themselves wholly to the study of the laws of the
land, and no longer considering it as a mere subordinate science for
the amusement of leisure hours, soon raised those laws to that pitch
of perfection, which they suddenly attained under the auspices of our
English Justinian, king Edward the first.

[Footnote p: _c._ 11.]

[Footnote q: _Glossar._ 334.]

IN consequence of this lucky assemblage, they naturally fell into a
kind of collegiate order, and, being excluded from Oxford and
Cambridge, found it necessary to establish a new university of their
own. This they did by purchasing at various times certain houses (now
called the inns of court and of chancery) between the city of
Westminster, the place of holding the king's courts, and the city of
London; for advantage of ready access to the one, and plenty of
provisions in the other[r]. Here exercises were performed, lectures
read, and degrees were at length conferred in the common law, as at
other universities in the canon and civil. The degrees were those of
barristers (first stiled apprentices[s] from _apprendre_, to learn)
who answered to our bachelors; as the state and degree of a
serjeant[t], _servientis ad legem_, did to that of doctor.

[Footnote r: Fortesc. _c._ 48.]

[Footnote s: Apprentices or Barristers seem to have been first
appointed by an ordinance of king Edward the first in parliament, in
the 20th year of his reign. (Spelm. _Gloss._ 37. Dugdale. _Orig.
jurid._ 55.)]

[Footnote t: The first mention I have met with in our lawbooks of
serjeants or countors, is in the statute of Westm. 1. 3 Edw. I. c. 29.
and in Horn's Mirror, _c._ 1. Sec. 10. _c._ 2. Sec. 5. _c._ 3. Sec. 1. in
the same reign. But M. Paris in his life of John II, abbot of St.
Alban's, which he wrote in 1255, 39 Hen. III. speaks of advocates at
the common law, or countors (_quos banci narra