tores vulgariter
appellamus_) as of an order of men well known. And we have an example
of the antiquity of the coif in the same author's history of England,
_A.D._ 1259. in the case of one William de Bussy; who, being called to
account for his great knavery and malpractices, claimed the benefit of
his orders or clergy, which till then remained an entire secret; and
to that end _voluit ligamenta coifae suae solvere, ut palam monstraret
se tonsuram habere clericalem; sed non est permissus.----Satelles vero
eum arripiens, non per coifae ligamina sed per guttur eum
apprehendens, traxit ad carcerem_. And hence sir H. Spelman
conjectures, (_Glossar._ 335.) that coifs were introduced to hide the
tonsure of such renegade clerks, as were still tempted to remain in
the secular courts in the quality of advocates or judges,
notwithstanding their prohibition by canon.]

THE crown seems to have soon taken under it's protection this infant
seminary of common law; and, the more effectually to foster and
cherish it, king Henry the third in the nineteenth year of his reign
issued out an order directed to the mayor and sheriffs of London,
commanding that no regent of any law schools _within_ that city should
for the future teach law therein[u]. The word, law, or _leges_, being
a general term, may create some doubt at this distance of time whether
the teaching of the civil law, or the common, or both, is hereby
restrained. But in either case it tends to the same end. If the civil
law only is prohibited, (which is Mr Selden's[w] opinion) it is then a
retaliation upon the clergy, who had excluded the common law from
_their_ seats of learning. If the municipal law be also included in
the restriction, (as sir Edward Coke[x] understands it, and which the
words seem to import) then the intention is evidently this; by
preventing private teachers within the walls of the city, to collect
all the common lawyers into the one public university, which was newly
instituted in the suburbs.

[Footnote u: _Ne aliquis scholas regens de legibus in eadem civitate
de caetero ibidem leges doceat._]

[Footnote w: _in Flet._ 8. 2.]

[Footnote x: 2 Inst. proem.]

IN this juridical university (for such it is insisted to have been by
Fortescue[y] and sir Edward Coke[z]) there are two sorts of collegiate
houses; one called inns of chancery, in which the younger students of
the law were usually placed, "learning and studying, says
Fortescue[a], the originals an