the latter let the
Temple to "divers apprentices of the law that came from Thaveis Inn in
Holborn." This was evidently in existence at the time. How long it had
existed prior to 1324 cannot be stated, but in his will dated 1348, and
enrolled in the Court of Hustings of the City of London, John Tavye,
citizen and armourer, devised to his wife Alicia "illud hospitium, in
quo apprenticii legis habitare solebant." In all probability,
therefore, the existence of the inn did not go back farther than the
lifetime of the armourer. The notice seems to show also that the inns
received their names not from Serjeants, as fathers of the apprentices,
but from the actual owners.

Till about the commencement of the sixteenth century we are wholly in
the dark as to the management of the inns. We then hear of governors,
treasurers, and the control of affairs in the different houses
lay with the senior members of the societies, who were styled
ancients or benchers. The apprentices may be regarded as inchoate
Serjeants--Serjeants in the making, persons on the way to become
Serjeants. The Serjeants had their own inns; and, on joining the
brotherhood, the newly-appointed dignitary was rung out of the inn to
which he had previously belonged by the chapel bell.

From Fortescue's "De Laudibus Legum Angliae," written in France after his
withdrawal to that country with Queen Margaret in 1463, we learn that
the rule was, when the degree of serjeant-at-law was to be conferred,
for the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, with the consent of the other
justices, to nominate for the purpose seven or eight of the most
experienced professors of the common law. Thereupon the Lord Chancellor
issued a writ to each of them, summoning them to appear under a heavy
penalty, and take upon themselves the state and degree of
serjeant-at-law. On duly presenting themselves they affirmed on oath
that they would be ready on a day and at a place, which were then
determined, to assume the said state and degree, and that they would
_give gold_ according to custom of the realm in such cases ("dabit aurum
secundum consuetudinem regni in hoc casu usitatam").

On the date in question a feast was begun, which continued for seven
days, and this, with other ceremonies, involved an expenditure, on the
part of each debutant of some 1,600 nobles or 400 marks. A portion of
this amount went to the purchase of gold rings, and Fortescue tells us
that, when he was called to the degre