been advanced to this degree before that time. By the common law no one
can be appointed a judge of the superior courts, who has not attained
the degree of the coif; which degree can only be conferred on a
barrister of one of the four inns of court. As soon as any member of an
inn of court is raised by royal writ to the state, degree, and dignity
of a serjeant-at-law, he ceases to be a member of the society. He
removes to a new hall, and appears for the future in the inn of court as
a guest (Pearce, 52).

The most valuable privilege formerly enjoyed by the serjeants (who,
besides the judges, were limited to fifteen in number), was the monopoly
of the practice in the Court of Common Pleas. A bill was introduced into
Parliament in the year 1755; for the purpose of destroying this
monopoly; but it did not pass. In 1834, a warrant under the sign manual
of the Crown was directed to the Judges of the Common Pleas, commanding
them to open that court to the Bar at large, on the ground that it would
tend to the general dispatch of business. This order was received, and
the court acted accordingly. But in 1839 the matter was brought before
the court by the serjeants, when it was decided that the order was
illegal; Tindal, C. J., declaring that, "from time immemorial, the
serjeants have enjoyed the exclusive privilege of practising, pleading;
and audience in the Court of Common Pleas. Immemorial enjoyment is the
most solid of all titles; and we think the warrant of the Crown can no
more deprive the serjeant, who holds an immemorial office, of the
benefits and privileges which belong to it, than it could alter the
administration of the law within the court itself." (10 Bingh. 571; 6
Bingh. N. C. 187, 232, 235.) However, the Statute 9 & 10 Vict. c. 54,
has since extended to all barristers the privileges of serjeants in the
Court of Common Pleas.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This oath seems first to have been prescribed by the Act of
Assembly, passed August 22d, 1752: "An act for regulating and
establishing fees." (1 Smith's Laws, 218.) It has been copied into the
revised Act of 14th April, 1834, s. 69 (Pamphlet Laws, 354), with the
addition of the clause to "support the Constitution of the United
States, and the Constitution of this Commonwealth." In England, by the
Stat. 4 Henry IV, c. 18 (A. D. 1402), it was provided, "that all
attorneys shall be examined by the Justices, and by their discretion,
their names put in the roll, and they th