In the spirit of weber 243 trayed in the popular literature of the nineteenth century. Here, for example, is an extract from Elizabeth Gaskell’s short story, “The Squire’s Story”: [The] principal was a Mr Dudgeon, the attorney of Barford, and the agent for all the county families about. The firm of Dudgeon had managed the leases, the marriage settlements and the wills of the neighbourhood for generations. Mr Dudgeon’s father had the responsibility of collecting the landowners’ rents, just as the present Mr Dudgeon had at the time of which I speak; and as his son and his son’s son have done since. Their business was an hereditary estate to them; and with something of the old feudal feeling was mixed a kind of proud humility at their position towards the squires whose family secrets they had mastered, and the mysteries of whose fortunes and estates were better known to the Messrs Dudgeon than to themselves. ”110 “Eminent attorneys” would turn down that law work which might be construed as threatening the privacy that bound clients to their lawyers.*This encouraged a certain reticence which helped to mystify what lawyers did and how they did it. It also makes the writing of the history of the English legal professions especially difficult. The familial nature of legal practice - the importance of family connections with clients, barristers and for those who sought a career in the firm* *2 _ and the widespread use of restraint of trade clauses in the case of solicitors, fortified the obscure and intimate features of lawyer-client relations.’ The relation between barrister and solicitor was grounded upon an irrational core: namely, on the one hand, the superiority of the “upper branch” vis-a-vis the “lower” branch with the deference that even the most junior of 113 On the importance of family connections (re clients, barristers, as well as members of the firm) - and keeping the firmin the family - see, Belcher, op. cit., pp. 3-6, 7, 37, 41, 65, 66. This phenomenon was a particularly common practice in British trade and industry, relative to other western industrialising nations: see, for example, P. L. Payne, “The Emergence of the Large-Scale Company in Great Britain”, Economic History Review, 20, 1967, pp. 213-40. The Works of Mrs Gaskell, vol. 2., “The Squires Story”, (1906), p. 541. I Derek Crothall for drawing this quotation to my attention. See M. Miles, “Eminent Practitioners: The New Visage of Country Attorneys c.17501800”, in G.R. Rubin and D. Sugarman (eds.). Law, Economy and Society, 1750-1914: Essays in the History of English Law(Abingdon: Professional Books, 1984), pp. 470-503. The interdependence of lawyering, family and friends was, it seems, indicative of a wider tendency within the English middle classes: see L. Davidoff and C. Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780-1850, (London: Hutchinson, 1987), pp. 215-228. See, the reference in note 109 above. ■'3 On the Inns as places where business could be conducted, as a club and a business address for attorneys as well as barristers, see Belcher, op. cit., pp. 14-15. The solicitors’ conveyancing monopoly, and the economic security this assured, undoubtedly sustained many of the pre-modern attitudes of solicitors that are only new beginning to dissolve, largely spurred on by the withdrawal of that monopoly. See, further, A. Offer, Property and Polltics. 1870-1914, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1581), Part I; and on the contemporary situation, see, L. Barber, “A Pro For All Seasons”, The Sunday Times, 11 November, 1984, p. 67. grateful to am
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