David Sugarman 244 barristers expected froma solicitor; and, on the other hand, the bars’ economic dependence upon solicitors. Again, the close association between the Inns of Court and the call to the bar, and the education of gentlemen is important. The exclusion of attorneys fromthe Inns and call enabled the bar to assert its social and educational superiority and, therefore, to denigrate the lower branch, and its “mechanical” learning symbolised by the systemof apprenticeship.*’"* What is striking is the way the bar maintained and enhanced its claims to social and educational superiority as well as to autonomy and independence - though this was increasingly contradicted by the facts. After all, the scholarly role of the Inns was almost non-existent from the late seventeenth to the late nineteenth centuries.And it has been argued that the importance of the landed, as the chief source of the bar’s recruits, significantly declined during the nineteenth century as its composition became increasingly drawn from the middle classes.”^ Moreover, the bar’s autonomy had always been to some extent a myth. Barristers certainly took retainers from magnates and corporations in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - and this practice possibly continued for some time thereafter.”^ The existence of Crown Chambers constitute a form of institutionalised patronage. Most importantly, the independence of the barrister was de-limited by his dependence upon good, continuing relations with solicitors and the often powerful role of the barrister’s clerk in determining what briefs were accepted. In France, Russia and the United States, the legal professions emerged from the great revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries more debilitated than previously. By contrast, the bar survived the English Revolution with increased power and prestige. Another “peculiarity” of the English? And whilst many of the core practices of the bar impugned the injunctions of laissez faire and economic liberalism, its claims to autonomy and self-regulation had become unassailable by the end of the nineteenth century. Finally, the almost feudal relationship between lawyer and client, obscured "■* See, C.W. Brooks, Pettyfoggers and Vipers of the Commonwealth: the ‘Lower Branch’ of the Legal Profession in Early Modern England, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp.178-181. "5 See, Abel-Smith and Stevens, op cit., pp. 63-76, pp. 165-86 and 349-76; and W.R. Prest, The Inns of Court under Elizabeth I and the Early Stuarts 1590-1640, (London: Longmans, 1972). Duman, op. cit., chap 1-3. I am grateful to Chris Brooks far drawing this point to my attention. See Duman, op. cit., chap. 1-3; Brooks,; ., chap. 9; J. Slinn, oil ., pp. 100-108; H. Kirk, Portrait of a Profession, (London: Oyez, 1978), chap. 9; D. Sugarman and G. R. Rubin (eds.), op. cit., pp. 84-99; J. A. Flood, Barristers’ Clerks: The Law’s Middlemen, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983). W. Prest, The Rise of the Barristers, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), touches on the patronage of judges for selected practitioners, a problems that certainly extended into the eighteenth century and possibly beyond. Michael Burridge’s forthcoming comparative history of the legal professions will develop these themes. 118 118
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