eating their children in this way, so that there is scarce to be found throughout the Kingdom an eminent lawyer who is not a gentleman by birth and fortune; conse quently these have a greater regard for their character and honor than those who are bred in another way." Knights, Barons and the greatest nobility of the Kingdom, sent their sons to the Inns of Court, both to get a tincture of the laws and to form their manners. This is Fortescue's outline. The details we get from the records of the Inns themselves: in the case of Lincoln's Inn from the "Black Books."
LIFE IN AN INN OF COURT IN 1430. It is altogether a quaint and delightful picture which we get from these records. The society numbered in the middle of the Fifteenth Century, some 160 resident mem bers—13 Masters of the Bench, 47 "utter ' barristers and 100 inner barristers or "clerks"—students we should call them now. All these lived within the precincts of the Inn in the Chambers, of which there were 92, each chamber being divided into two. They went to chapel at 6 o'clock every morning, winter and summer—later on it was relaxed to 7 in winter. They had their commons from the buttery, breakfasted to gether on bread and beer .in the Hall,— when breakfast was supplied by the Inn, dined together at 12.30 and supped together on bread and beer again at 6.30. They fre quented the Courts at Westminster when the Courts were sitting; attended the Read ings and moots; and they amused themselves in the intervals of study in the bowling green of the Inn (spheristeriunf) and with cards and dice in the Hall in an evening, but not later than 9 o'clock, until the Benchers came to the decision that these evening amusements were not a very fit preparation for Sunday and forbade play on Saturday nights, for the Benchers were very solici
tous about religion and morals. "All vice, as Fdrtescue says is there discouraged and banished." LEGAL EDUCATION—THE "MOOT" AND THE "BOLT." The Benchers in those days took legal education also very seriously. The student could not—as in later days—"eat" his way to the Bar. He had to be constant in his attendance at Westminster, at "moots" and "bolts and "readings" and his education did not end with call, it continued for three years at least after. Neglect was visited with fines and other penalties as appears by this "mem." "No utter barrister to be al lowed to have any Boyer pot (i. c., his pint and a half of ale or beer after evensong) un less he give his diligent attendance at all learnings and especially in the learning vacations as well within this house as at Chancery moots." Chancery moots were the moots held in the Inns of Chancery which each Inn of Court had attached to it—in the case of Lincoln's Inn, Furnival's Inn and Thavies' Inn. A moot was first "assigned," that is, the subject and the persons to argue it were settled at a preliminary meeting in the evening in the Hall at which the butler was ordered to at tend with "the Candle and the Book." The case was cast in the form of pleadings and when it came on was argued first by the Bar and afterwards by the Bench. At the upper end of the Hall sat the Benchers on the Bench, a bar running between them and the rest of the Hall. Opposite the Bencn sat on forms the outer and the inner Bar risters who were engaged in the moot. The origin of this term outer or "utter" barrister is not clear. Mr. Douglas Walker thinks it arose from the fact of the form extending beyond the bar both ways. Hence those who sat outside were called the outer bar. The subjects of the moot of those days would have finely puzzled the modern law
