OF THE NUMBER OF ATTORNIES IN THIS COUNTIE NOW AND HERETOFORE.
[A STATUTE was passed in the reign of Edward I. which gave the first
authority to suitors in the courts of law to prosecute or defend by
attorney; and the number of attorneys afterwards increased so rapidly
that several statutes were passed in the reigns of Henry IV. Henry VI.
and Elizabeth, for limiting their number. One of these (33 Hen. VI. c.
7) states that not long before there were only six or eight attorneys
in Norfolk and Suffolk, and that their increase to twenty-four was to
the vexation and prejudice of those counties; and it therefore enacts
that for the future there shall be only six in Norfolk, six in Suffolk,
and two in Norwich. (Penny Cycle, art. Attorney.) Aubrey adopts the
inference that strife and dissension were promoted by the increase of
attorneys; which he accordingly laments as a serious evil. He quotes at
some length from a treatise “About Actions for Slander and
Arbitrements, what words are actionable in the law, and what not”, &c.
by John March, of Gray’s Inn, Barrister (London, 1674, 8vo.); wherein
the great increase of actions for slander is shewn, by reference to old
law books. The author urges the propriety of checking such actions as
much as possible, and quaintly observes, “as I cannot balk that
observation of that learned Chief Justice (Wray), who sayes that in our
old bookes actions for scandal are very rare; so I will here close with
this one word: though the tongues of men be set on fire, I know no
reason wherefore the law should be used as bellows”. Aubrey remarks
upon this:—“The true and intrinsic reason why actions of the case were
so rare in those times above mentioned, was by reason that men’s
consciences were kept cleane and in awe by confession”; and he
concludes the chapter with an extract from “Europæ Speculum”, by Sir
Edwin Sandys, Knight, (1637,) in which the advantages and disadvantages
of auricular confession are discussed.—J. B.]
ME. BAYNHAM, of Cold Ashton, in Gloucestershire, bred an attorney,
sayes, that an hundred yeares since there were in the county of
Gloucester but four attorneys, and now (1689) no fewer than three
hundred attorneys and sollicitors; and Dr. Guydot, Physician, of Bath,
sayes that they report that anciently there was but one attorney in
Somerset, and he was so poor that he went a’foot to London; and now
they swarme there like locusts.
Fabian Philips tells me (1683) that about sixty-nine yeares since there
were but two attorneys in Worcestershire, sc. Langston and Dowdeswell;
and they be now in every market towne, and goe to marketts; and he
believes there are a hundred.
In Henry 6th time (q. if not in Hen. 7?) there was a complaint to the
Parliament by the Norfolk people that whereas formerly there were in
that county but five or six attorneys, that now they are exceedingly
encreased, and that they went to markets and bred contention. The
judges were ordered to rectify this grievance, but they fell asleep and
never awak’t since.—Vide the Parliament Roll. [See the above note. In
page 12 (ante) Aubrey states that the Norfolk people are the “most
litigious” of any in England.—J. B.] ’Tis thought that in England there
are at this time near three thousand;* but there is a rule in hawking,
the more spaniells the more game. They doe now rule and governe the
lawyers [barristers] and judges. They will take a hundred pounds with a
clarke.
*[There are now upwards of three thousand attorneys in practice in the
metropolis alone, to whom the celebrated remark of Alderman Beckford to
King George the Third may be justly applied, with the substitution of
another word for “the Crown”,—“the influence of lawyers has increased,
is increasing, and ought to be diminished.”—J. B.]