clerical crowns they were to leave: the extent of
the tonsure being measured according to the
different grades. The invention of the coif was,
according to the conjecture of Spelman, a device
to hide the tonsure in such renegate and rebellious
clerics as were tempted to remain in the secular
courts, notwithstanding the prohibition of the
canons. The coif was made of lawn, worn on the
head; and the black patch emblematic of the
degree of the coif, is still retained as the badge of
serjeants-at-law.

The benchers of the several inns have always
exercised the exclusive and summary power of
admitting or rejecting students; of excommoning
them, that is, of excluding them from commons;
and of disbarring members, which is synonymous
with silencing them in court. We have the
authority of Lord Mansfield that the powers of
the Inns of Court respecting the bar are delegated
to them from the judges, and that in every
instance the conduct of those societies is subject
to the control of the judges as visitors. The
anxiety of the brethren to pocket fees, and their
disposition to regulate the services rendered, by
the amount received, have been old and inveterate
failings: an imputation from which even the
celebrated Serjeant Maynard* did not escape.
Roger North relates that being "the leading counsel
in a small feed case, he would give it up to the
judge's mistake and not contend to set him right,
that he might gain credit to mislead him in some
other cause in which he was well feed." One of
the earliest recorded cases in which the benchers
interfered, was that of a certain Serjeant Davy,
whom they summoned to appear before them on
a charge of taking a fee in copper: a practice
which they held to be derogatory to the dignity of
the bar. The offence having been proved, and
the learned brother of the coif called on for his
defence, he assured his judges that he had never
accepted, even silver, until he had first got from
the client all the gold he had; and that he had not
condescended to touch copper, until he had in
like manner exhausted all the silver of the suitor.
He then confidently submitted that his procedure
was not degrading to his order; but we are
not told whether or no the benchers concurred
in this opinion.
* "The lawyers paid their homage" to William,
"headed by Maynard, who at ninety years of age
was as alert and clear headed as when he stood up in
Westminster Hall to accuse Strafford. 'Mr. Serjeant,'
said the prince, 'you must have survived all
the lawyers of your standing.' ' Yes, sir,' said the
old man, ' and but for your highness, I should have
survived the laws too!' "—Lord Macaulay's History
of England, vol. ii. p. 581.

The authority exercised by the "ancients"
as to admitting to the bar, led from time to
time to open revolts. Pepys, writing in 1067,
tells us, "Great talk of how the barristers and
the students of Gray's Inn rose in rebellion
against the benchers the other day who outlawed
them, but now they are at peace again."
The most remarkable man over whom the
benchers of any inn ever achieved a triumph,
was the celebrated John Horne Tooke, the
famous antagonist of Junius. Educated at
Westminster and at Eton, he had entered his name
as a law student on the books of the Inner
Temple in 1756, in order, as he expressed, "to
eat his way to the bar." Four years afterwards,
in 1760, having obtained a degree at the University
of Cambridge, he took holy orders; and,
having been admitted into the Church, was
presented with the rectory of New Brentford,
Middlesex, and became a popular preacher. Wilkes
subsequently excited the emulation of the country
parson, who determined also to acquire position
and fame as an agitator and redresser of
public wrongs. Men in power were in those
days peculiarly sensitive; and one of Horne
Tooke's earliest introductions into public life
was an indictment for libel; although he
defended himself before Lord Mansfield, Chief
Justice, with great boldness, ability, and address,
lie was, according to the fashion of the day,
found guilty. A sentence of fine and imprisonment
followed, and the gates of the jail had
hardly closed after his liberation, when, elated
with the reputation he had acquired from his
defence, he determined to take up his forensic
calling. On presenting his petition to be called
to the bar, he was met by the obsolete canons of
the Church, in which its members had, in ages
long gone by, disclaimed communion with the
law tribunals of the State; and he was rejected as
being in holy orders. This rejection led to loud
public clamour. Horne Tooke made a subsequent
attempt, but was again rejected, in 1779, after a
close division in the secret conclave, by a majority
of one—Mr. Bearcroft, a queen's counsel,
who was immediately after rewarded for his vote
by high employment at Chester. Horne Tooke
had resigned his living, and it was conceived
by many that his having been once in holy
orders, was used as a mere pretext to crush
a formidable political partisan, whose entry
into parliament would have been facilitated
by admission to the bar. By others, the
opposition was attributed to the jealousy of some
practising barristers, who were afraid of being
eclipsed by the man who had faced, and who was
believed by some to have even vanquished, Junius
in the press, and who in the arbitrary days of
high prerogative judges had braved the threats
and terrors of the Court of Queen's Bench.
After his exclusion, Tooke again successfully
bearded, in the Queen's Bench, another Lord
Chief Justice, Lord Kenyon: who quailed on
being told by Tooke that the most illustrious
judicial characters, Coke and Hale and Holt, had
remained commoners, and that the first common-law
judge who was ever ennobled, was the
infamous Jeffreys in the infamous reign of James
the Second. The old principles of exclusion
pursued him when he took his oaths and seat in
parliament on the 16th of February, 1801, as
member for the borough of Old Sarum. The
House, adopting the precedent of the benchers,