The Catholic Lawyer Volume 17 Number 1 Volume 17, Winter 1971, Number 1 Article 7 Thomas More and the Inns of Court Brian Butler Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/tcl Part of the Catholic Studies Commons, and the Religion Law Commons This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at St. John's Law Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Catholic Lawyer by an authorized editor of St. John's Law Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THOMAS MORE AND THE INNS OF COURT BRIAN BUTLER* B IOGRAPHERS of Thomas More have consistently underestimated, if not entirely ignored, the significant influence that the Inns of Court had upon More's scholarly inclinations. Biographers such as Cham- bers,' Hexter, 2 and Reynolds 3 have stolidly maintained that More's education at the Inns of Court was peculiarly provincial, being limited to the study of English law and little else. It is the purpose of this paper to establish that this is not the case-that in fact More's education at the Inns of Court availed him of a great opportunity to realize fully his potentialities. The four Inns of Court: Lincoln's Inn, Gray's Inn, the Middle Temple and the Inner Temple constitute what has been called Eng- land's "Judicial University."' 4 Although their origin is somewhat vague, it is clear that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, schools of law under clerical control existed in London. Faced with extremely inde- pendent English bishops and barons who based their opposition to royal and papal levies and decrees on the common law, the King of England and the Pope, each acted to reduce the Lord's familiarity with the vig- orous spirit of the law and thus to stifle a growing sense of indepen- dence. This and a series of events resulted in the breaking up of these schools. One of these events was the issuance of a decree by the English King Henry III "prohibiting the holding of any schools of law in the City of London. Another was the promulgation of a Papal Bull for- '5 bidding the Clergy to teach the common law." Denied the benefit of clergy as teachers and faced with the extinction *B.A. St. Francis College (Bklyn), 1971. 1 R. CHAMBERS, THOMAS MORE 62 (1958) [hereinafter CHAMBERS]. 2 J. HEXTER, MORE'S UTOPIA: THE BIOGRAPHY OF AN IDEA 17 (1952). 3 E. REYNOLDS, ST. THOMAS MORE 17 (1958) [hereinafter REYNOLDS]. 4 D. BARTON, THE STORY OF OUR INNS OF COURT 9 (1928) [hereinafter BARTON]. 5 Id, at 5, THOMAS MORE AND THE INNS OF COURT of organized schools of law in England, the ple and the Inner Temple had become the legal profession began to reorganize slowly. four Inns of Court or Colleges of Law to- The Court of Common Pleas had its seat at gether forming what could be called a Westminster Hall just outside London. As "London University of jurisprudence." 8 a result, judges and lawyers lived in the The other ten inns, mentioned above, for inns in that area. When the city law schools one reason or another, "fell into the sec- were turned adrift law students found new ond rank."9 They became known as the lodgings at Holburn, a village in the open Inns of Chancery and served as prepara- country east of London and adjacent to tory schools for the Inns of Court. Westminster. Gradually the judges, law- yers and law students began to live to- Behind a hedge of trustees it [Inns of Court] gether in the same Inns. In time, the lived an autonomous life, unhampered by lawyers, through voluntary association, be- charters or statutes. There was a hall in which its members dined in common; there gan to organize into groups, like the guilds was the nucleus of a library; there were also of that period, and form closed organiza- dormitories or chambers in which during tions for practice in the courts.6 These term-time lawyers lived celibately, leaving Guilds of Law acquired some of the prin- their wives in the country. Something of the cipal houses in the area. In the neighbor- college thus enters the constitution of these fellowships; and then something academical. hood were the manor houses of the Earl The craft gild regulated apprenticeship; it of Lincoln and the Baron Grey de Wilton, would protect the public against incompe- which in time became Lincoln's Inn and tent artificers, and its own members against Gray's Inn. The former churches and quar- unfair competition. So the fellowship of ters of the abolished Knights Templars, lawyers. In course of time a lengthy and also in the area, were leased by two other laborious course of education of the medieval sort had been devised. He who legal societies. These came to be known as had pursued it to its end received a call to the Middle Temple and the Inner Temple. the bar of his inn. This call was in effect a degree. Like the doctor or master of a uni- These Guilds of Law were just four of a versity, the full-blown barrister was com- number of legal societies then in existence. petent to teach others, and was expected to The others were: Clifford's Inn, Clement's read lectures to students. But further, in a Inn, Lyon's Inn, Strand Inn, New Inn, manner that is still very dark, these societies Thavie's Inn, Staple Inn, Barnard's Inn, had succeeded in making their degrees the only steps that led to practice in the king's Furnival's Inn and another "of which even courts.' 0 the name is forgotten."'7 By the middle of the fourteenth century, the Inns of Court As time passed, the Inns of Court be- had taken on a definite university flavor. came a kind of aristocratic university- Lincoln's Inn, Gray's Inn, the Middle Tem- institutions for the training of the wealthier 6 R. WILKIN, THE SPIRIT OF THE LEGAL PROFES- 8 G. HOME, THE INNS OF COURT 9 (1909). SION 40 (1938) [hereinafter WILKIN]. 9 ODGERS at 45. 7 W. ODGERS, THE INNS OF COURT AND OF CHAN- 10 F. MAITLAND, SELECTED HISTORICAL ESSAYS CERY 45 (1912) [hereinafter ODOERS]. OF F.W. MAITLAND 108-09 (1957). 17 CATHOLIC LAWYER, WINTER 1971 classes. The expense of maintaining the from the contagion of vice."113 These students at the Inns of Court was so pro- youths were sent to the Inns of Court to hibitive that they became the fashionable acquire the learning necessary for state- colleges for young noblemen and gentle- craft and the management of their lands, men. for as lords of the manors they would have to hold courts to hear and determine griev- Lord Chief Justice Fortescue, writing ances among their people and to punish about the Inns of Court, said: those who broke the customs and laws. The students are sons to persons of quality; Thus, the gentlemen were taught subjects those of an inferior rank not being able to ranging from mathematics and dancing, to 14 bear the expenses of maintaining and edu- military tactics and common law. cating their children in this way. As to the merchants, they seldom care to lessen their "So general was the training, indeed, stock in trade by being at such large yearly that the Inns became a source of English expenses. So that there is scarce to be letters as well as of English law." 5 "Dur- found, throughout the Kingdom, an emi- ing the sixteenth century the law schools nent lawyer, who is not a gentleman by sponsored liberal study of the classics as birth and fortune; consequently they have a greater regard for their character and did no other places of learning in Eng- 6 honour than those who are bred in another land." way." At the great universities, at this time, the The Lord Chief Justice gave an account curricula were highly formalized, and, al- of the schooling which the young men re- though they required the study of the clas- sics, existing methods permitted little cre- ceived from the Inns of Court. He asserted ative work. The universities were at a that education at the Inns of Court, in ad- disadvantage, moreover, in that they were dition to an intensive in depth study of the at a distance from the court, where taste English common law, included "singing, in all the arts was determined. As gentle- music, dancing and such other accomplish- men of the Inns of Court were usually of ments and diversions as were suitable to families of higher rank than the students 2 at the universities, they were naturally more their quality.' closely associated with the leaders of the As the Inns were institutions for the realm. Moreover the Inns were the resi- training of the wealthier classes, the cur- dence of the intellectual class of the great metropolis; hence they were often called riculum included anything conducive to a upon to establish the criteria of taste even liberal education. The youth of the nobility for the court. In addition, the obligation of attended "not so much to make laws their the lawyers to entertain the royal family study, much less to live by the profession, and the nobility required them to display having large patrimonies of their own, but great dramatic diversity and ingenuity in to form their manners and preserve them 13 Id. 14 A. GREEN, THE INNS OF COURT AND EARLY 11 J.