Henry III took these Inns under his
especial protection and prohibited the study of law anywhere in London
save in the Inns of Court. They were the homes of the Bar, for within
their walls lawyers had their offices, and there students of the law
received their education. In fact, they may be said to constitute the
foundation of the modern profession of the law in the English-speaking
race.
The Inns of Court were at first an aristocratic institution, and only
men of good blood were permitted to practice in them. Indeed, that was
the case in the early days in Rome. Pliny reports that no one could
become a _jurist consult_, an _advocatus_ or a _patronus_ except he be
of the Patrician class. But soon after the Empire began, this rule broke
down and the Roman Bar became open to all. So, too, in the English Bar
at first admission was controlled by the Benchers or governing bodies of
the Inns of Court and the students were chosen only from good families.
It was probably this that led to their unpopularity and to the
denunciation which they received in Wat Tyler's day, in the fourteenth
century, and from Jack Cade's followers whom Shakespeare makes wish to
kill all the lawyers in the next century.
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