This chapter traces the precise urban realities that encouraged the Inns of Court satirists to turn to Thomas Nashe’s urban metaphysical style as they constructed the satires and epigrams that poured from the Inns. In doing so, I aim to clarify both Nashe’s and the city’s central place in the development of this poetic mode, a centrality that has been underrecognized in our literary genealogies. In this confluence of authors writing and reading amidst the city’s various spaces in the last decade of the century, we can see more clearly an urban metaphysical aesthetic, at once plenist, obscure, digressive, and visceral, being put into practice. The first part of this chapter explores the vogue for verse satire in the last years of the century, linking it both to the precise urban conditions out of which its authors wrote and to Nashe’s own skeptical impulses. The latter half examines the satires’ and epigrams’ formal features to show how these poems, just as Nashe’s prose before them, self-consciously reorganized and reprocessed the urban experience in ways that we now associate with the metaphysical style.

This chapter examines the imaginative choices, and the implications of these choices, that John Manningham made as he created a record of his daily life, what we now call his Diary, relating these choices to the urban metaphysical style that I have traced in the previous chapters. Manninghams collection of notes as a whole does imply that he rejected a more pragmatic or moralistic approach to his recordkeeping, a rejection in line with Nashes turn away from humanist utility and towards contention and wit. In addition, once we view Manningham’s diary as a reordering of experience, we can identify within the selection and sequence of entries a particular orientation to the world, a processing of urban reality that aligns with the recreation of reality in the writings of his Inns peers. Not only might we see a rejection of humanist models of reading and writing in the diary, we can also clearly see Manningham embracing a skeptical, witty, and contentious style of being in the world. It is a style that is highly performative, just as Nashe’s prose and the Inns satires are; it is also a style that signals an awareness of the heterogeneity and fragmentary nature of urban experience.

‘ The inns of court man that never was studient’ argues that the contemporary stereotype of the idle and dissolute young inns of court gallant with more interest in playgoing than reading law reports, while doubtless exaggerated for moral and satirical effect, is corroborated by an abundance of biographical evidence.It also reflects two prime causes of student delinquency and disinclination for legal studies: lack of supervision and the intractability of the common law as a subject of study. ‘Guides to Method’ surveys the legal literature available to students, concluding that it offered little assistance to those attempting to navigate the law’s complexities. ‘Lay and Professional Legal Knowledge’ emphasises the gulf between the practising barrister’s expertise and the kinds of legal knowledge which most laymen were likely to need or possess.

Yet members acquired and exercised a remarkably wide range of non-legal accomplishments and skills. ‘Accomplishments and the Decline of Creativity’ argues that the inns did little to encourage such activities, especially after c.1615. ‘Varieties of Learning’ surveys the remarkably diverse intellectual life of the early modern inns, while the closing section ‘Achievements, Failures, Prescriptions’ evaluates their diverse roles as educational institutions, and the few contemporary proposals for their reform.

This chapter maps the continued presence of Roman Catholics at the inns of court, from the accession of Elizabeth and her protestant church settlement of 1559 to the eve of the civil war. ‘Survival and Resurgence’ shows that besides a significant remnant of Catholic lawyerswho had held firm to their traditional beliefs and successfully resisted conformity to the new dispensation, the 1570s saw the arrival of missionary priests charged with reviving the old faith. Besides supporting existing Catholics, they sought new adherents among the gentlemen students of the inns of court, as a vital step towards freeing the country from heresy.

Notwithstanding a battery of increasingly restrictive measures aimed at excluding Catholics from the inns, ‘Quietism and Survival’ shows that papists continued to be admitted and even promoted to the bar and bench. But the anticipated flood of well-born converts did not eventuate, and in the early seventeenth century the failure of Gunpowder Plot saw a more relaxed and tolerant attitude towards Catholics, at the inns as elsewhere, on the part of both government and the inns’ rulers. While both pragmatic and commendably tolerant, this policy stance underestimated the political potency of anti-popish paranoia among the population at large.

After an introductory excursus on the concept of the inns as early modern England’s third university, this chapter outlines the form of legal instruction which they provided by means of oral ‘learning exercises’, notably case-putting in moots and other exercises involving the argument of hypothetical cases in law,and ‘readings’ or lectures at both the inns of court and chancery.

The second section (‘The State of the Learning Exercises to 1640’) considers the supposed decline in the performance of exercises. It argues that even though they may have been rendered largely obsolete by the advent of the printed law-book, there is little to suggest that they were not generally performed in a conscientious and regular fashion before the outbreak of the civil war. But it was one thing to preserve the system as a going concern, quite another to revive it after the disruptions of the 1640s and ‘50s.

After outlining the motivation for a second edition, this opens with a brief account (‘Origins’) of how the book first came to be written and published. It then proceeds to discuss (‘Continuities and Changes’) the 1960s-early ‘70s historiographical context in which it was created and its positive reception on first publication. Some criticisms, questions and suggestions raised by readers and reviewers are also outlined and discussed. The following section (‘New Ways and New Work’) canvasses the impact of the digital revolution on scholarship in the humanities and social sciences, together with the burgeoning of specialised research, and explains how the large body of new work bearing on the history of the early modern inns has been accommodated in the following text.The final section (Future Directions) looks at challenges and opportunities for further research on the inns, addressing a wide range of questions and topics of interest to both general and legal historians.

The first section (‘Centralisation’) traces the consolidation of authority in the hands of the benchers, whose internal supremacy appears to have been of fairly recent origin, and the growing interest of Elizabethan governments in the societies, with the effect of strengthening the benchers’ powers. Before the great expansion of membership, most of the routine administrative chores necessary to keep the societies operating on a day-to-day basis were undertaken by members themselves. But thereafter there was increasing reliance on salaried officers or servants (‘Bureaucratisation’), especially the creation of full-time administrative positions to assist the nominal temporary head of each society, the treasurer. On-going provision of catering and lodging depended on a continuously expanding domestic establishment. However the inns had both a ‘Servant Problem’, and a ‘Management Problem’. Servants depended for much of their income on tips and perquisites, leading to various conflicts of interest, while much of the responsibility for overseeing the societies’ affairs was shouldered by a small minority of benchers. The chapter concludes with a glance at difficulties experienced in managing the societies’ finances, which encouraged the commutation of former academic requirements into cash payments.

‘History and Historiography’ shows that the history of the inns of court has tended to be written from a foreshortened perspective, taking insufficient account of changes in the function and operation of the societies.‘Membership and Residence’ traces the impact of a massive expansion in student enrolments from the mid-sixteenth century, including the resultant shortage of on-site accommodation, while explaining why the nature of the surviving records and the inns’ own distinctive practices and requirements makes it impossible to precisely determine their size as residential institutions during this period. It concludes with a brief account of the changes in ‘Architecture and Topography’ consequent upon the inns’ membership expansion.

‘The Clerical Establishment’ of the inns of court ranged from lowly chaplains who conducted daily services to well-paid pulpit orators appointed as ‘lecturers’ or preachers to deliver regular sermons in the Temple Church and chapels of Gray’s Inn and Lincoln’s Inn. The advent of the preacherships and the prominent presbyteriansamong those divineswho first held these positions has been regarded as signalling the strength of puritan zeal at the inns. But ‘The Elizabethan Experiment’ argues that both were actively encouraged by government as an anti-Catholic measure, rather than simply reflecting the benchers’ own religious preferences.

‘Moderates and Radicals’ shows that while most inns’ preachers from 1600 to 1640 were radical protestants, such zealots did not monopolise their pulpits. ‘The Puritan Lay Presence’considers in more detail the religious attitudes of the inns’ lawyer members. While Lincoln’s Inn was the godly brethren’s stronghold, all four houses served as recruiting grounds and points of contact for those committed to further reformation of church and commonwealth. But if a combination of ideological and material forces tended to attract common lawyers to the godly camp, there were always lawyers anxious to support the established church and to reject its more extreme puritan critics.

The nature of whatever ‘Political Education’ was imparted to students at the inns is difficult to determine. While possibly enhancing their political awareness, it did not simply operate in one direction. Historians have been impressed by links between the inns and parliament, but contemporaries were probably more aware of their ties with the royal court. ‘Court Connections’ were manifest in masques presented at court, and associations between prominent courtiers and the inns, as well as between the central government and the inns’ rulers. The most spectacular demonstration of this affinity was the 1634 joint masque, The Triumph of Peace, an extravaganza presented by all four inns in repudiation of William Prynne and his alleged libel against women actresses, including Queen Henrietta Maria.

But ‘Towards Civil War’ shows that the rapprochement between the inns andCharles I’s court was never complete. The inns lay low during the political struggles before the outbreak of hostilities, although an armed band of 500 students offered their services to the king just before his attempted arrest of the 5 members in January 1642.When war did come, the inns’ allegiance was effectively determined by their location in parliamentarian London.

The first section of this chapter, ‘The Scope of Discipline’ traces the fashion in which the benchers initially sought to impose disciplinary constraints on members’ behaviour and demeanour. The growth of the inns after 1550 made it increasingly difficult to police the personal lives of junior members. But the benchers became more anxious to maintain and enhance their own authority, establishing sumptuary regulations on apparel, long hair and beards which emphasised the subordinate status of those below the bench, and sharply escalating measures against casual interpersonal violence within the societies.

They seem to have had some success in eliminating armed assaults, if not other forms of physical violence, while traditional violent behaviour outside the walls of the inns appears to have waned towards the end of our period.However, as ‘The Range of Defiance’ illustrates, collective defiance of and disobedience to the bench became a feature of life from the 1610s onwards, with sporadic outbreaks continuing until the end of the century and beyond, over sumptuary regulations, gambling at Christmas commons, and other issues.

The final section, ‘Authority and Revolt’ proposes that outbreaks of protest and rebellion in the latter half of our period were closely related to the major institutional changes examined in the preceding chapters.

Having examined the societies’ human dimensions, we may look more closely at their internal structure. As membership numbers grew, the intimacy of corporate life tended to weaken (‘From Clerks to Students’), while call to the bar, previously no more than an internal rank of membership, had become the necessary qualification for audience in the superior courts.‘The Rise of the Barristers’ and mounting pressure of numbers seeking call impelled the inns to prescribe formal qualifications, in terms of years of ‘continuance’ and participation in specified oral law-learning exercises. While non-academic factors, especially patronage and tenure of legal office, also played a part, use of the exercises to qualify for aa potentially lucrative legal career at the bar encouraged evasion or perfunctory performance. Meanwhile promotion to the governing bench of each society was no longer so intimately associated with the delivery of a ‘reading’ on a branch of statute law, and lawyer members who held major office under the crown or in the bureaucracy of the law courts were increasingly given automatic promotion as benchers or associates to the bench (‘From Readers to Benchers’).

As voluntary unincorporated societies, the inns hardly existed apart from their members. This chapter opens with a discussion (‘Motives and Status’) of reasons for the boom in admissions to membership from the mid-sixteenth century and the unsuccessful efforts to regulate and restrict that expansion. The following section (‘Income and Social Origins’) considers economic barriers to membership and the familial origins of those so admitted during the half-century before the Long Parliament, concluding that the inns’ students were generally recruited from a considerably higher social stratum than the student population of the two ancient universities. The chapter moves on to examine the ‘Regional Origins’ of inns of court entrants, showing that while they came from all over England, Wales and Ireland, each society had a distinctive regional recruitment pattern. At the same time, attendance at the inns did much to strengthen the national identity of the future governing elite, rather than merely reinforcing local divisions. A final section (‘Social Tensions and the Exodus of the Gentry’) points to tensions between young gentlemen students and the inns’ lawyer members, contributing to the gradual abandonment of the inns as finishing schools for the upper ranks of society after the civil wars.

This chapter surveys the principal features of the legal system of the later sixteenth century, beginning with the courts and their functions. Trials took place at the assizes in the country, separated from the legal argument in Westminster Hall. The court at Westminster did not hear the evidence but had to take the facts as encapsulated in Latin; the effect of this separation is considered. In absence of appeals as we know them, judges were unwilling to decide difficult cases, though the desire for unanimity was giving way to an acceptance of majority decisions. The cost of litigation was much lower than today, and most litigants in the highest courts were of a social status below the gentry. The chapter ends with an account of the legal profession in this period, which saw the rise of the solicitor. The inns of court played a central role as a residential legal university, attended by a substantial proportion of the English gentry.

This chapter continues with the differences between then and now and explores the difficulties of an evaluative comparison. The question is approached in terms of the rule of law, as now understood. In terms of accessibility, efficiency and fairness, in the sphere of civil justice the scales seem to be evenly balanced between the two periods. The criminal law, on the other hand, is now more protective of the accused and less severe; the removal of the death penalty, however, has led to the removal of some of the older safeguards. A meaningful comparison of the substantive content of the law in both periods is hindered by the intervening social changes and by changing attitudes to property and personal autonomy. The transformation of family law is a case in point. Nevertheless, the ultimate conclusion is that the law under two Elizabeths is in essence the same organism, facing similar challenges, and tackling them in recognisably similar ways. Much of what we regard as achievements of modern enlightenment should in fact be credited to the lawyers of the sixteenth century and the common-law heritage.

Until 1919, women were barred from becoming barristers or solicitors. With the passing of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919, Helena Normanton made legal history on 24 December 1919 (the day after the Act was passed) by becoming the first woman to join an Inn of Court, the Middle Temple. Her milestone entry marked women’s formal entry to the legal profession. But what do we actually know about that history? The stories of Gwyneth Bebb and Helena Normanton have been recorded, but the struggle was wider than just two individuals. They were not lone agents of change. This chapter argues that women’s entry to the Bar was achieved through women’s networks and connections, a history that has not yet been recorded.