Pettyfoggers and Vipers of the Commonwealth
The 'Lower Branch' of the Legal Profession in Early Modern England

This work charts the huge growth of the lower branches of the legal profession in sixteenth-century England..

C. W. Brooks (Author)

9780521890830, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 24 June 2004

412 pages
21.6 x 14 x 2.3 cm, 0.52 kg

Historians have long recognized that members of the lower branch of the legal profession, the ancestors of the modern solicitors, played an important part in early modern English society, but difficulties in establishing their identities and recovering their career patterns have hitherto left them virtually unstudied. This work charts the massive sixteenth-century increase in central court litigation and offers an explanation of it largely in terms of social change and the decline of local jurisdictions. At the same time, it argues that the period witnessed a major turning point in the relationship between the legal profession and English society. The number of practitioners in the lower branch who were associated with the legal institutions of London grew to such an extent that by 1640 the ratio of lawyers to population was not much different from that in the early twentieth century. Although this tremendous growth in the amount of legal business and the number of legal practitioners created some serious administrative problems, the commonly held view that the lower branch in this period was largely untrained, dishonest, and uncontrolled is no more than a myth.

List of tables and figures
Preface
Abbreviations
1. Introduction
2. Lawyers and the royal courts in London during the reign of Elizabeth
3. The legal profession in the provinces
4. The increase in litigation
5. The causes of the increase in litigation
6. The increase in litigation and the legal profession
7. The attitudes of layman and attempts at reform
8. Clerkship, the inns of chancery, and legal education
9. Private practice
10. Public office and politics
11. Fees and income
12. Conclusion
Appendix
Notes
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], British & Irish history [HBJD1]