Willis : Anglo-American Law 
89 
counsel (barristers), like advocates, (1) a friend, who spoke 
for litigants, and (2) sergeants-at-law in the pay of the king. 
The king brought both classes under the control of the judges 
and gave them a monopoly of practice. The judges were no 
longer chosen from among ecclesiastics but from the body 
of pleaders in the king's court. The reason for this was the 
fact that the church opposed the appointment of the clergy. 
But the clergy continued to serve as clerks of court. Brit- 
ton, Fleta, and Horn, noted law writers, wrote their treatises 
in this period. From the standpoint of the legal profession 
the thirteenth century was brilliant. From this standpoint 
the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries were as dull 
as the thirteenth had been brilliant. The common law was 
committed to judges and lawyers who knew their own business 
but nothing else. Under them the law became an occult sci- 
ence. They were mere logicians. The sky might fall, the 
War of the Roses might rage, but they continued the even 
course of their argumentation. The law became full of delays 
as early as Edward III. Evidence of the general dissatisfac- 
tion with the administration of justice is found in the reign 
of Richard II in Wat Tyler's Rebellion and the banishment 
of the judges (1888). The education of the legal profession 
was taken away from the universities, which trained civilians, 
and intrusted to Inns of Court, which were clubs, colleges, and 
trade unions combined. The Inns of Court were therefore 
responsible for the kind of lawyers of the day. Maitland 
says that the one thing distinctive of mediaeval England 
was the Inns of Court. With Fortescue and Littleton, in the 
last of the fifteenth century, the period seemed for a time to 
be becoming more literary, but the hopes of this period were 
not fulfilled, and the publications in the sixteenth century were 
little more than alphabetical abridgments. The common law 
was made tough by these common law lawyers, but perhaps 
it was this toughness which saved it from the Tudors and the 
Stuarts. 
Language. The legal language of this period was, for stat- 
utes, Norman French before the time of Richard III and Eng- 
lish thereafter; and for records, Latin until 1731 in the next 
period. 
Rise of Equity. The one great ameliorating influence in 
this period was that of the Court of Chancery, or Equity, and 
