13 - The rewards of the profession: fees and payments

Summary

Chaucer's ‘Man of Law’ begins his ‘tale’ with a diatribe against the ‘hateful harm’ of poverty, an opening entirely in character with a serjeant-at-law who:

For his science and for his heigh renoun

Of fees and robes hadde he many oon.

So great a purchasour was no-wher noon.

Al was fee simple to him in effect, His purchasing mighte nat been infect.

The audience would have caught the allusion at once; wealth was the goal of the lawyer, the measure of success. It would have enjoyed, also, the Serjeant's praise of wealthy merchants:

O riche marchaunts, ful of wele ben ye,

O noble, o prudent folk, as in this cas!

Your bagges been nat filled with ambes as [a

pair of aces],

But with sis cink [a six-five], that renneth

for your chaunce;

At Cristemasse merie may ye daunce …

This identification of the law and wealth is universally made, and generally in terms less urbane than Chaucer's. The besetting sin, almost the trade-mark of the lawyers, is avarice. Refusing to share knowledge except for money appears a simple lack of charity, and the esoteric language and exclusiveness of the profession seem a conspiracy to fleece the layman. In medieval England this was a stock theme of the moralist, increasingly heard as lawyers became better organised and more influential. When Thomas Kebell joined the profession, the anonymous London Lickpenny was in circulation:

In Westminster I found one

Went in a longe gowne of ray;

I crowched, I kneled before them anon,

‘For Mary's love’, of helpe I gan them pray. […]