Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T07:57:59.608Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Profession in the Marketplace: The Distribution of Attorneys in England and Wales 1730-1800

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2011

Philip Aylett
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The history of the professions in England before 1800 is attracting steadily increasing academic interest. Among the most popular areas for study has been the legal profession, and especially its lower branch, the attorneys. A number of these studies have shown that attorneys played a significant role in provincial and metropolitan society during the eighteenth century. Yet, despite the existence of good and detailed information about the distribution of eighteenth century attorneys, no systematic attempt has yet been made to assess the actual number of practitioners present in England (and Wales) at that period. Using lists from both the early eighteenth century and the very beginning of the nineteenth, this article aims to put that right by sketching the statistical background to the energetic and many-sided activities of the attorney, and especially the country variety. The object is to see something of how one numerous branch of an influential profession responded to the economic and social changes of the eighteenth century.

Type
Symposium on the History of the Legal Profession and the Judiciary
Information
Law and History Review , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , Spring 1987 , pp. 1 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Notably Holmes, Geoffrey, Augustan England: Professions, State and Society, 1680–1730 (London, 1982)Google Scholar; Parry, Noel and , José, The Rise of the Medical Profession (London, 1976)Google Scholar. The author wishes to acknowledge the important suggestions made by Dr. D.A. Farnie and Dr. N.J. Higham during the research of which this article is a result.

2. In particular Robson, Robert, The Attorney in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1959)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Anderson, B.L., ‘The Attorney and the Early Capital Market in Lancashire’ in Crouzet, F., ed., Capital Formation in the Industrial Revolution (London, 1972) 223–255Google Scholar; Miles, M., ‘The Money Market in the Early Industrial Revolution: The Evidence from West Riding Attorneys c. 1750–1800’, Business History (July 1981) 127–146CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘“Eminent Practitioners”: The New Visage of Country Attorneys c. 1750–1800’ in Rubin, G.R. and Sugarman, David, eds., Law, Economy and Society, 1750–1914: Essays in the History of English Law (Abingdon, 1984) 470–503Google Scholar [hereinafter: M. Miles, ‘Eminent Practitioners’].

3. Lists of Attornies and Solicitors admitted in pursuance of the late Act for the better Regulation of Attornies and Solicitors: presented to the House of Commons (London, 1729)Google Scholar and Additional Lists of Attornies and Solicitors admitted in pursuance of the late Act… (London, 1731)Google Scholar.

4. Concern expressed at the numbers of attorneys and others in the report of a Select Committee in 1729, and a petition from the West Riding, certainly inspired the Act. 21 Journals of the House of Commons 266–68 (1729).Google Scholar

5. Geoffrey Holmes, Augustan England, supra note 1 at 304, describes the use of Stamp Office apprenticeship registers to illuminate trends in clerkships before 1730, when a period as an attorney's clerk was a common though not a compulsory qualification for a career as an attorney.

6. The frequency of contacts between John Plumbe (1670–1763) of Wavertree near Liverpool and Nicholas Blundell of nearby Little Crosby is well documented. Bagley, J.J., ed., The Great Diurnal of Nicholas Blundell, Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 1968, 1970, 1972.Google Scholar B.L. Anderson, ‘The Attorney and the Early Capital Market in Lancashire’, supra note 2, shows how many small transactions took place between attorneys and their clients in the same area at the same time. Miles, M., ‘Eminent Practitioners’, supra note 2 at 487Google Scholar, shows the importance of frequent, small-scale advice-giving to the attorney in the eighteenth century.

7. Deane, Phyllis and Cole, W.A., British Economic Growth 1688–1959: Trends and Structure (Cambridge, 2d ed. 1967) 103Google Scholar [hereinafter cited as Deane and Cole, British Economic Growth].

8. Ibid., estimating a decline in Suffolk's population from 161,245 in 1701 to 159,577 in 1751. Daniel Defoe, travelling at about this time, found little dynamism in the manufacturing of Suffolk's main towns, such as Ipswich, Sudbury and Bury St. Edmunds, and only a limited seagoing trade. In Norfolk, however, Defoe was able to see ‘a face of diligence spread over the whole country’ with ‘vast manufactures’ carried on, both in Norwich and in the surrounding countryside. Defoe, Daniel, A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain, Everyman's Edition, (London, 1962) i: 42–61Google Scholar. Warwickshire was already growing steadily, especially around Birmingham. Court, W.H.B., The Rise of the Midland Industries 1600–1838 (London, 1938) 69ffGoogle Scholar.

9. Williams, Peter Howell, A Gentleman's Calling: the Liverpool Attorney-at-Law (Liverpool, 1980)Google Scholar, outlines the connections between a maritime town and its lively and influential legal community in the eighteeth and nineteenth centuries.

10. For the growth of Salop's industries, see Trinder, Barrie, The Industrial Revolution in Shropshire (London, 1973)Google Scholar. Defoe, Daniel, A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain supra note 8 at ii: 36–37Google Scholar, was impressed by the trading power of Bristol, which accounted for much of the commerce of Gloucestershire. Court, W. H. B., The Rise of the Midland Industries 1600–1838; supra note 8 at 79ffGoogle Scholar, describes the growth of ironmaking in both Gloucestershire and Salop in the seventeenth century.

11. The Courts of Great Sessions. Williams, David, A History of Modern Wales (London, 2d ed., 1977) 269–70Google Scholar.

12. Bagley, J.J., A History of Lancashire (Beaconsfield, 1967) 22–24Google Scholar.

13. Deane and Cole, British Economic Growth, supra note 7.

14. The ownership of mines in Cornwall, more complex and subdivided than that in Cumberland, may have caused a larger number of disputes and made legal practice in the county more attractive. On the other hand, in Cumberland the historically large number of small farmers must have balanced to some extent the influence of big estates in both industry and agriculture. Rowe, J., Cornwall in the Age of the Industrial Revolution (Liverpool, 1953) 65–66Google Scholar; Marshall, J.D. and Walton, John K., The Lake Counties from 1830 to the mid-twentieth century (Manchester, 1981) 7–8Google Scholar; Mingay, G.E., The Gentry: The Rise and Fall of a Ruling Class (London, 1976) 99–101Google Scholar.

15. Legal and bureaucratic factors may have played a part. It may be significant that while the 1729 Act includes the County Palatine Court of Durham among those courts in which attorneys had to be sworn and admitted, there are no attorneys listed in the Commons returns as having been admitted in that court at that time. It seems likely that there was a rare lapse in the administration of the returns and a consequent underestimation of the number of Durham attorneys.

16. Law, C.M., ‘Some Notes on the Urban Population of England and Wales in the Eighteenth Century’, The Local Historian 10 (1972) 13–26Google Scholar.

17. Quoted in Clark, Peter and Slack, Paul, English Towns in Transition (London, 1976) 19Google Scholar.

18. Towns with fairs or markets were recorded in Owen's New Book of Fairs (1792), whose lists were reproduced in the First Report of the Royal Commission on Market Rights and Tolls, 1889. There may thus be some slight over-or under-estimation of the number of places without fairs or market in 1730 in the percentage noted here.

19. Nicholas Blundell (d. 1737) met his attorneys frequently during the local fairs of southwest Lancashire. For instance, Blundell went to the house of Jameson, an Ormskirk attorney, after visiting the town's fair in June 1704. The Great Diurnal of Nicholas Blundell, supra note 6 at cx:58.

20. Anderson, B.L., ‘The Attorney and the Early Capital Market in Lancashire’, supra note 2 at 223–35Google Scholar, describes the activities of Isaac Greene of Childwall Hall near Liverpool (1678–1749) a highly successful attorney who, despite his proximity to a growing seaport, spent a great deal of his time dealing with landed society in various places in southwest Lancashire.

21. John Plumbe's contacts with Nicholas Blundell often took place at Blundell's house at Little Crosby. The Great Diurnal of Nicholas Blundell, supra note 6 at ex: 18–310.

22. Webb, Sidney and , Beatrice, The Manor and the Borough (London, 1963) i: 16–17Google Scholar.

23. Miles, M., ‘Eminent Practitioners’, supra note 2 at 482.Google Scholar

24. Sidney and Beatrice Webb, The Manor and the Borough, supra note 22 at i:10n.

25. Ibid. at i:83.

26. Several recent studies have emphasised the role of professionals such as attorneys in the activities of the urban middling ranks. Among them are Clark, and Slack, , English Towns in Transition, supra note 17 at 109–10, 120–21Google Scholar and Corfield, P.J., The Impact of English Towns 1700–1800 (Oxford, 1982) 133Google Scholar.

27. Hughes, John, The New Law List (London, 1802)Google Scholar.

28. Robson, Robert, The Attorney in Eighteenth-Century England, supra note 2 at 146Google Scholar, believes that substantial changes took place in the status of attorneys during the eighteenth century, with integrity and professional standards growing in importance. Miles, M., ‘Eminent Practitioners’, supra note 2 at 501–03Google Scholar, sees the family attorney, concerned increasingly with conveyancing and similar matters, and less with litigation, as a product of the period 1660–1750. These developments, if indeed they took place, are not reflected in the relatively conservative statistical trends revealed in this article. Neither the alleged improvement in the standing of attorneys, nor the suggested alteration in the business of the average attorney, away from the riskiness of litigation and towards the richer pickings of conveyancing and advice-giving, seem to have attracted many more people into the profession.

29. Robson, Robert, The Attorney in Eighteenth-Century England, supra note 2 at 5–6.Google Scholar

30. The unqualified ‘hedge solicitor’ appears, on the other hand, to have been a fairly common feature of life in rural England, catering for less prosperous people and sometimes those who had put themselves outside the law. ‘King David’ Hartley, monarch of the Yorkshire coiners, used the services of David Greenwood, hedge solicitor and kerseymaker, in his defence in 1769. Interestingly, Greenwood seems to have worked in concert with a prominent qualified and enrolled attorney, James Carr. John Styles, ‘“Our traitorous money makers”: the Yorkshire coiners and the law, 1760–83’ in Brewer, John and Styles, John, eds., An Ungovernable People: The English and their Law in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London, 1980) 219Google Scholar.

31. The estimated cost of an apprenticeship to an attorney in the 1740s was somewhere between 50 and 300 guineas. Anon., A General Description of all Trades, digested in Alphabetical Order (LondonGoogle Scholar, 1747), quoted in Anderson, B.L., ed., Capital Accumulation in the Industrial Revolution (London, 1974) 119Google Scholar.

32. C.M. Law, ‘Some Notes on the Urban Population of England and Wales in the Eighteenth Century, supra note 16 at 22, 26, calculates that Salisbury's population remained around 7,000 for much of the eighteenth century, while Cambridge's kept within a range between 6,000 and 7,500 from perhaps 1730 to 1775. Attorney numbers in Cambridge rose from 9 in 1730 to 19 in 1802, while Salisbury's were 17 in both 1730 and 1802.

33. Mistley was a small port with a busy trade in malt, but the other places were overwhelmingly agricultural, and all of them were far from London. Booker, John, Essex and the Industrial Revolution (Chelmsford, 1974) 27Google Scholar.

34. Yelling, J.A., Common Field and Enclosure in England 1450–1850 (London, 1977) 15–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35. Tate, W. E., The English Village Community and the Enclosure Movements (London, 1967) 111Google Scholar.

36. The literature on the subject of professional markets has recently been reviewed by Wilfrid Prest in ‘Why the History of the Professions is Not Written’, in Rubin, G. R. and Sugarman, David, eds., Law, Economy and Society, 1750–1914, supra note 2 at 300–20.Google Scholar

37. Yelling, J.A., Common Field and Enclosure in England 1450–1850, supra note 34 at 16.Google Scholar

38. Corfield, P.J., The Impact of English Towns 1700–1800, supra note 26 at 37, 39.Google ScholarBouch, C.M.L., A Short Economic and Social History of the Lake Counties 1500–1830 (Manchester, 1961)Google Scholar Chs. IX, X.

39. Jenkins, D.T. and Ponting, K.G., The British Wool Textile Industry 1770–1914 (London, 1982) 1–56Google Scholar.

40. Victoria County History: East Riding Yorkshire (London, 1969) i: 174–14Google Scholar.

41. Corfield, P.J., The Impact of English Towns, 1700–1800, supra note 26 at 112.Google Scholar

42. Law, C.M., ‘Some Notes on the Urban Population of England and Wales in the Eighteenth Century’, supra note 16 at 26.Google Scholar

43. Attorneys played an important part in many late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth century urban housing developments, for instance. The activity of attorneys in both the promotion and financing of building schemes is especially well recorded. Chalklin, C.W., The Provincial Towns of Georgian England: A Study of the Building Process 1740–1820 (London, 1974) 59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44. Attorneys seem usually to have preferred the role of business adviser to that of entrepreneur, although Thomas Williams was a notable success in both parts in eighteenth-century Anglesey. Harris, J.R., The Copper King: A Biography of Thomas Williams of Llanidan (Liverpool, 1964)Google Scholar.

45. In his first New Law List, (London, 1799)Google Scholar, Hughes asked readers to provide him with information, post paid, which could help him to make the next edition ‘a complete Law List’.

46. John Plumbe, for example, moved from the Prescot/Whiston area of Lancashire to Wavertree, much nearer Liverpool during the course of his career and as his prosperity grew. Anderson, B.L., ‘The Attorney and the Early Capital Market in Lancashire’, supra note 2 at 242.Google Scholar

47. Mathias, Peter, ‘The Social Structure in the Eighteenth Century: A Calculation by Joseph Massie’, The Transformation of England (London, 1979) 171–89Google Scholar.

48. Holmes, Geoffrey, in ‘Gregory King and the Social Structure of Pre-Industrial England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., (1977) 41–68Google Scholar, questions the objectivity of King's figures and suggests that caution should be liberally used when it comes to applying his conclusions. In particular, Holmes believes, King underestimated the number of gentlemen. There may well have been 20,000 of them. However, if this criticism were true, it would still leave lawyers as a very important group. In addition, Holmes's attack on King's estimate of the lawyers’ mean income of £140 a year—he says it is far too low—would indicate that legal men were even more prosperous and economically influential than King calculated. The relationships between the figures, of course, could still be roughly correct even if individual totals were different.

49. Deane, and Cole, , British Economic Growth, supra note 7 at 103–104.Google Scholar