ABSTRACT
The legal profession was a significant element in late-medieval English society, both by reason of its intellectual contribution to the development of England’s characteristic institutions and traditions and by reason of the opportunities which it provided for the gifted individual to rise and prosper. The most clearly identifiable and best documented branch of the English legal profession was the order or fraternity of seijeants-at-law. The study of the legal profession as a whole must therefore, to a large extent, be part of the history of the inns of court and chancery. The inns of court did not begin to infiltrate the Chancery bench until the middle of Henry VIII’s reign. From 1529 to 1544 two common lawyers (More and Audley) held the great seal, and from 1534 until after 1550 laymen filled the office of master of the rolls. The largest single group of lawyers were the attorneys.
