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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
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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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