the business of the bank by appointing agents in other towns in the border counties, a matter in which his professional connections were of some help. The bank was prepared to allow him to undertake all aspects of banking business, provided that he fitted up an office solely for this purpose, and they sent a clerk from Paisley to help him with this. Like all eighteenth-century business correspondence, this one contains references to many other matters. Hodgson supplied Hog with salmon, and on one occasion sent him a greyhound. Hog in his turn suggested that there might be money to be made in exporting coals from Cumberland to Dublin in 1792, and advised Hodgson about the possibility of setting up a cotton manufactory in 1793. Most attorneys had no such direct connection with the banking world, but all of them seem to have played an important part in transacting financial business. The negotiation of loans was a major part of their business, and in most cases the money they dealt with was that of their clients, but occasionally they put out their own. William Adams, a Sheffield attorney at the beginning of the century, seems to have lent his own money to clients, in sums of £60 and £100, and also in sums of £2 or £3. Most of the money he handled, however, belonged to others.1 Samuel Dawson, another Sheffield attorney, had a more extensive business of this kind. In his case the sums involved were much larger. John Bright wrote in April 1747 for a further loan of £1000.2 Another client, Thomas Hinckesman, wrote in August 1754 thanking Dawson for his offer to put out £500 for his mother. In 1765 Dawson was asked to procure £2000 for William Howley on the security of land worth £3000. I have it in my power to make the security better, perhaps as good again, but I hope there is no need of it. The gentleman need not fear the sum increasing by an accumulation of interest, as I will sooner lose my head than forfeit the Equity of Redemption. Of my lands I may 1 Diary and Account Book of William Adams, MS. Sheffield City Libraries. Joseph Hunter, Hallamshire (ed. Alfred Gatty, London, 1869), p. 432 n. 1, quotes the following lines about Adams by Henry Parke, curate of Wentworth: 'Adams the wealthy, good, and mild, He builds his house and tills his field; But amongst all attornies he A miracle is sure to be Who follows law with honesty.' 2 Tibbitts] C[ollection], 522/16, 30 April 1747. 9 T.C. 522/99, 19 August 1754. perhaps sell some for which reason I shall not engage them. Before the matter goes much further, I must beg to know who the lender is. I should not care to come into the hands of a money scrivener that lets out his own money in others' names, and twice a year renews the securities....1 The lender was not a money scrivener, but a Lieutenant-Colonel of the Queen's Dragoons of Mansfield, 'of as good a temper and as much integrity as any gentlemen in the country; he is now retired and out of the army, and proposes to live upon the income of what he has, and if his interests be duly paid will have no thought of calling in his money...."2 This loan was negotiated by Dawson through Charles Bellamy of Mansfield. Dawson seems to have been widely known as an agent in these matters, and in December 1768, another attorney, Jonathan Dawson, wrote to him: 'I have at present 5 or £600, shall have £900 or £1000 in a month or thereabouts. Also £2000 the 1st May and £2000 the 12th May next but would wish to have the two latter sums go in three securities of £1000, £1000, and £2000 or thereabouts. If these or any of them suit or are likely to suit, I shall be glad to hear from you and to divide the profits as usual. Also several sums of £100 and £200 at present." Dawson was still conducting business with this correspondent in 1772, when he told him: 'Within a fortnight past I have lent £1000 at £4-10 and £2500 at £4-5 on as good security as is in Yorkshire, and it is with difficulty now to be procured at £4-10 which is the interest expected for this money.'4 Dawson was in business at least until 1776.5 He had an extensive practice. He had been articled to John Battie whose daughter he had married. Some indication of one side of his business, the problems it involved, and the kind of person it meant dealing with, is given in this correspondence. In this, as in other branches of the attorney's work, it is very clear that the slightest suspicion of improper behaviour would have a disastrous effect on a man's practice. When so much depended on a reputation for honest dealing and a respectable connection, the anxiety of the attorneys to be thought respectable is very understandable, as also is their indignation at the undiscriminating abuse to which they were sometimes subjected. 1 T.C. 522/246, 27 September 1765. 2 T.C. 522/247, 4 October 1765. 4 T.C. 522/319, 13 July 1772. Certainly the position had its temptations. Benjamin Rogers noted in his diary on 26 June 1733, I heard a month or more ago that Mr Thomas Binkley, attorney at law of Eynsbury, was gone off 4 or £5000 in debt. He was a man of good credit in his profession, by which means he had the putting out a great deal of other people's money, and it is said he has carried with him most if not all of the above mentioned sum and I now hear he is gone beyond the sea. Cave cui credas.1 Many of the critics of the profession noted less respectable financial dealings among attorneys than those of Samuel Dawson. Robert Holloway's strictures are highly coloured, but they are perhaps merely exaggerated statements of real practices. He censured the custom where attorneys make a trade of discounting small bills of ten or twenty pounds, that do not hold out a probability of prompt payment, for a bill upon the house of Child or Drummond would not answer their purpose; four times out of five the bill is not paid when due, which does answer their purpose. The next morning process is sued out, and £15 or £16 costs in proportion to the number of endorsers, either real or fictitious, is added to the debt of a less sum: this lays the foundation of judgments upon judgments, and a vast accumulation of costs, the dreadful proceedings we reprobate. And we know several instances where an attorney has contrived to make £100 cost upon a debt of £10 within twelve months. Let any man read the daily papers, and notice the great number of advertisements offering sums of money upon notes, bills, or other securities of respectable tradesmen; who are these reptilized sprigs of Croesus? the diabolical jackals of more diabolical attorneys.2 He adds, 'We know of an attorney who, in 18 months sued out ninety tailable actions, all grounded upon small bills, that came into his hands from similar means; this is what they call made business, and, to say the truth, much is made of it." Financial transactions of this sort were clearly not beneficial to the community, and there was another which Holloway also censured, which was that he ascribed to Mr Gregory Bateman, whose 'parents kept a secondhand clothes shop at the end of Monmouth Street. At a very early age he was admitted an attorney; and, without fortune, family 1 Diary of Benjamin Rogers, Bedfordshire Historical Records Society, xxx (1950). 2 Robert Holloway, Strictures on the Characters of the most prominent practising Attornies (1805-11), p. 88. 3 Ibid. p. 89. connexions, or a capacity above mediocrity, he soon acquired some monied connexions, which gradually increased, until he found himself able to command vast sums, and become, as it were, banker to most of the distressed men of fashion in town. His house was the depot of title-deeds, and other permanent securities, upon the credit of which he procured pecuniary accommodations to an immense amount, and his notes passed with a currency and credit almost equal to the national bank-insomuch, that it became a proverbial saying "Guineas at BATEMAN'S at two pence a bushel"." 1 Robert Holloway, op. cit., p. 67. CHAPTER IX TWO ATTORNEYS I. CHRISTOPHER WALLIS THE Journal of Christopher Wallis, attorney of Helston in Cornwall, gives a vivid picture of the life of an attorney in the period 1790-1815.1 Wallis was the eldest son of a schoolmaster.2 He had been articled to William Sandys, a member of a prominent family of attorneys in Helston,3 and was admitted to the Roll in 1769. His Journal is extremely detailed, and must have been a labour of several hours every week. All the work he did is recorded meticulously, together with long and interesting accounts of the state of the tin and copper mines and of agriculture in Cornwall during these years. At the beginning of each volume there is a survey of the main events of his year, and at the end there is usually a passage in which he reflects on events in Europe in this crowded period, and he has much to say about that 'frantic, eccentric, clever fellow, Napoleon'. There are occasional gaps in the Journal-he did not always record his business journeys to London-but for the most part it is very full, and when it is not, there is usually an entry in which he rebukes himself for his failure, and resolves to be more painstaking in the future. And, in addition to this account of a large and varied practice, there are many passages which reveal Wallis's attitude to his calling, and show him to have been eminently, and self-consciously, respectable, the very type of that élite of attorneys which was more and more deciding the character of the profession at the end of the century. Wallis's assiduity in compiling his journal is a reflection of the attention he devoted to his work. He rose very early-at 5, 4, even 3 o'clock, and after dealing with some correspondence at his home in Trevarno, went in to his office at Helston, and stayed there until 9 or 10 o'clock at night. On Sundays and holidays the pace 1 This Journal, only portions of which survive for the period 1790-1815, is preserved in the library of the Royal Institution of Cornwall at Truro. 2 Nicholas Wallis, master of the endowed school at Madron. See H. S. Toy, The History of Helston (Oxford, 1936), p. 301. 3 See Toy, op. cit., esp. pp. 601-2. 4 In August 1810 he copied into his Journal an extract from the Cornish Gazette which calculated that 'The difference between rising every morning at |