become a discontented class in revolt against a system which condemned them to a position of social inferiority'.1 But this study leads to a contrary conclusion, and suggests that the attorneys who were acting as officers in the militia, and as secretaries to Church and King Clubs and Associations for the Protection of Liberty and Property, were more typical of their profession than was John Frost. Respectability and Jacobinism rarely went together.

It was in the nineteenth century that the professional classes came into their own, and the standards of professional morality which they set were in some measure those which decided the tone of society as a whole. Certainly the epithet 'respectable' is one which was frequently applied to these people, and it was one which many were proud to deserve. For however justly respectability may sometimes be linked with hypocrisy, at this time it represented a valuable and important attitude, which played its part in the process described by G. M. Young as the 'moralizing of society'.3 The conditions and complexities of the new age demanded new standards and new organisations for those who had its work to do, and it was of some importance that the attorneys and others entered it with these standards clearly before them, and with suitable organisations either already in existence, or at hand.

1 Halévy, England in 1815, p. 22.

2 John Frost (1750-1842) was educated at Winchester, and became an attorney. He was struck off the Roll in 1797 as a result of a trial for sedition. He was given a free pardon by the Regent in 1813, but a move to have him reinstated as an attorney in 1815 failed, since the 'court held that his want of practice and experience in the profession made him presumably unfit for the employment' (State Trials, XXII; D.N.B.). William Hone, who was sent to an attorney's office in London in 1790 at the age of ten, was removed by his father when he came under the influence of the Corresponding Society, and sent to another attorney in Chatham. He left the law in 1800 for bookselling and publishing (D.N.B.). 3 G. M. Young, Victorian England: Portrait of an Age (Oxford, 1949), p. 4.

APPENDIX I

THE APPRENTICESHIPS OF RICHARD
CARRE AND SAMUEL BERRIDGE

RICHARD CARRE was articled to Thomas Wright and Francis Sitwell, attorneys at Sheffield in the early part of the eighteenth century. His Day Book, which is preserved at Sheffield,1 gives a detailed picture of his life as an articled clerk in the period 1724-30. It begins appropriately enough on 2 December 1724, 'Engrossed a deed', for this seems to have been one of his principal occupations, together with that of attending his master on his business journeys, especially to hold manorial courts, and to enter indentures of apprenticeship at the Hall of the Cutlers' Company in Sheffield. At sessions time he went with him to Doncaster, York, Rotherham, and Chesterfield. He was sent to Wakefield to buy stamps, he issued subpoenas, collected rents, and when there was no work of this kind to be done, he occupied his time in copying out precedents, or reading from such current legal manuals as Giles Jacob's Common Law Common Plac'd.

Carre's masters seem to have taken the task of training him very seriously. The main purpose of the Day Books seems to have been to act as a sort of check on his activities, and may perhaps have served as documentary evidence of his diligence-or lack of itduring his clerkship, and have been produced for the inspection of the judges when he was seeking admission. This at least seems to be the meaning of the various marginal comments added in a hand different from that of the main body of the text, and which is presumably that of the master.

On 31 January 1726/7, the clerk notes, '12 sheets of Bradesford's answer-Bradesford had not the skin till almost noon'. Beneath this is written in a different hand, "This is the engrossment of the answer and is 39 lines of the skin and is but 10 sheets of the draft and 2 lines though here it is said 12, these sheets are very wide and there happens to be a sheet or more of the 10 struck out, but however all this should have been done in less than two hours and

Tibbitts] C[ollection] 384.

better done than it is done'. On 6 April 1727 Carre writes: 'Finished Swynson's writ'; to this is added the comment: 'Although you have writ that Swynson's writ is finished I find it is not, let there be a fourth copy made, and stay in your office from 8 in the morning till noon and from 2 to 7 and see if business cannot be better minded. If it be not I must at last come....' This has been heavily scored through, so that the last words are indecipherable; perhaps the clerk was anxious that those looking over his book should not be able to read his master's strictures on his behaviour.

Between the entries for 11 and 12 July 1727, the master had written: 'Friday 14, 10 in the morning I find nothing entered to be done of Wednesday and Thursday and he lay out of my house last night and not yet come in.' On 8 May the master noted: 'Although I required every night you should enter what you had done that day here is nothing done in my absence since Wednesday the 3rd.' On 17 July Carre claimed to have copied out a conveyance, but his master noted: 'At 10 o'clock of Monday night there was not a sheet of this conveyance copied, and he not in when the doors were locked....' Again the remainder has been scored through too heavily to be legible. Some days afterwards Carre noted that he had nothing before him to do. On such occasions he might be employed in running errands for Mrs Wright.

On 3 February 1727/8, Carre went up to London with Sitwell, and returned to Sheffield on 21 March. The details about this visit are not recorded in the Day Book, but are apparently given in a note book preserved at Renishaw Hall. He travelled, wrote Sir George Sitwell,1 'Carrying the portmantle and mail leather bag strapped with rings and staples on the saddle behind him'. Both travellers carried a pair of pistols. Once in London, the clerk was kept busy with the legal business of the visit which was entrusted to him, while his master did the more important work, and paid social calls on his relatives. He was 'kept busy running about between the King's Bench, the Green Seal Office, Register Office, Custos Brevium Office, King's Silver Office in Brick Court, Alienation Office, Cursitor's Office, Chirographer's Office, Return Office, Warrants of Attorney Office, and so forth'.2

On his return to Sheffield the Day Book begins again. On 10 July he records that he 'read several trials for High Treason, not

1 G. R. Sitwell, The Hurts of Haldworth (Oxford, 1930), ch. xv, p. 267. 2 Ibid. p. 269.

having any other book to inform myself in', and on 22 July, ‘Had nothing before me and read all day in Bridall's works upon conveyances to the 32nd page'. On 29 August he was 'with Mr Sitwell at Town taking the Master Cutler's account and afterwards at the Feast'.1 On 25 September he spent the morning making a fair copy of a will, and attended the school burgesses feast in the afternoon. He kept an account of all the money spent and received by him on his master's account-payments for letters, stationery, rents and fines received at manorial courts.2

In the same collection at Sheffield is another Day Book which seems also to have been Carre's. Apart from the single note saying, 'lay out of my house a second time...', there are no more strictures on his behaviour, but he still had to account for himself, and still noted the books he had been reading. These included the Compleat Attorney, the Statute Laws, Littleton's Tenures, Nelson's Justice of the Peace, Brown on Fines, Common Law Common Plac'd, and the Guide to the Conveyancer. He read up such subjects as baron and feme, settlements and removals, and the practice of the ecclesiastical court. On one occasion he was able to put his legal knowledge to his own use. ‘1 October 1729. Went over to my mother's to inquire and meet people who were about presenting a watercourse belonging to her when having produced and examined our witnesses, convinced them of their error. 8 October, went about 3 miles about a little business of my own with master's leave. '3

Samuel Berridge was articled to William Leigh a solicitor of Bardon, near Taunton, and the correspondence between Leigh, Samuel's father (a Leicester attorney), and a friend of both parties, Mr Huxtable, a master at Rugby School, in 1820, illustrates the conditions under which Leigh's articled clerks lived.1

On 19 April Leigh wrote to Huxtable:

...I have always been very particular upon such occasions which the peculiar situation and circumstances of my home and family in which my clerks are more than ordinarily inmates and part of the society render more than usually requisite; and as in January last I articled my own son...it is become more essential to my comfort to be very cautious 1 Sitwell was Clerk to the Cutlers' Company. 2 T.C. 385.

3 T.C. 386.

4 These letters are printed in W. E. Beasley, The Early History of an Old Leicester Firm of Attorneys, 1767-1865 (privately printed, Leicester, 1930), pp. 24-7. I am most grateful to the Leicester City Librarian for sending this book to Cambridge for my use.

in the selection both as my two articled clerks will be so young in the office at the same time, and as I would not for any consideration on earth introduce to the society of my son a young man in the least degree likely to set him a bad example upon any one point, as he is in himself, I am most thankful to say, as well disposed a youth as can possibly be. I will therefore enter at some length into my views. I have been led to think not only that a very good classical education is necessary for the profession.... My clerks work very hard and we do not know the meaning of 'office hours'. All hours within which I want them are office hours.... My articled clerks must look up to and respect my highly respectable managing clerk, Mr Rowcliffe, whom I have brought up and who has been with me upwards of 14 years. My writing clerk is as good a lad as can possibly be; we never hear of a dog or a gun. Business and study fill up the hours here. The situation and peculiar circumstances of my family prevent my taking any young gentleman who is not of the Established Church. My terms are 600 guineas, and my clerks pay for their washing out of the house, and I always stipulate...for obvious reasons that in the case of sickness the clerk should be provided with lodging and attendants as well as medical assistance by his father. You do not mention the age of the young gentleman...and as the distance is too great to propose an interview, which I have always wished, as so much depends upon the manners of the young gentleman and the way in which he has been brought up, and as my clerks are certainly cast with the best society in the neighbourhood, I trust it would not be considered indelicate towards either you or Mr Berridge that I make these general inquiries, that the reasons into which I have thought it best to enter so fully, necessarily will require my having most satisfactorily answered; at the same time I shall be happy to hear from you whether you think your young friend will answer the description I have endeavoured to give of what I wish my clerks to be.

On 27 April Mr Berridge wrote to Huxtable approving these conditions-except the 600 guineas which he wanted reduced to 500-and said, '...he requires no more as to character and conduct than every gentleman similarly circumstanced ought to do'. He added that his son would 'be 16 on 22 May next and from his infancy was taught to revere the King and the Established Church'. These conditions were eventually agreed to. Samuel was told to write to Leigh sending a specimen of his handwriting, and Leigh wrote that he thought it would develop into a good business hand, but that he regretted that the young man was not acquainted with law hands. When the period of articles was over Samuel returned to Leicester and became a partner in his father's firm.