counsel; Mason's own charges for writing and engrossing and journeying about on Corsellis's business are made up of small amounts of 3s. 4d. and 6s. 8d.

Mason's other clients seem to have been farmers and landowners of moderate wealth. There was a sprinkling of professional people and smaller tradesmen―a hatter, a fishmonger. But he did some business for people of a higher status such as Sir William Rowley and Sir Edmund and Lady Affleck. Occasionally he was employed by an attorney from outside the county to conduct cases at the Assizes, but for the most part his clients came from Colchester and the surrounding district of north-east Essex.

The practice of Samuel Meddowes at Halstead was even more limited.1 His account book for the years 1770-5 has survived, but only some 110 clients are mentioned during this period. By far the largest part of his business was connected with the purchase and sale of land and other property, and with arranging small mortgages -the largest sum he was asked to obtain was £200. Thirteen entries relate to the making of wills and the winding up of estates, twelve to the recovery of debts, thirteen to the administration of estatesserving ejectment notices and making distraints, eleven to mortgages. Three entries concer nmarriage settlements, one of which was that between the Revd Mr Houghton and Miss Moss, which had to be laid before Charles Gray of Colchester for his perusal, and involved consultations with a broker about investments in the funds. Only two entries relate to parish business. Meddowes's clients were of very humble standing when compared with such men as the Duke of Bridgewater, but they too had their problems which involved matters of law, and could afford a lawyer to look after them. Meddowes's charges may have been more moderate than most; he was not over-exacting in his demands, and left several debts to be collected by his successor, Samuel Alston.

Very different was the career of Thomas Nuthall, the attorney of William Pitt and many other leading figures of the day. Nuthall held many valuable offices in addition to his normal practice. He was registrar of warrants in 1740, receiver-general for hackney coaches in 1749, solicitor to the East India Company in 1765, solicitor to the Treasury in 1765, and secretary of bankrupts in 1766. In 1766 also he had been appointed Ranger of Enfield Chase, a position in which he displayed much zeal in planting and caring 1 E.R.O. D/DQM.

for the oaks.1 Chatham employed Nuthall as an intermediary in his attempts to form an administration in 1766, and in May wrote to thank him for his 'unlawyer-like zeal for your friend'.2

Nuthall himself had much to be thankful for, and for such a client as Chatham he could hardly be other than zealous. But there are signs of dissatisfaction later. In 1772 there was a dispute about a mortgage of Hayes which Temple and Chatham were inclined to blame on Nuthall. The fault was indeed his, for he had omitted a whole parcel of lands from the mortgage deeds which he had drawn up. 'Here is a story', Chatham wrote, 'of a mistake to me quite incomprehensible, had I not often found that lawyers, hurried by variety of business, are the most stupid blunderers imaginable.' Temple's reply was no more complimentary to Nuthall:

At my return to this place (Stowe) on Sunday last, I found your Lordship's letter, together with one of the 4th from that facetious man of business in so many departments, Mr Thomas Nuthall, whose fellow is not easily to be met with: witness your marriage settlement not witnessed, his peremptory and repeated assertions, that your trustees had no power to advance the trust money on mortgage, even though I quoted the very words to him, and his late unparalleled proceedings, which the better to ascertain I send you the copies of the letters which have already passed, leaving the comparison of his letters to you and me, the dates, the contradictions, and the comments to your lordship....I rely with the fullest security on your lordship's honour, but not at all on Mr Nuthall's law.4

In 1775 Nuthall died as a result of an attack by a highwayman, and in July Horace Walpole noted in his Journal, 'Just now the widow of Nuttall, solicitor of the Treasury, who had embezzled £19,000, had a pension of £300 a year to induce her to give up her husband's papers, who had been engaged in many election matters'.5

1 Nuthall wrote to Chatham on 21 June 1768: 'I hope I shall leave behind me innumerable proofs, that with care and common honesty in office, the fleets of this land may be supplied from the King's forests and chases only. I had rather this should be written on my monument, than any one compliment that can be given to the last peace' (Chatham Correspondence, ed. W. S. Taylor and J. H. Pringle (London, 1840), II, 424-5).

2 Ibid. p. 419, Pitt to Nuthall, 11 May 1766.

3 Grenville Papers, ed. W. J. Smith (London, 1852), IV, 543; Chatham to Temple, 30 August 1772.

4 Ibid. IV, 545; Temple to Chatham, 8 September 1772.

5 Last Journals, 1, 469–70.

Attorneys of the eminence of Nuthall were clearly exceptional, but there were a few others-John Robinson, Jack Robinson of the Treasury, and Brass Crosby, M.P. for Honiton and Lord Mayor of London in 1770, for example-who held positions of national importance. There was a sprinkling of attorneys in the House of Commons, but the fact that they did not reach the House until fairly late in life suggests that they too, like Nuthall and Robinson, owed their positions to some patron or other, rather than to the fact that they were attorneys, although it was clearly as attorneys that they were useful to their patrons in the first place.1 But there were many others, like Mr Goodman, 'who lives in Pall Mall and keeps both Chariot and Phaeton, and Fame says has got 20 to £60,000 by Matrimony',2 who made their mark in the social life of London.

Any assessment of the importance of all this work is difficult, for in most cases the attorneys were only the agents of other men, and a valuation of this sort would perhaps emerge more clearly from a study which viewed the profession from the point of view of society, than from one which looked at society from the attorney's office. Attorneys were often despised because they were merely agents, but such criticisms became less and less apt in a society whose structure was changing so fundamentally, and in which many new pieces of social machinery were being found necessary. In a simple society middle-men may perhaps justly be despised as parasites, but eighteenth-century English society was not simple, and by the end of this period there could be little doubt that its 'agents' played an essential part as a sort of social lubricant. Without them the social changes of the period would have taken place less quickly and less smoothly.

So it was perhaps easier than it had been for attorneys to justify their calling as useful and therefore honourable, the more so since they filled so many places which were later to become the preserves of more specialised professions. And if the profession was found to be honourable, it was also found to be profitable. It certainly attracted a wide variety of men, but the great majority of them

1 Out of some 700 lawyers in the House between 1734 and 1832, thirty-nine were attorneys and solicitors. See G. P. Judd Iv, Members of Parliament, 17341832 (Yale, 1955), p. 51; Mr Judd also notices that 'Attorneys and solicitors did not receive their first election until they had reached the average age of 48' (ibid. p. 52).

2 Verney Letters of the Eighteenth Century, ed. M. M. Verney (London, 1930), II, 289 (Archdeacon Heslop to Lord Verney, 6 April 1787).

occupied and maintained-a position in the middle ranges of society, and formed part of what was perhaps a new social class. It was certainly new in its self-consciousness, and in the place it was accorded in society as a whole. As has been shown, these men were already among the leaders of provincial society, and in 1800 they were only entering on a role whose period of major influence lay in the future. But even at that date, they had established themselves in a position of strength, and the respectability of their calling was conceded.

CHAPTER VII

ESTATES AND ELECTIONS

GIVING evidence before the Select Committee on Legal Education in 1846, Sir George Stephen, an attorney and solicitor, said: 'It is quite impossible to define within a narrow compass the nature of a solicitor's business: it extends to anything, it extends to everything: law, I should say, forms about the least part of the duty of a solicitor in a large practice."1 What was true in this matter in the nineteenth century was at least equally true in the eighteenth, before the specialisation of activities which resulted in the development of many distinct professions. It was certainly true that the part of the attorney's business which involved him in court cases was a small part of his normal activities. A very much larger part of his time was spent in organisation and administration in many different capacities, and perhaps the greatest single source of business and of profit was his concern with landed property, and all the problems it involved. It was from their work in these important fields that the attorneys derived much of their profit and their prestige. In view of the paramount importance of land at the time, this is not surprising. Land was the foundation of wealth and of many social attitudes and aspirations; it was directly connected with local and political influence.2 The laws regulating tenures and inheritance were many and complicated, the subject of innumerable treatises and hand-books, and the source, it was alleged by landowners, of much unwarranted profit to lawyers.3 The buying and selling of even the smallest estate might involve complicated legal problems, prolonged investigations of the title deeds, and the drawing of long and intricate conveyancing deeds. In the case of a major estate, these problems were all multiplied, and they were exacerbated by involved settlements, trusts, and all the rights and duties inextricably linked up with landed property.

All this meant that the services of a legal expert were desirable,

1 Reports, Committees (1846), X, 141.

2 On this, see Sir Lewis Namier's remarks on land as the basis of citizenship in England in the Age of the American Revolution (London, 1930), pp. 20–9. 3 On the land laws, see Sir Frederick Pollock, The Land Laws (3rd ed. London, 1896).