Барристеры XVI – начала XVII в.: между степенью и профессией

Abstract

Статья посвящена барристерам – студентам судебных подворий, активно превращающихся в практикующих адвокатов и консультантов. Показано, что термин «барристер» использовался как для обозначения обучающегося студента (inner-barrister), так и закончившего цикл обучения (upper-barrister). Обозначен переходный статус барристеров, история их эволюции, сфера профессиональной деятельности, численность, уровень доходов.

The article is devoted to barristers: students and graduates of judicial courts who actively became practicing counselors and consultants. The term "barrister" was used both to designate students (inner-barrister) and those called to the bar (upper-barrister). English jurisprudence and the English Bar in the post-Reformation period underwent essential changes. The multiple growth of trials required more lawyers, increased their incomes, raised the prestige of the profession. The obvious public demand increased the number of young people entering the Inns of Court (a "third university") to receive education, and led to a significant increase in the number of their graduates, i.e. upper-barristers admitted to the bar. In the 16th century, barristers, using the shortage of professional lawyers and solicitors, began to attempt themselves in these fields. Thus it was the start of a long transformation of a barrister from a person who received a degree in the Inns of Court to a practicing lawyer and a pleader. This practice was fixed in 1590 by a judicial precedent; according to it, the admission to the bar in one of the Inns of Court granted the right to practice law in the courts of common law and was evidence of a sufficient qualification of a lawyer. Barristers had the right to handle cases in the courts of Westminster (the Court of the King Bench, the Chancery, the Court of Requests, etc.), with the exception of the Court of Common Pleas, the most profitable one. Barristers accompanied judges and handled cases in assize circuits and in provincial courts. Barristers worked as members of justices of the peace in provincial counties, stewards in manorial courts, recorders in cities and towns, clerks of city guilds and corporations, attorneys in provincial courts. They were commissioners of bankruptcy, usurers, large land purchasers and landowners, shareholders of trading companies, owners of mines, men draining swamps and marshes. The author believes that barristers with wide horizontal connections inside the judiciary in the capital and provincial circles built up a significant pool of clients and received high incomes. In the 16th-17th centuries, barristers had not yet created their own professional corporation, remaining members of the Inns of Court that admitted them to the bar.