PREFACE.
foundations and form the groundwork of more scholarly and accurate biographical knowledge than it has hitherto been possible to obtain.
Our painters and engravers, our judges, our naval heroes, some of our archbishops, and even our authors have had special works devoted to them by able biographers. Yet it is remarkable that neither of the seats of learning, our universities and our inns of court, with their records carefully and elaborately kept for at least three centuries, should have possessed men strong enough to compile from time to time histories of their contemporaries and forerunners, and that these corporations should have lacked the public spirit to have stood sponsors to undertakings which to us of this generation would have been priceless. The works of Antony A'Wood and of Dugdale, and the MSS. of Cole, are evidence, however, of what could be effected if means only could have been found for their extension. The secret of failure is doubtless to be found in the fact that their value to posterity is ignored, or perhaps even undreamt of, and they are therefore denied legitimate support, even by the very corporations whose history they serve to illustrate.
We have it, then, that the continuous history of these institutions is yet to be written. But although the several universities each possess their calendar, yet the Inns of Court have never even in their corporate or collective capacity been able to rise to the university level. A spirited attempt was, indeed, made by the under-treasurer of the Middle Temple a few years ago, but it failed to arouse the interest of those concerned. This was most probably because it abounded merely in what seemed at the time common knowledge, yet unquestionably as time rolls on, his carefully compiled and useful volumes will be eagerly consulted by the legal biographer.
I have already advanced so far with my scheme as to have completed the list from the earliest times of Scottish members of parliament,[1] and to have made some progress with those of English and Irish representatives. It will, however, I find, be more advantageous to give precedence for the present to my lists of barristers. For this there are two reasons. In the first place, the material which they contain is of greater value or illustrating the other lists than conversely, and should, therefore, be dealt with first; in the second, their precious genealogical information is at once the most interesting and the most unknown. It was while collecting materials, a few years ago, for the annotation of the lists I am completing, as mentioned above, from the official returns of the members of parliament, that my attention was specially drawn to the value of the registers of admissions to the Inns of Court, "the noblest nurseries of humanity and liberty in the kingdom."
- ↑ Members of Parliament, Scotland, 1357-1882 (privately printed), pp. 360.
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