19. ZANE: THE FIVE AGES 683 reader, and the expense of readers' feasts at the Inns became very great. After a student had studied for seven years | (afterwards reduced to five), he was ehgible to be called to the bar. The barristers before becoming Serjeants were probably called apprentices, although that term was some-, times applied to the students. Whether an examination was required is problematical, but possibly that part of the ceremony of instituting a Serjeant, which requires the Ser- jeant to plead to a declaration, points to an examination of some perfunctory sort. While the students were pursuing their studies in the law, they were instructed in various other branches of learning, if we may believe Fortescue. Singing, all kinds of music, dancing, and sports were taught to the students in the same manner as those who were brought up in the king's house- hold were instructed. The revels and masques of the law students became a great feature of court life. On week days the greater part of the students devoted themselves to their legal studies, but on festival days and Sundays after divine service, they read the Holy Scriptures and pro- fane history. In the Inns of Court every virtue is learned and every vice is banished, says Fortescue; the discipline is pleasant, and in every way tends to proficiency. Such is the reputation of these schools that knights, barons, and the higher nobility put their children here, not so much for the purpose of making them lawyers as to form their man- ners and bring them up with a sound training. The con- stant harmony among the students, the absence of piques or differences or any bickerings or disturbances, which For- tescue asserts, taxes our credulity. But he claims that an expulsion from an Inn was feared more by the students than punishments are dreaded by criminals. The high social position of the students, a phenomenon that is always noticeable in the English barrister, is warmly commended by Fortescue. The expense of the residence at an Inn, which is twenty-eight pounds a year (equal to almost twenty times that amount at present money values), restricts the study of the law to the sons of gentle folk. The neces- sity of a servant doubles this expense, and the poor and
