Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/645

 19. ZANE: THE FIVE AGES 631 and divorce. Now under Henry I. began the practice of sending trained lawyers throughout the realm to take pleas of the crown and to hear civil causes. At the same time Roger of Salisbury, who was the legal adviser of Henry I., developed the exchequer portion of the king's court. A [group of men, some of them trained lawyers, gathered in 'the exchequer tribunal. They did incidental justice in civil controversies and traveled the circuit.! Indeed, Pulling in his " Order of the Coif " dates his first serjeant at law from 1117; but this must be a printer's error. Otherwise, Pull- ing's first serjeant is as wild a piece of history as Chief Justice Catlin's descent from Lucius Sergius Catiline. Besides Roger of Salisbury we know of one very celebrated lawyer in this reign — a man then renowned in the law, named Alberic de Vere. He is described by William of Malmesbury as catisidicus and homo causarum varietatibus exercitatus. Where he gained his legal education is not known. He was a son of one of the Conqueror's chief barons, the Count of Guynes, in Normandy. One of the chiefs of that house marched with Godfrey of Bouillon to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre. The hsts of the men who acted as judges in the king's courts show the names of many well- known Norman families during this reign. The educated lawyers were generally churchmen, yet the Norman barons had a natural taste for litigation. After a hundred years, scions of the great houses were to become the trained lawyers of the profession ; but at this time the ecclesiastics did most of the technical legal work. They issued the writs from the chancery ; they were needed to keep whatever records were kept. Alberic de Vere was not an ecclesiastic like Roger or Nigel of Sahsbury, yet he was high in the confidence of Henry I,, who granted to him and his heirs the dignity of Lord Great Chamberlain of England, — the only great office of state that by a regular course of inheritance has descended to its present holder. When Henry I. died, the interregnum caused by the contest between Henry's daughter Matilda and his nephew Stephen covered the land with misgovernment and oppression. Roger of Salisbury's son, euphemistically called his nephew — and