Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/39

§. 1. king’s capital juticiary of England, in the undefined, or uch of his palaces wherein his royal peron reided; and removed with his houhold from one end of the kingdom to the other. This was found to occaion great inconvenience to the uitors; to remedy which it was made an article of the great charter of liberties, both that of king John and king Henry the third, that “common pleas hould no longer follow the king’s court, but be held in ome certain place:” in conequence of which they have ever ince been held (a few neceary removals in times of the plague excepted) in the palace of Wetminter only. This brought together the profeors of the municipal law, who before were dipered about the kingdom, and formed them into an aggregate body; whereby a ociety was etablihed of perons, who (as Spelman oberves) addicting themelves wholly to the tudy of the laws of the land, and no longer conidering it as a mere ubordinate cience for the amuement of leiure hours, oon raied thoe laws to that pitch of perfection, which they uddenly attained under the aupices of our Englih Jutinian, king Edward the firt.

conequence of this lucky aemblage, they naturally fell into a kind of collegiate order, and, being excluded from Oxford and Cambridge, found it neceary to etablih a new univerity of their own. This they did by purchaing at various times certain houes (now called the inns of court and of chancery) between the city of Wetminter, the place of holding the king’s courts, and the city of London; for advantage of ready acces to the one, and plenty of proviions in the other. Here exercies were performed, lectures read, and degrees were at length conferred in the common law, as at other univerities in the canon and civil. The degrees were thoe of barriters (firt tiled apprentices from apprendre, to learn) who anwered to our ba- chelors;