Catalogue description Serjeants' Inn, Chancery Lane: Records

The order of the coif, as the brotherhood of serjeants at law was known, evolved in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century as a professional association of the senior pleaders or countors in the Court of Common Pleas. The effect in the medieval and early modern period was to create a pool of senior lawyers for crown service, as entry to the order came to be controlled by the crown through the lord chancellor.

The ceremonies attending the creation of new serjeants involved great personal expense: however, the serjeants did have the monopoly of pleading in the Court of Common Pleas. Some were directly retained as king's serjeants; assize judges were chosen from the serjeants (although the attorney-general and chief baron of the Exchequer could also be commissioned as assize judges, even if not serjeants).

The judges of King's Bench and Common Pleas (and, from the late sixteenth century, the barons of the Exchequer) could only be appointed from among the serjeants.

From the seventeenth century, the rise of other courts, in which the serjeants did not have a monopoly, and the out-ranking of the serjeants by queen's counsel, meant that 'taking the coif' simply became a formal requirement on appointment as a judge. Some non-judicial serjeants continued to be created, apparently as a way of rewarding lawyers whose practice was mainly at sessions. In 1834 their monopoly of pleading in the Common Pleas was abolished; the Judicature Act of 1873 (which came into effect in 1876) removed the requirement that judges needed to be made serjeants of law before appointment. Nathaniel Lindley was the last serjeant to be created (in 1875), and the last to die (in 1921).

Unlike the inns of court or the inns of chancery, the Serjeants' Inns had no educational function. Serjeants' Inn, Chancery Lane was one of the two private societies (the other was known as Serjeants' Inn, Fleet Street) set up in the late fourteenth century to provide lodgings and commons during the legal terms for the judges and serjeants, who were expelled from membership of the inns of court on creation as a serjeant. However, with the increase in numbers of serjeants in the seventeenth century, many refused to leave the inns of court, and eventually the majority had chambers in the inns of court rather than in Serjeants' Inn. In 1738, the remaining members of Serjeants' Inn, Fleet Street were admitted to membership of Serjeants' Inn, Chancery Lane.

In 1833, the freehold of Serjeants' Inn, Chancery Lane was purchased from the see of Ely, by the members, who became incorporated for the purpose as The Honourable Society of Judges and Serjeants at Law. In 1875, the remaining members took legal advice, and decided to sell the property, by public auction, and seek readmittance to the inns of court. Serjeant Cox bought the property for £57,100: this, with the money from the sale of investments and plate, was split between the members. Each received a little over £1,400. Several kept back the £400 they had had to pay on entry to the inn, and gave the rest to charity. Nevertheless, the proceedings created a considerable furore in the press.