> > On 21/06/16 11:22, Tompkins wrote: > > That sounds very interesting, June. It is now recognised that there were many levels of provincial and local lawyers below the elite London attorneys, apprentices-at-law and sergeants, and there is a small literature on the problems of identifying them in the records. The footnotes to pages 83-85 of this article will guide you to some of them: > > > > https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=8Vq_-ZFRtnkC&pg=PA73&dq=%22employ+lawyers+when%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwibjb7t67jNAhXMVhoKHZ5AAf8Q6AEINjAA#v=onepage&q=%22employ%20lawyers%20when%22&f=false > > > > Unfortunately it's only a Preview, so at least one of those pages will probably be unavailable. If you'd like to see it all, I can send you the text as an attachment. > > > > Witnessing charters and other documents would not in itself normally be evidence that an individual was acting as a lawyer - anyone could be a witness. Appointment as an attorney could sometimes be a pointer to a lawyer, but it depends very much on the circumstances - could you describe the document you have found more fully? > > On Monday, June 27, 2016 at 9:34:55 AM UTC+1, Ian Goddard wrote: > Matt, > > I'd be grateful if you could send me a copy also although. > > One thing I've noticed looking through manorial court rolls for the > years around 1300 (Wakefield) is that some individuals will frequently > present essoins and act as pledges. Whilst neighbours might well act as > pledges for each other* it seems likely that someone doing so on a > regular basis suggests that he is being paid some sort of fee; after all > there is a risk involved as I've seen one pledge for a debt left > stranded when his "client" failed to appear and he had to stump up the > value of the wool that was at issue and pay a fine. > > At the same time these individuals were not referred to as attorneys. > I've even seen one enter an essoin on behalf of an attorney who had been > accredited as such at a previous court. I'm interested in understanding > the status of such men. > > In the C17th Almondbury rolls the lord of an adjacent manor was > regularly represented by his attorney in the list of those present. > Given that they were both called John Kaye and so were a number of other > villagers this must have made life interesting. However as there was a > 100% correlation between such representation and the presence of a > specific John Kaye as identified by his address it wasn't difficult to > identify the individual, nor to identify his house as being somewhat > larger than the rest in the street on a contemporary map. It was also > possible to identify him in the parish registers and to note that his > appearance at that address coincided with the disappearance of a John > Kaye at a different address. There's no indication of him being legally > qualified; it looks as if he had been employed by his principal to look > after the latter's affairs in the village and given a house befitting > his status as his employer's representative. > > *When a batch of enclosures where being licensed in 1309 pairs of > neighbours, as judged by their abodes and the land they were enclosing, > were pledges for each other. Sometimes they may have been family > members but usually their surnames differed. > > -- Yes, those early 14C pledgors do sound like part-time low-level village lawyers. I'll send the article direct. Matt