174 Social History

by chancery, he has clearly overlooked the earlier interest of
the common law in manorial custom, a point rightly stressed
by Kerridge (n. 263). Jones's history of one area of the law of
trusts is a thorough^ learned, distinguished piece of work of
the kind which relieves the subject for ever from the need to
IDC studied again.1089 McGregor, by contrast, brings the mind
and training of a sociologist to the study of the law of divorce:
perhaps divorce is a strictly social problem, while charity is
one of law?10*0

The legal profession: Ives describes the means and ways of
advance in an age in which the numbers of lawyers increased
greatly in the wake of fast increasing profits.1091 Legal educa-
tion is a subject on which we could do with more knowledge;
Prest looks only at the special problem of the experience of
those who in the main did not want to be trained as lawyers,
despite their presence at the inns of court.1092 The lower level
of the profession enjoyed a sordid reputation in the eighteenth
century; whether this was deserved is not a question - among
others-that Robson's rather slight book enables one to
answer.1093 A good deal slighter still is another book on this
theme, if only because it covers a longer span in time.109*
Even the age of the smuggest self-satisfaction harboured plans
for reform.1095 A few judges - too few, compared with bishops
- have found biographers. Two well-known seventeenth-cen-
tury figures appear in Hurst's article, which somewhat de-
preciates the long over-valued Matthew Hale, and in Keeton's

10S* Gareth Jones, History of the Law of Charity, 1532-1827. GUP:
1969. Pp. xxiii, 270.

1090 Oliver R, McGregor, Divorce in England: a centenary study. L:
Heinemann: 1957. Pp. xi, 220.

1091 E, W. Ives, 'Promotion in the legal profession of Yorkist and
early Tudor England*, LQR 75 (1959), 348-63.

ma Wilfrid Prest, 'Legal education of the gentry at the inns of court,

1560-1640*, PP 38 (1967), 20-39.
ms Robert Robson, The Attorney in Eighteenth Century England. GUP:

*959* PP- xii, 182.
10 ** Michael Birks, Gentlemen of the Law. L: Stevens: 1960. Pp. xi, 304.

Rev: EHR 77, 147^
1085 Paul Lucas, 'Blackstone and the reform of the legal profession*,

EHR 77 (1962), 456-89.