[Footnote t: The first mention I have met with in our lawbooks of serjeants or countors, is in the statute of Westm. 1. 3 Edw. I. c. 29. and in Horn's Mirror, _c._ 1. Sec. 10. _c._ 2. Sec. 5. _c._ 3. Sec. 1. in the same reign. But M. Paris in his life of John II, abbot of St. Alban's, which he wrote in 1255, 39 Hen. III. speaks of advocates at the common law, or countors (_quos banci narratores vulgariter appellamus_) as of an order of men well known. And we have an example of the antiquity of the coif in the same author's history of England, _A.D._ 1259. in the case of one William de Bussy; who, being called to account for his great knavery and malpractices, claimed the benefit of his orders or clergy, which till then remained an entire secret; and to that end _voluit ligamenta coifae suae solvere, ut palam monstraret se tonsuram habere clericalem; sed non est permissus.----Satelles vero eum arripiens, non per coifae ligamina sed per guttur eum apprehendens, traxit ad carcerem_. And hence sir H. Spelman conjectures, (_Glossar._ 335.) that coifs were introduced to hide the tonsure of such renegade clerks, as were still tempted to remain in the secular courts in the quality of advocates or judges, notwithstanding their prohibition by canon.] THE crown seems to have soon taken under it's protection this infant seminary of common law; and, the more effectually to foster and cherish it, king Henry the third in the nineteenth year of his reign issued out an order directed to the mayor and sheriffs of London, commanding that no regent of any law schools _within_ that city should for the future teach law therein[u]. The word, law, or _leges_, being a general term, may create some doubt at this distance of time whether the teaching of the civil law, or the common, or both, is hereby restrained. But in either case it tends to the same end. If the civil law only is prohibited, (which is Mr Selden's[w] opinion) it is then a retaliation upon the clergy, who had excluded the common law from _their_ seats of learning. If the municipal law be also included in the restriction, (as sir Edward Coke[x] understands it, and which the words seem to import) then the intention is evidently this; by preventing private teachers within the walls of the city, to collect all the common lawyers into the one public university, which was newly instituted in the suburbs. [Footnote u: _Ne aliquis scholas regens de legibus in eadem civitate de caetero ibidem leges doceat._] [Footnote w: _in Flet._ 8. 2.] [Footnote x: 2 Inst. proem.]