In the year 1292--a date of some significance for us, not only in the immediate context, but with reference to other portions of the work--the King (Edward I.) promulgated an ordinance "De Attornatis et Apprenticiis" in which he enjoined on John de Metingham and his fellows that they should, at their discretion, "provide and ordain from every county certain attorneys and lawyers of the best and most apt for their learning and skill, who might do service to his court and that people, and those so chosen only, and no other, should follow his court and transact the affairs therein, the said King and his council deeming the number of seven score sufficient for that employment, but leaving it to the discretion of the judges to add to or diminish the number, as they should see fit" (Dugdale's Tr.). Serjeant Pulling is somewhat perplexed concerning the precise position of the _apprenticii ad legem_ at the time of this edict. He, however, hazards the conjecture that "by the apprentices were meant the advanced students, or learners of the law, who, as pupils or assistants to the Serjeants of the Coif, had obtained an insight into practice, and perhaps also there were included the more irregular followers of the law--the dilettante practitioners and Cleri Causidici, who continued to follow the law in the secular courts in spite of repeated prohibitions and objections." With the foundation and growth of the Inns of Court, the apprentices--the better sort at least--obtained full recognition as practitioners; and at the close of the fourteenth century their reputation had become so considerable that the great apprentices had formed themselves into a distinct order, in which they stood next to serjeants-at-law, the gradation being as follows: (i) Serjeants-at-law. (ii) Nobiliores, or great apprentices. (iii) Other apprentices who followed the law. (iv) Apprentices of less estate, and attorneys. The term "apprentice-at-law" yielded to _apprenticius ad barros_, and that again to "utter-barrister," corresponding to the modern "barrister-at-law." Not all the students admitted at an inn were "called" to the bar, the truth being that only a small proportion received that distinction. In 1596 an arrangement was made by the Judges and Benchers of the four Inns of Court, by which it was agreed: "That hereafter none shall be admitted to the Barr but only such as be at the least seven years' continuance, and have kept the exercises within the House and abroad in Inns of Chancery, according to the orders of the House: "_Item_, that there be in one year only four Utter-Barristers called in any Inne of Court (that is to say) in Easter Term, two, and, in Michaelmas Term, two," etc.