In June, 1596, the period of probation which must be spent by a student in attending preliminary exercises in the Inns, before graduating in Law, was limited by an ordinance of the Judges and Benchers to seven years. Before that date the ‘exercises’ necessary for ‘a call to the Bar’ occupied eight years, during which twelve grand moots must be attended in one of the Inns of Chancery, and twenty petty moots in term time before the Readers of one of the greater Societies. But in 1617, in a ‘Parliament’ of the Benchers of the Inner Temple, it was ordained that ‘no man shall be called to the Bar before he has been full eight years of the House.’ Nor was lapse of time to be considered sufficient without proportionate acquisition of learning. Only ‘painful and sufficient students’ were to be called, who had ‘frequented and argued grand and petty moots in the Inns of Chancery, and brought in moots and argued clerks’ common cases within this House.’ A proviso against outside influence was added by the injunction that ‘anyone who procured letters from any great person to the Treasurer or Benchers in order to be called to the Bar, should forever be disqualified from receiving that degree within that House.’ In the seventeenth century, however, ‘readings’ and ‘mootings’ alike fell into desuetude, and official instruction practically disappeared. The Inns became merely formal institutions, residence within the walls of which, indicated by the eating of dinners, was alone necessary for admittance to the Bar. The loss of the Law was the gain of Letters. A new class of students, educated in literature and politics, and highly born, were bred up to take their place in the direction of affairs and the criticism of writers. ‘When the “readings” with their odds and ends of law-French and Latin went out into the darkness of oblivion, polite literature stepped into their place. “Wood’s Institutes” and “Finch’s Law” shared a divided reign with Beaumont and Fletcher, Butler and Dryden, Congreve and Aphra Behn. The “pert Templar” became a critic of _belles lettres_, and foremost among the wits, whereas his predecessors had been simply regarded by the outer world as a race that knew or cared for little else save black-letter tomes and musty precedents. Polite literature ultimately came to clothe the very forms of law with an elegance of diction not dreamed of in the philosophy of the older jurists, and thus deprived an arduous study of one of its most repellent features.’[10]