And the kind of Collegiate Order into which they shaped themselves was also shown by the several grades existing within the Societies themselves. The word ‘barrister’ itself perpetuates the ancient discipline of the Inns, where the dais of the governing body, or Benchers, corresponding to the High Table of an Oxford College, was separated by a bar from the profane crowd of the Hall. The Halls of the Inns were not only the scenes of that business of eating and drinking, the ‘dinners’ to which so much attention was devoted, and by which the students ‘eat their way to the Bench,’ but also the centres of the social life and educational system of these Guilds. Dugdale gives at length the degrees of Tables in the Halls of the Inns--the Benchers’ Tables, the tables of the Utter Barristers, the tables of the Inner-Bar, and the Clerks’ Commons, and, without the screen, the Yeoman’s Table for Benchers’ Clerks. The _Utter-_ or _Outer Barristers_ ranked next to the Benchers. They were the advanced students who, after they had attained a certain standing, were called from the body of the Hall to the first place outside the bar for the purpose of taking part in the _moots_ or public debates on points of law. The _Inner Barristers_ assembled near the centre of the Hall. ‘For the space of seven years or thereabouts,’ says Stow, ‘they frequent readings, meetings, boltinges, and other learned exercises, whereby growing ripe in the knowledge of the lawes, and approved withal to be of honest conversation, they are either by the general consent of the Benchers or Readers, being of the most auncient, grave and iudiciall men of everie Inn of the Court, or by the special priviledge of the present Reader there, selected and called to the degree of Utter Barristers, and so enabled to be Common Counsellors, and to practise the law, both in their Chambers, and at the Barres.’ Readers, to help the younger students, were chosen from the Utter Barristers. From the Utter Barristers, too, were chosen by the Benchers ‘the chiefest and best learned’ to increase the number of the Bench and to be Readers there also. After this ‘second reading’ the young Barrister was named an Apprentice at the Law, and might be advanced at the pleasure of the Prince, as Stow says, to the place of Serjeant, ‘and from the number of Serjeants also the void places of Judges are likewise ordinarily filled.’ ‘From thenceforth they hold not any roome in those Innes of Court, being translated to the Serjeants’ Innes, where none but the Serjeants and Judges do converse’ (Stow, i., pp. 78, 79). Upon the Benchers, or Ancients, devolved the government of the Inn, and from their number a treasurer was chosen annually.