Note t — Section the first. On the STUDY of the LAW.[A]

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. §. 10. c. 2. §. 5. c. 3. §. 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.