Message #120919

[Knight of Jerusalem]

of the grant of the honour of knighthood for services purely civil, and the professors of the common law, who had the exclusive privilege of practising in that court, assumed the title or degree of FRERES SERJENS or FRATRES SERVIENTES, so that knights and serving-brethren, similar to those of the antient order of the Temple, were most curiously revived and introduced into the profession of the law.

It is true that the word serviens, serjen, or serjeant, was applied to the professors of the law long before the reign of Edward the Third, but not to denote a privileged brotherhood. It was applied to lawyers in common with all persons who did any description of work for another, from the serviens domini regis ad legem, who prosecuted the pleas of the crown in the county court, to the serviens or serjen who walked with his cane before the concubine of the Patriarch in the streets of Jerusalem. * The priest who worked for the Lord was called serjens de Dieu, and the lover who served the lady of his affections serjens d’amour. * It was in the order of the Temple that the word freres serjens or fratres servientes signified an honorary title or degree, and denoted a powerful privileged class of men. The fratres servientes armigeri or freres serjens des armes, of the chivalry of the Temple, were of the rank of gentlemen. They united in their own persons the monastic and the military character, they were allotted one horse each, they wore the red cross of the order of the Temple on their breasts, † they participated in all the privileges of the brotherhood, and were eligible to the dignity of Preceptor. Large sums of money were frequently given by seculars who had not been advanced to the honour of knighthood,



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to be admitted amongst this highly-esteemed order of men.

The freres serjens of the Temple wore linen coifs, and red caps close over them. * At the ceremony of their admission into the fraternity, the Master of the Temple placed the coif upon their heads, and threw over their shoulders the white mantle of the Temple; he then caused them to sit down on the ground, and gave them a solemn admonition concerning the duties and responsibilities of their profession. † They were warned that they must enter upon a new life, that they must keep themselves fair and free from stain, like the white garment that had been thrown around them, which was the emblem of purity and innocence; that they must render complete and perfect obedience to their superiors; that they must protect the weak, succour the needy, reverence old men, and do good to the poor.

The knights and serjeants of the common law, on the other hand, have ever constituted a privileged fraternity, and always address one another by the endearing term brother. The religious character of the antient ceremony of admission into this legal brotherhood, which took place in church, and its striking similarity to the antient mode of reception into the fraternity of the Temple, are curious and remarkable.

"Capitalis Justitiarius," says an antient MS. account of the creation of serjeants-at-law in the reign of Henry the Seventh, "monstrabat eis plura bona exempla de eorum prædecessoribus, et tunc posuit les coyfes ‡ super eorum capitibus, et induebat eos




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singulariter de capital de skarletto, et sic creati fuerunt servientes ad legem." In his admonitory exhortation, the chief justice displays to them the moral and religious duties of their profession. "Ambulate in vocatione in quâ vocati estis. . . . Disce cultum Dei, reverentiam superioris (!), misericordiam pauperi." He tells them the coif is sicut vestis candida et immaculata, the emblem of purity and virtue, and he commences a portion of his discourse in the scriptural language used by the popes in the famous bull conceding to the Templars their vast spiritual and temporal privileges, "Omne datum optimum et omne donum perfectum desursum est descendens a patre luminum, &c. &c.! *

The freres serjens of the Temple were strictly enjoined to "eat their bread in silence," and "place a watch upon their mouths," and the freres serjens of the law, we are told, after their admission, did "dyne together with sober countenance and lytel communycacion."

The common-law lawyers, after their location in the Temple, continued rapidly to increase, and between the reigns of Richard the Second and Henry the Sixth, they divided themselves into two bodies. "In the raigne of king Henry the Sixth," says the MS. account of the Temple, written "Charles the First," they were soe multiplied and grown into soe great a bulke as could not conveniently be regulated into one society, nor indeed was the


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