The surviving image of the Elizabethan and Jacobean solicitor was created for us by the pamphleteers and playmongers, who could be sure of immediate applause or popular sympathy by introducing into their work a few caricatures drawn from the seamier recesses of the legal world. We are encouraged by these writers to imagine a London plagued by these vermin of the law, scurrying in and around the Temple and lurking in the shadows of Westminster Hall, waiting to pounce on any unsuspecting bumpkin who had the misfortune to wander near their reach. Whether and to what extent these portraits bear any relation to reality are questions which social historians have yet to answer. Legal historians have made but a slight contribution to the history of solicitors during the period which, for them, was the most critical of all. To this period may be assigned the beginning of a process of demarcation between the functions of barristers and solicitors, and when we understand how this came about we shall have traced for the first time the origin of the solicitors' branch of the profession.

It will be necessary in tackling these questions to search through classes of material which are unfamiliar to legal historians, and to undertake individual biographical studies covering as wide a range of legal practitioners as is possible. Such investigations are already being undertaken by those who are trained to use information of this kind.