The custom of distributing gold at the creation of serjeants at law was kept up from the fourteenth century until 1875. It was perhaps a kind of largesse, analogous to that given by knights at their creation, and the custom was more or less coeval with the order of the coif itself. Indeed, ‘giving the gold’ was the usual way of referring to the earliest creation ceremonies. The first known mention is in 1329, when two new serjeants were reported as making their ‘first argument after the gold was given’ (prima ratio post aurum datum), and in the same year the pleaders admitted to practise in the eyre of Northamptonshire also ‘gave the gold’ (doneront l'or). There are further references to the giving of gold by new serjeants in 1342, 1383 and 1388. Moreover, the earliest known form of serjeant's writ – that is, the writ of subpoena ordering an apprentice of the law to prepare for creation – expressly commands the recipient ‘que vous vous arraiez et facez prest de doner l'or’. Sir John Fortescue (himself created in 1438) even mentioned an oath to give gold ‘according to the custom of the realm’ on the day of receiving the degree. None of these sources indicates the form in which the gold was given out, but we know from a reference in a serjeant's will of 1368 that by the 1360s it was made into rings, and so that may be assumed to have been the usage since the beginning.