The rise of the barristers : a social history of the English bar, 1590-1640

This is a detailed study of the most powerful and prosperous professional group in early modern England. The half century before the calling of the Long Parliament in 1640 saw the bar undergo rapid growth and profound structural change. Wilfrid Prest's scholarly history examines the effects of these changes on the barrister's working life and explores the participation of barristers in the cultural, social, and political life of Elizabethan and early Stuart England.