In 1558 the English legal profession already had a long history. From the earliest years of the post-Conquest era, and probably long before, kings had made provision for the settlement of disputes between individuals and acknowledged the need for legal specialists who could aid litigants seeking redress before the royal tribunals. Prior to the beginning of the thirteenth century, most of the officials associated with the king's courts in London were still clerics, but by the end of that century the emergence of full-time lay lawyers, who were subjected to a certain degree of royal regulation and discipline, can be discerned and charted.

The most important and most highly organized of the early common lawyers were the serjeants at law. By the early fourteenth century they had become a distinctive order of lawyers who usually numbered some twelve to fifteen men at any one time. The serjeants were the senior members of the legal profession below the judges. They were nominated by royal writ, their creation was accompanied by great public ceremony, and they wore characteristic robes and a cap, the coif. In addition the serjeants enjoyed the privileged professional position of having an exclusive right to plead before the court most frequently involved in civil litigation, the Common Pleas.

However, there were other royal courts besides the Common Pleas, and although the serjeants could and did practise in tribunals such as Chancery, Star Chamber, the court of Wards, and the court of Requests, in these jurisdictions they enjoyed no monopoly and so had to share the business of pleading with another group of lawyers known as the apprentices at law.