Definition
A historical term from English legal education referring to two distinct classes of persons associated with the Inns of Court:
1. Lecturers at the Middle Temple and other Inns of Court who were appointed to deliver formal lectures — called "readings" — on selected statutes or areas of law at prescribed periods during term. These individuals held a position of significant prestige within the Inn and were typically senior members of the bar. The act of delivering such a lecture was itself called a "reading," and the officer who delivered it was the Reader.
2. Clerks in holy orders appointed to read prayers and assist in the conduct of divine service in the chapels of the several Inns of Court. These were ecclesiastical officers serving the religious functions of the Inn, and the title "Readers" applied to them in that distinct capacity.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of "reader" — one who reads; also reading glasses.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): One who reads; specifically, one who reads manuscripts for a publisher, or a lay reader in a church.
The gap between common and legal meaning is notable in the ecclesiastical direction: the lay "reader" of Webster's and modern usage resembles the second legal sense, but the primary legal meaning — a senior barrister appointed to lecture at an Inn of Court — has no everyday counterpart. A researcher encountering "Readers" in historical legal sources should not assume the ordinary sense of the word.
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Common Confusion
The two senses of "Readers" within legal usage are themselves easily conflated. The lecturer-barrister and the chapel cleric shared a title but held entirely different roles. Context will usually distinguish them: references to "readings" delivered during term concern the educational function; references to chapel service concern the ecclesiastical function. Confusion also arises with the term "readings" itself, which referred to the lectures delivered by Readers in the first sense — the two terms are closely related but not interchangeable.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in historical sources concerning English legal education and the organization of the Inns of Court. It is essentially obsolete as a live legal designation. Researchers will encounter it most often in:
- Historical accounts of legal education in England from roughly the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries, when the system of Readers and readings was the primary mode of formal instruction at the Inns.
- Institutional histories of the Middle Temple, Inner Temple, Lincoln's Inn, and Gray's Inn.
- Sources discussing the decline of the readings system, which had largely collapsed by the late seventeenth century.
The term carries no operative meaning in modern American or English law. Its research value is purely historical and contextual. A researcher tracing the development of legal education, bar admission standards, or the internal governance of the Inns of Court will need to understand what Readers were and what their "readings" involved. The term should not be confused with modern uses of "reader" in academic or publishing contexts.
Corpus connections: Researchers working on the history of the legal profession or legal education will find this term surfaces alongside related terms such as BENCHERS, SERJEANTS-AT-LAW, INNS OF COURT, and READINGS. The educational function of Readers predates and anticipates later structures of bar preparation and examination.
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Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence — are in near-complete agreement, reproducing essentially the same entry with only minor variation in punctuation and orthography. All three identify the two senses (lecturer and chapel clerk) and locate the term specifically in the Middle Temple, though the chapel-clerk sense extends to the Inns of Court generally.
Rapalje & Lawrence is the most useful of the three for researchers because it supplies a citation: 5 Reeves, History of the English Law (1st ed.) 247. John Reeves's history is a genuine primary reference for the institutional development of the Inns and provides substantive context that the dictionary entries themselves do not.
What the historical dictionaries do not provide: any account of how the readings system operated in practice, when it flourished, or why it declined. They treat the term as a static definition rather than a historically situated institution. Researchers relying solely on these entries will have the vocabulary but not the historical picture.
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Jurisdictional Note
This term has no operative meaning in American law. It is exclusively an English legal institution. American legal education developed along entirely different lines, with no equivalent to the Inns of Court system or the office of Reader in the English sense.
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