[1] Roger l'Enfant in the late 1370s pleaded mainly in Cork City,[2] and Walter Cotterell in Munster As a rule, the Serjeant was licensed to appear in all of the Royal Courts, although John Haire in 1392 was described as "Serjeant-at-law of our Lord the King in the Common Pleas".
[4] They also spent a surprisingly large amount of time protecting the Crown's right of advowson: i.e. the right of nomination of a parish priest to a particular church (many private landowners also acquired the right).
[4] In 1537 a Royal Commission on law reform considered recommending the abolition of the office of Serjeant, and the transfer of his functions to the Attorney General, but nothing came of the proposal, probably due to firm opposition from the Serjeant-at-law of the day, Patrick Barnewall, who argued that the Serjeant-at-law had argued in Court on the Crown's behalf for 200 years, and that the existing system worked perfectly well.
Although in theory the salary in the 1690s was fixed at £30 a year (it had been £20 in 1620), it was well known that in practice the various perquisites attached to the office brought it up to between £900 and £1000 a year, in addition to what the office holder earned from private fees, as it was the serjeant's right to continue to take briefs on behalf of clients other than the Crown.
In the early centuries, it was apparently normal procedure for the Serjeants to take private work,[7] although it was understood that Crown work took precedence:[7] a retainer agreement made between William of Bardfield, King's Serjeant, and his client Nicholas, son of John of Interberge, in the early 1300s spells this out.
[7] In the early centuries the Serjeant might be paid for his Crown work in a single session of the Court, as for example, Roger L' Enfant was in 1377.
[4] In 1441 it was noted that the Serjeant-at-law must attend at his own expense all meetings of Council and Parliament "wherever they are held in Ireland".
[13] In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the serjeants often acted as extra judges of assize, or in another minor judicial capacity.
Although the practice had its critics, it survived intermittently into the nineteenth century: Walter Berwick was chairman of the East Cork Quarter Sessions from 1856 to 1859, while also serving as serjeant, and Sir John Howley was both serjeant-at-law and chairman of the County Tipperary Quarter Sessions for 30 years.