 Advocates, who formed the senior branch of the legal profession in their field, were Doctors of Law of the Oxford, Cambridge, or Dublin and Fellows of the Society of Doctors' Commons.Advocates lost their exclusive rights of audience in probate and divorce cases when the Crown took these matters over from the church in 1857, and in Admiralty cases in 1859.The Society of Advocates was never formally wound up, but its building was sold off in 1865 and the last advocate died in 1912.