Alderson shudder under his robes by applying for a 'nolle prosequi,' was
not equally quick at self-defence, when that judge interposed, "Stop,
sir--consider that this is the last day of term, and don't make things
unnecessarily long." It was Baron Alderson who, in reply to the
juryman's confession that he was deaf in one ear, observed, "Then leave
the box before the trial begins; for it is necessary that jurymen should
_hear both sides_."

Amongst legal wits, Lord Ellenborough enjoys a high place; and though in
dealing out satire upon barristers and witnesses, and even on his
judicial coadjutors, he was often needlessly severe, he seldom
perpetrated a jest the force of which lay solely in its cruelty. Perhaps
the most harsh and reprehensible outburst of satiric humor recorded of
him is the crushing speech by which he ruined a young man for life. "The
_unfortunate_ client for whom it is my privilege to appear," said a
young barrister, making his first essay in Westminster Hall--"the
unfortunate client, my lord, for whom I appear--hem! hem!--I say, my
lord, my _unfortunate client_----" Leaning forwards, and speaking in a
soft, cooing voice, that was all the more derisive, because it was so
gentle, Lord Ellenborough said, "you may go on, sir--so far the court is
with you." One would have liked his lordship better had he sacrificed
his jest to humanity, and acted as long afterwards that true gentleman,
Mr. Justice Talfourd, acted, who, seeing a young barrister overpowered
with nervousness, gave him time to recover himself by saying, in the
kindest possible manner, "Excuse me for interrupting you--but for a
minute I am not at liberty to pay you attention." Whereupon the Judge
took up his pen and wrote a short note to a friend. Before the note was
finished, the young barrister had completely recovered his
self-possession, and by an admirable speech secured a verdict for his
client. A highly nervous man, he might on that day have been broken for
life, like Ellenborough's victim, by mockery; but fortunate in appearing
before a judge whose witty tongue knew not how to fashion unkind words,
he triumphed over his temporary weakness, and has since achieved well
deserved success in his profession. Talfourd might have made a jest for
the thoughtless to laugh at; but he preferred to do an act, on which
those who loved him like to think.

When Preston, the great conveyancer, gravely informed the judges of the
King's Bench that "an estate in fee simple was the highest estate known
to the law of England," Lord Ellenborough checked the great Chancery
lawyer, and said with politest irony, "Stay, stay, Mr. Preston, let me
take that down. An estate" (the judge writing as he spoke) "in fee
simple is--the highest estate--known to--the law of England. Thank you,
Mr. Preston! The court, sir, is much indebted to you for the
information." Having inflicted on the court an unspeakably dreary
oration, Preston, towards the close of the day, asked when it would be
their lordship's pleasure to hear the remainder of his argument;
whereupon Lord Ellenborough uttered a sigh of resignation, and answered,
'We are bound to hear you, and we will endeavor to give you our
undivided attention on Friday next; but as for _pleasure_, that, sir,
has been long out of the question.'

Probably mistelling an old story, and taking to himself the merit of
Lord Ellenborough's reply to Preston, Sir Vicary Gibbs (Chief of the
Common Pleas) used to tell his friends that Sergeant Vaughan--the
sergeant who, on being subsequently raised to the bench through the
influence of his elder brother, Sir Henry Halford, the court physician,
was humorously described by the wits of Westminster Hall as a judge _by
prescription_--once observed in a grandiose address to the Judges of the
Common Pleas, "For though our law takes cognizance of divers different
estates, I may be permitted to say, without reserve or qualification of
any kind, that the highest estate known to the law of England is an
estate in fee simple." Whereupon Sir Vicary, according to his own
account, interrupted the sergeant with an air of incredulity and
astonishment. "What is your proposition, brother Vaughan? Perhaps I did
not hear you rightly!" Flustered by the interruption, which completely
effected its object, the sergeant explained, "My lord, I mean to contend
that an estate in fee simple is _one of the highest estates_ known to
the law of England, that is, my lord, that it may be under certain
circumstances--and sometimes is so."

Notwithstanding his high reputation for wit, Lord Ellenborough would
deign to use the oldest jests. Thus of Mr. Caldecott, who over and over
again, with dull verbosity, had said that certain limestone quarries,
like lead and copper mines, "were not rateable, because the limestone
could only be reached by boring, which was matter of science," he
gravely inquired, "Would you, Mr. Caldecott, have us believe that every
kind of _boring_ is matter of science?" With finer humor he nipped in
the bud one of Randle Jackson's flowery harangues. "My lords," said the
orator, with nervous intonation, "in the book of nature it is
written----" "Be kind enough, Mr. Jackson," interposed Lord
Ellenborough, "to mention the page from which you are about to quote."
This calls to mind the ridicule which, at an earlier period of his
career, he cast on Sheridan for saying at the trial of Warren Hastings,
"The treasures in the Zenana of the Begum are offerings laid by the
hand of piety on the altar of a saint." To this not too rhetorical
statement, Edward Law, as leading counsel for Warren Hastings, replied
by asking, "how the lady was to be considered a saint, and how the
camels were to be laid upon the altar?" With greater pungency, Sheridan
defended himself by saying, "This is the first time in my life that I
ever heard of special pleading on a metaphor, or a bill of indictment
against a trope; but such is the turn of the learned gentleman's mind,
that when he attempts to be humorous no jest can be found, and when
serious no fact is visible."[31] To the last Law delighted to point the
absurdities of orators who in aiming at the sublime only achieved the
ridiculous. "My lords," said Mr. Gaselee, arguing that mourning coaches
at a funeral were not liable to post-horse duty, "it never could have
been the intention of a Christian legislature to aggravate the grief
which mourners endure whilst following to the grave the remains of their
dearest relatives, by compelling them at the same time to pay the
horse-duty." Had Mr. Gaselee been a humorist, Lord Ellenborough would
have laughed; but as the advocate was well known to have no turn for
raillery, the Chief Justice gravely observed, "Mr. Gaselee, you incur
danger by sailing in high sentimental latitudes."

To the surgeon in the witness-box who said, "I employ myself as a
surgeon," Lord Ellenborough retorted, "But does anybody else employ you
as a surgeon?"

The demand to be examined _on affirmation_ being preferred by a Quaker
witness, whose dress was so much like the costume of an ordinary
_conformist_ that the officer of the court had begun to administer the
usual oath, Lord Ellenborough inquired of the 'friend,' "Do you really
mean to impose upon the court by appearing here in the disguise of a
reasonable being?" Very pungent was his ejaculation at a cabinet dinner
when he heard that Lord Kenyon was about to close his penurious old age
by dying. "Die!--why should he die?--what would he get by that?"
interposed Lord Ellenborough, adding to the pile of jests by which men
have endeavored to keep a grim, unpleasant subject out of sight--a pile
to which the latest _mot_ was added the other day by Lord Palmerston,
who during his last attack of gout exclaimed playfully. "_Die_, my dear
doctor! That's the _last_ thing I think of doing." Having jested about
Kenyon's parsimony, as the old man lay _in extremis_, Ellenborough
placed another joke of the same kind upon his coffin. Hearing that
through the blunder of an illiterate undertaker the motto on Kenyon's
hatchment in Lincoln's Inn Fields had been painted '_Mors Janua Vita_,'
instead of 'Mors Janua Vitæ,' he exclaimed, "Bless you, there's no
mistake; Kenyon's will directed that it should be 'Vita,' so that his
estate might be saved the expense of _a diphthong._" Capital also was
his reply when Erskine urged him to accept the Great Seal. "How can
you," he asked, in a tone of solemn entreaty, "wish me to accept the
office of Chancellor, when you know, Erskine, that I am as ignorant of
its duties as you are yourself?" At the time of uttering these words,
Ellenborough was well aware that if he declined them Erskine would take
the seals. Some of his puns were very poor. For instance, his
exclamation, "Cite to me the decisions of the judges of the land: not
the judgments of the Chief Justice of Ely, who is fit only to _rule_ a
copybook."

One of the best 'legal' puns on record is unanimously attributed by the
gossipers of Westminster Hall to Lord Chelmsford. As Sir Frederick
Thesiger he was engaged in the conduct of a cause, and objected to the
irregularity of a learned sergeant who in examining his witnesses
repeatedly put leading questions. "I have a right," maintained the
sergeant, doggedly, "to _deal_ with my witnesses as I please." "To that
I offer no objection," retorted Sir Frederick; "you may _deal_ as you
like, but you shan't _lead_." Of the same brilliant conversationalist
Mr. Grantley Berkeley has recorded a good story in 'My Life and
Recollections.' Walking down St. James's Street, Lord Chelmsford was
accosted by a stranger, who exclaimed "Mr. Birch I believe?" "If you
believe that, sir, you'll believe anything," replied the ex-Chancellor,
as he passed on.

When Thelwall, instead of regarding his advocate with grateful silence,
insisted on interrupting him with vexatious remarks and impertinent
criticisms, Erskine neither threw up his brief nor lost his temper, but
retorted with an innocent flash of merriment. To a slip of paper on
which the prisoner had written, "I'll be hanged if I don't plead my own
cause," he contented himself with returning answer, "You'll be hanged if
you do." His _mots_ were often excellent, but it was the tone and joyous
animation of the speaker that gave them their charm. It is said that in
his later years, when his habitual loquaciousness occasionally sank into
garrulity, he used to repeat his jests with imprudent frequency,
shamelessly giving his companions the same pun with each course of a
long dinner. There is a story that after his retirement from public life
he used morning after morning to waylay visitors on their road through
the garden to his house, and, pointing to his horticultural attire and
the spade in his hand assure them that he was 'enjoying his otium cum
_digging a tatie_.' Indeed the tradition lives that before his fall from
the woolsack, pert juniors used to lay bets as to the number of times he
could fire off a favorite old pun in the course of a sitting in the
Court of Chancery, and that wily leaders habitually strove to catch his
favor by giving him opportunities for facetious interruptions during
their arguments. If such traditions be truthful, it is no matter for
surprise that Erskine's court-jokes have come down to us with so many
variations. For instance, it is recorded with much circumstantiality
that on circuit, accosting a junior who had lost his portmanteau from
the back of a post-chaise, he said, with mock gravity, "Young gentlemen,
henceforth imitate the elephant, the wisest of animals, who always
_carries his trunk before him_;" and on equally good authority it is
stated that when Polito, the keeper of the Exeter 'Change Menagerie, met
with a similar accident and brought an action for damages against the
proprietor of the coach from the hind-boot of which his property had
disappeared, Erskine, speaking for the defence, told the jury that they
would not be justified in giving a verdict favorable to the man, who,
though he actually possessed an elephant, had neglected to imitate its
prudent example and carry his trunk before him.

As a _littérateur_ Erskine met with meagre success; but some of his
squibs and epigrams are greatly above the ordinary level of '_vers de
société_.' For instance this is his:--

   "DE QUODAM REGE.

   "I may not do right, though I ne'er can do wrong;
   I never can die, though I can not live long;
   My jowl it is purple, my hand it is fat--
   Come, riddle my riddle. What is it? _What? What?_"

The liveliest illustrations of Erskine's proverbial egotism are the
squibs of political caricaturists; and from their humorous
exaggerations it is difficult to make a correct estimate of the lengths
of absurdity to which his intellectual vanity and self-consciousness
sometimes carried him. From what is known of his disposition it seems
probable that the sarcasms aimed by public writers at his infirmity
inclined him to justify their attacks rather than to disprove them by
his subsequent demeanor, and that some of his most extravagant outbursts
of self-assertion were designed in a spirit of bravado and reckless
good-nature to increase the laughter which satirists had raised against
him. However this may be, his conduct drew upon him blows that would
have ruffled the composure of any less self-complacent or less amiable
man. The Tory prints habitually spoke of him as Counsellor Ego whilst he
was at the bar; and when it was known that he had accepted the seals,
the opposition journals announced that he would enter the house as
"Baron Ego, of Eye, in the county of Suffolk." Another of his nicknames
was _Lord Clackmannan_; and Cobbett published the following notice of an
harangue made by the fluent advocate in the House of Commons:--"Mr.
Erskine delivered a most animated speech in the House of Commons on the
causes and consequences of the late war, which lasted thirteen hours,
eighteen minutes, and a second, by Mr. John Nichol's stop-watch. Mr.
Erskine closed his speech with a dignified climax: 'I was born free,
and, by G-d, I'll remain so!'--[A loud cry of '_Hear! hear_' in the
gallery, in which were citizens Tallien and Barrère.] On Monday three
weeks we shall have the extreme satisfaction of laying before the public
a brief analysis of the above speech, our letter-founder having entered
into an engagement to furnish a fresh font of I's."[32]

From the days of Wriothesley, who may be regarded as the most
conspicuous and unquestionable instance of judicial incompetency in the
annals of English lawyers, the multitudes have always delighted in
stories that illustrate the ignorance and incapacity of men who are
presumed to possess, by right of their office, an extraordinary share of
knowledge and wisdom. What law-student does not rub his hands as he
reads of Lord St. John's trouble during term whilst he held the seals,
and of the impatience with which he looked forward to the long vacation,
when he would not be required to look wise and speak authoritatively
about matters concerning which he was totally ignorant. Delicious are
the stories of Francis Bacon's clerical successor, who endeavored to get
up a _quantum suff_. of Chancery law by falling on his knees and asking
enlightenment of Heaven. Gloomily comical are the anecdotes of Chief
Justice Fleming, whose most famous and disastrous blunder was his
judgment in Bates's case. Great fun may be gathered from the tales that
exemplify the ignorance of law which characterized the military, and
also the non-military laymen, who helped to take care of the seals
during the civil troubles of the seventeenth century. Capital is Roger
North's picture of Bob Wright's ludicrous shiftlessness whenever the
influence of his powerful relations brought the loquacious, handsome,
plausible fellow a piece of business. "He was a comely fellow," says
Roger North, speaking of the Chief Justice Wright's earlier days, "airy
and flourishing both in his habits and way of living; and his relation
Wren (being a powerful man in those parts) set him in credit with the
country; but withal, he was so poor a lawyer that he used to bring such
cases as came to him to his friend Mr. North, and he wrote the opinion
on the paper, and the lawyer copied it, and signed under the case as if
it had been his own. It ran so low with him that when Mr. North was at
London he sent up his cases to him, and had opinions returned by the
post; and, in the meantime he put off his clients on pretence of taking
the matter into serious consideration." Perhaps some readers of this
page can point to juniors of the present date whose professional
incapacity closely resembles the incompetence of this gay young
barrister of Charles II.'s time. Laughter again rises at the thought of
Lord Chancellor Bathurst and the judicial perplexities and blunders
which caused Sir Charles Williams to class him with those who

   "Were cursed and stigmatized by power,
     And rais'd to be expos'd."

Much more than an average or altogether desirable amount of amiability
has fallen to the reader who can refrain from a malicious smile, when he
is informed by reliable history that Lord Loughborough (no mean lawyer
or inefficient judge), gave utterance to so much bad law, as Chairman of
Quarter Sessions in canny Yorkshire, that when on appeal his decisions
were reversed with many polite expressions of _sincere_ regret by the
King's Bench, all Westminster Hall laughed in concert at the mistakes of
the sagacious Chief of the Common Pleas.

But no lawyer, brilliant or dull, has been more widely ridiculed for
incompetence than Erskine. Sir Causticus Witherett, being asked some
years since why a certain Chancellor, unjustly accused of intellectual
dimness by his political adversaries and by the uninformed public,
preferred his seat amongst the barons to his official place on the
woolsack, is said to have replied: "The Lord Chancellor usually takes
his seat amongst the peers whenever he can do so with propriety, because
he is a highly nervous man, and when he is on the woolsack, he is apt to
be frightened at finding himself all alone--_in the dark_." As soon as
Erskine was mentioned as a likely person to be Lord Chancellor, rumors
began to circulate concerning his total unfitness for the office; and no
sooner had he mounted the woolsack than the wits declared him to be
alone and in the dark. Lord Ellenborough's sarcasm was widely repeated,
and gave the cue to the advocate's detractors, who had little difficulty
in persuading the public that any intelligent law-clerk would make as
good a Chancellor as Thomas Erskine. With less discretion than
good-humor, Erskine gave countenance to the representations of his
enemies by ridiculing his own unfitness for the office. During the
interval between his appointment and his first appearance as judge in
the Court of Chancery, he made a jocose pretence of 'reading up' for his
new duties: and whimsically exaggerating his deficiencies, he
represented himself as studying books with which raw students have some
degree of familiarity. Caught with 'Cruise's Digest' of the laws
relating to real property, open in his hand, he observed to the visitor
who had interrupted his studies, "You see, I am taking a little from my
_cruise_ daily, without any prospect of coming to the end of it."

In the autumn of 1819 two gentlemen of the United States having differed
in opinion concerning his incompetence in the Court of Chancery--the one
of them maintaining that the greater number of his decrees had been
reversed, and the other maintaining that so many of his decisions had
not endured reversal--the dispute gave rise to a bet of three dozen of
port. With comical bad taste one of the parties to the bet--the one who
believed that the Chancellor's judgments had been thus frequently
upset--wrote to Erskine for information on the point. Instead of giving
the answer which his correspondent desired, Erskine informed him in the
following terms that he had lost his wine:--

   "Upper Berkley Street, Nov. 13, 1819.

   "SIR:--I certainly was appointed Chancellor under the administration
   in which Mr. Fox was Secretary of State, in 1806, and could have been
   Chancellor under no administration in which he had not a post; nor
   would have accepted without him any office whatsoever. I believe the
   administration was said, by all the _Blockheads_, to be made up of
   all the _Talents_ in the country.

   "But you have certainly lost your bet on the subject of my decrees.
   None of them were appealed against, except one, upon a branch of Mr.
   Thellusson's will--but it was affirmed without a dissentient voice,
   on the motion of Lord Eldon, then and now Lord Chancellor. If you
   think I was no lawyer, you may continue to think so. It is plain you
   are no lawyer yourself; but I wish every man to retain his opinion,
   though at the cost of three dozen of port.

   "Your humble servant,

   "ERSKINE.

   "To save you from spending your money on bets which you are sure to
   lose, remember that no man can be a great advocate who is no lawyer.
   The thing is impossible."

Of the many good stories current about chiefs of the law who are still
alive, the present writer, for obvious reasons, abstains from taking
notice; but one humorous anecdote concerning a lively judge may with
propriety be inserted in these pages, since it fell from his own lips
when he was making a speech from the chair at a public dinner. Between
sixty-five and seventy years from the present time, when Sir Frederick
Pollock was a boy at St. Paul's school, he drew upon himself the
displeasure of Dr. Roberts, the somewhat irascible head-master of the
school, who frankly told Sir Frederick's father, "Sir, you'll live to
see that boy of yours hanged." Years afterwards, when the boy of whom
this dismal prophecy was made had distinguished himself at Cambridge and
the bar, Dr. Roberts, meeting Sir Frederick's mother in society,
overwhelmed her with congratulations upon her son's success, and
fortunately oblivious of his former misunderstanding with his pupil,
concluded his polite speeches by saying--"Ah! madam, I always said he'd
fill an _elevated_ situation." Told by the venerable judge at a recent
dinner of 'Old Paulines,' this story was not less effective than the
best of those post-prandial sallies with which William St. Julien
Arabin--the Assistant Judge of Old Bailey notoriety--used to convulse
his auditors something more than thirty years since. In the 'Arabiniana'
it is recorded how this judge, in sentencing an unfortunate woman to a
long term of transportation, concluded his address with--"You must go
out of the country. You have disgraced _even_ your own sex."

Let this chapter close with a lawyer's testimony to the moral qualities
of his brethren. In the garden of Clement's Inn may still be seen the
statue of a negro, supporting a sun-dial, upon which a legal wit
inscribed the following lines:--

   "In vain, poor sable son of woe,
     Thou seek'st the tender tear;
   From thee in vain with pangs they flow,
     For mercy dwells not here.
   From cannibals thou fled'st in vain;
     Lawyers less quarter give;
   The _first_ won't eat you till you're _slain_,
     The _last_ will do't _alive_."

Unfortunately these lines have been obliterated.

[31] Robert Dallas--one of Edward Law's coadjutors in the defence of
Hastings--gave another 'manager' a more telling blow. Indignant with
Burke for his implacable animosity to Hastings, Dallas (subsequently
Chief Justice of the Common Pleas) wrote the stinging lines--

"Oft have we wondered that on Irish ground No poisonous reptile has e'er
yet been found; Reveal'd the secret stands of nature's work--She saved
her venom to produce her Burke."

[32] In the 'Anti-Jacobin,' Canning, in the mock report of an imaginary
speech, represented Erskine as addressing the 'Whig Club' thus:--"For
his part he should only say that, having been, as he had been, both a
soldier and a sailor, if it had been his fortune to have stood in either
of these relations to the Directory--as _a_ man and a major-general he
should not have scrupled to direct his artillery against the national
representatives:--as a naval officer he would undoubtedly have
undertaken for the removal of the exiled deputies; admitting the
exigency, under all its relations, as it appeared to him to exist, and
the then circumstances of the times with all their bearings and
dependencies, branching out into an infinity of collateral
considerations and involving in each a variety of objects, political,
physical, and moral; and these, again, under their distinct and separate
heads, ramifying into endless subdivisions, which it was foreign to his
purpose to consider, Mr. Erskine concluded by recapitulating, in a
strain of agonizing and impressive eloquence, the several more prominent
heads of his speech; he had been a soldier and a sailor, and had a son
at Winchester school--he had been called by special retainers, during
the summer, into many different and distant parts of the
country--traveling chiefly in post-chaises. He felt himself called upon
to declare that his poor faculties were at the service of his
country--of the free and enlightened part of it at least. He stood there
as a man--he stood in the eye, indeed, in the hand of God--to whom (in
the presence of the company and the waiters), he solemnly appealed. He
was of noble, perhaps royal, blood--he had a house at Hampsted--was
convinced of the necessity of a thorough and radical reform. His
pamphlets had gone through thirty editions, skipping alternately the odd
and even numbers. He loved the Constitution, to which he would cling and
grapple--and he was clothed with the infirmities of man's nature."

CHAPTER XLII.

WITNESSES.

In the days when Mr. Davenport Hill, the Recorder of Birmingham, made a
professional reputation for himself in the committee-rooms of the Houses
of Parliament, he had many a sharp tussle with one of those venal
witnesses who, during the period of excitement that terminated in the
disastrous railway panic, were ready to give scientific evidence on
engineering questions, with less regard to truth than to the interests
of the persons who paid for their evidence. Having by mendacious
evidence gravely injured a cause in which Mr. Hill was interested as
counsel, and Mr. Tite, the eminent architect, and present member for
Bath, was concerned as a projector, this witness was struck with
apoplexy and died--before he could complete the mischief which he had so
adroitly begun. Under the circumstances, his sudden withdrawal from the
world was not an occasion for universal regret. "Well, Hill, have you
heard the news?" inquired Mr. Tite of the barrister, whom he encountered
in Middle Temple Lane on the morning after the engineer's death. "Have
you heard that ---- died yesterday of apoplexy?" "I can't say," was the
rejoinder, "that I shall shed many tears for his loss. He was an arrant
scoundrel." "Come, come," replied the architect, charitably, "you have
always been too hard on that man. He was by no means so bad a fellow as
you would make him out. I do verily believe that in the whole course of
his life that man never told a lie--_out of the witness-box_." Strange
to say, this comical testimony to character was quite justified by the
fact. This man, who lied in public as a matter of business, was
punctiliously honorable in private life.

Of the simplest method of tampering with witnesses an instance is found
in a case which occurred while Sir Edward Coke was Chief Justice of the
King's Bench. Loitering about Westminster Hall, one of the parties in an
action stumbled upon the witness whose temporary withdrawal from the
ways of men he was most anxious to effect. With a perfect perception of
the proper use of hospitality, he accosted this witness (a staring,
open-mouthed countryman), with suitable professions of friendliness, and
carrying him into an adjacent tavern, set him down before a bottle of
wine. As soon as the sack had begun to quicken his guest's circulation,
the crafty fellow hastened into court with the intelligence that the
witness, whom he had left drinking in a room not two hundred yards
distant, was in a fit and lying at death's door. The court being asked
to wait, the impudent rascal protested that to wait would be useless;
and the Chief Justice, taking his view of the case, proceeded to give
judgment without hearing the most important evidence in the cause.

In badgering a witness with noisy derision, no barrister of Charles
II.'s time could surpass George Jeffreys; but on more than one occasion
that gentleman, in his most overbearing moments, met with his master in
the witness whom he meant to brow-beat. "You fellow in the leathern
doublet," he is said to have exclaimed to a countryman whom he was about
to cross-examine, "Pray, what are you paid for swearing?" "God bless
you, sir, and make you an honest man," answered the farmer, looking the
barrister full in the face, and speaking with a voice of hearty
good-humor; "if you had no more for lying than I have for swearing, you
would wear a leather doublet as well as I."

Sometimes Erskine's treatment of witnesses was very jocular, and
sometimes very unfair; but his jocoseness was usually so distinct from
mere flippant derisiveness, and his unfairness was redeemed by such
delicacy of wit and courtesy of manner, that his most malicious _jeux
d'esprit_ seldom raised the anger of the witnesses at whom they were
aimed. A religious enthusiast objecting to be sworn in the usual manner,
but stating that though he would not "kiss the book," he would "hold up
his hand" and swear, Erskine asked him to give his reason for preferring
so eccentric a way to the ordinary mode of giving testimony. "It is
written in the book of Revelations," answered the man, "that the angel
standing on the sea _held up his hand_." "But that does not apply to
your case," urged the advocate; "for in the first place, you are no
angel; secondly, you cannot tell how the angel would have sworn if he
had stood on dry ground, as you do." Not shaken by this reply, which
cannot be called unfair, and which, notwithstanding its jocoseness, was
exactly the answer which the gravest divine would have made to such
scruples, the witness persisted in his position; and on being permitted
to give evidence in his own peculiar way, he had enough influence with
the jury to induce them to give a verdict adverse to Erskine's wishes.

Less fair but more successful was Erskine's treatment of the commercial
traveller, who appeared in the witness box dressed in the height of
fashion, and wearing a starched white necktie folded with the 'Brummel
fold.' In an instant reading the character of the man, on whom he had
never before set eyes, and knowing how necessary it was to put him in a
state of extreme agitation and confusion, before touching on the facts
concerning which he had come to give evidence, Erskine rose, surveyed
the coxcomb, and said, with an air of careless amusement, "You were born
and bred in Manchester, _I perceive_." Greatly astonished at this
opening remark, the man answered, nervously, that he was "a Manchester
man--born and bred in Manchester." "Exactly," observed Erskine, in a
conversational tone, and as though he were imparting information to a
personal friend--"exactly so; I knew it from the absurd tie of your
neckcloth." The roars of laughter which followed this rejoinder so
completely effected the speaker's purpose that the confounded bagman
could not tell his right hand from his left. Equally effective was
Erskine's sharp question, put quickly to the witness, who, in an action
for payment of a tailor's bill, swore that a certain dress-coat was
badly made--one of the sleeves being longer than the other. "You will,"
said Erskine, slowly, having risen to cross-examine, "swear--that one of
the sleeves was--longer--than the other?" _Witness._ "I do swear it."
_Erskine_, quickly, and with a flash of indignation, "Then, sir, I am to
understand that you positively deny that one of the sleeves was
_shorter_ than the other?" Startled into a self-contradiction by the
suddenness and impetuosity of this thrust, the witness said, "I do deny
it." _Erskine_, raising his voice as the tumultuous laughter died away,
"Thank you, sir; I don't want to trouble you with another question." One
of Erskine's smartest puns referred to a question of evidence. "A case,"
he observed, in a speech made during his latter years, "being laid
before me by my veteran friend, the Duke of Queensbury--better known as
'old Q'--as to whether he could sue a tradesman for breach of contract
about the painting of his house; and the evidence being totally
insufficient to support the case, I wrote thus: 'I am of opinion that
this action will not _lie_ unless the witnesses _do_.'" It is worthy of
notice that this witticism was but a revival (with a modification) of a
pun attributed to Lord Chancellor Hatton in Bacon's 'Apophthegmes.'

In this country many years have elapsed since duels have taken place
betwixt gentlemen of the long robe, or between barristers and witnesses
in consequence of words uttered in the heat of forensic strife; but in
the last century, and in the opening years of the present, it was no
very rare occurrence for a barrister to be called upon for
'satisfaction' by a person whom he had insulted in the course of his
professional duty. During George II.'s reign, young Robert Henley so
mercilessly badgered one Zephaniah Reeve, whom he had occasion to
cross-examine in a trial at Bristol, that the infuriated witness--Quaker
and peace-loving merchant though he was--sent his persecutor a challenge
immediately upon leaving court. Rather than incur the ridicule of 'going
out with a Quaker,' and the sin of shooting at a man whom he had
actually treated with unjustifiable freedom, Henley retreated from an
embarrassing position by making a handsome apology; and years
afterwards, when he had risen to the woolsack, he entertained his old
acquaintance, Zephaniah Reeve, at a fashionable dinner-party, when he
assembled guests were greatly amused by the Lord Chancellor's account of
the commencement of his acquaintance with his Quaker friend.

Between thirty and forty years later Thurlow was 'called out' by the
Duke of Hamilton's agent, Mr. Andrew Stewart, whom he had grievously
offended by his conduct of the Great Douglas Case. On Jan. 14,
1769-1770, Thurlow and his adversary met in Hyde Park. On his way to the
appointed place, the barrister stopped at a tavern near Hyde Park
Corner, and "ate an enormous breakfast," after which preparation for
business, he hastened to the field of action. Accounts agree in saying
that he behaved well upon the ground. Long after the bloodless
_rencontre_, the Scotch agent, not a little proud of his 'affair' with a
future Lord Chancellor, said, "Mr. Thurlow advanced and stood up to me
like an elephant." But the elephant and the mouse parted without hurting
each other; the encounter being thus faithfully described in the 'Scots'
Magazine:' "On Sunday morning, January 14, the parties met with swords
and pistols, in Hyde Park, one of them having for his second his
brother, Colonel S----, and the other having for his Mr. L----, member
for a city in Kent. Having discharged pistols, at ten yards' distance,
without effect, they drew their swords, but the seconds interposed, and
put an end to the affair."

One of the best 'Northern Circuit stories' pinned upon Lord Eldon
relates to a challenge which an indignant suitor is said to have sent to
Law and John Scott. In a trial at York that arose from a horse-race, it
was stated in evidence that one of the conditions of the race required
that "each horse should be ridden by a gentleman." The race having been
run, the holders refused to pay the stakes to the winner on the ground
that he was not a gentleman; whereupon the equestrian whose gentility
was thus called in question brought an action for the money. After a
very humorous inquiry, which terminated in a verdict for the defendants,
the plaintiff _was said_ to have challenged the defendants' counsel.
Messrs. Scott and Law, for maintaining that he was no gentleman; to
which invitation, it also averred, reply was made that the challengees
"could not think of fighting one who had been found _no gentleman_ by
the solemn verdict of twelve of his countrymen." Inquiry, however, has
deprived this delicious story of much of its piquancy. Eldon had no part
in the offence; and Law, who was the sole utterer of the obnoxious
words, received no invitation to fight. "No message was sent," says a
writer, supposed to be Lord Brougham, in the 'Law Magazine,' "and no
attempt was made to provoke a breach of the peace. It is very possible
Lord Eldon may have said, and Lord Ellenborough too, that they were not
bound to treat one in such a predicament as a gentleman, and hence the
story has arisen in the lady's mind. The fact was as well known on the
Northern Circuit as the answer of a witness to a question, whether the
party had a right by his circumstances to keep a pack of fox-hounds; 'No
more right than I to keep a pack of archbishops.'"

Curran is said to have received a call, before he left his bed one
morning, from a gentleman whom he had cross-examined with needless
cruelty and unjustifiable insolence on the previous day. "Sir!" said
this irate man, presenting himself in Curran's bedroom, and rousing the
barrister from slumber to a consciousness that he was in a very awkward
position, "I am the gintleman whom you insulted yesterday in His
Majesty's court of justice, in the presence of the whole county, and I
am here to thrash you soundly!" Thus speaking, the Herculean intruder
waved a horsewhip over the recumbent lawyer. "You don't mean to strike a
man when he is lying down?" inquired Curran. "No, bedad; I'll just wait
till you've got out of bed and then I'll give it to you sharp and fast."
Curran's eye twinkled mischievously as he rejoined: "If that's the case,
by ---- I'll lie here all day." So tickled was the visitor with this
humorous announcement, that he dropped his horsewhip, and dismissing
anger with a hearty roar of laughter, asked the counsellor to shake
hands with him.

In the December of 1663, Pepys was present at a trial in Guildhall
concerning the fraud of a merchant-adventurer, who having insured his
vessel for £2400 when, together with her cargo, she was worth no more
than £500, had endeavored to wreck her off the French coast. From
Pepys's record it appears that this was a novel piece of rascality at
that time, and consequently created lively sensation in general society,
as well as in legal and commercial coteries. "All the great counsel in
the kingdom" were employed in the cause; and though maritime causes
then, as now, usually involved much hard swearing, the case was notable
for the prodigious amount of perjury which it elicited. For the most
part the witnesses were sailors, who, besides swearing with stolid
indifference to truth, caused much amusement by the incoherence of their
statements and by their free use of nautical expressions, which were
quite unintelligible to Chief Justice (Sir Robert) Hyde. "It was," says
Pepys, "pleasant to see what mad sort of testimonys the seamen did give,
and could not be got to speak in order; and then their terms such as the
judge could not understand, and to hear how sillily the counsel and
judge would speak as to the terms necessary in the matter, would make
one laugh; and above all a Frenchman, that was forced to speak in
French, and took an English oath he did not understand, and had an
interpreter sworn to tell us what he said, which was the best testimony
of all." A century later Lord Mansfield was presiding at a trial
consequent upon a collision of two ships at sea, when a common sailor,
whilst giving testimony, said, "At the time I was standing abaft the
binnacle;" whereupon his lordship, with a proper desire to master the
facts of the case, observed, "Stay, stay a minute, witness: you say
that at the time in question you were _standing abaft the binnacle_; now
tell me, where is abaft the binnacle?" This was too much for the gravity
of 'the salt,' who immediately before climbing into the witness-box had
taken a copious draught of neat rum. Removing his eyes from the bench,
and turning round upon the crowded court with an expression of intense
amusement, he exclaimed at the top of his voice, "He's a pretty fellow
for a judge! Bless my jolly old eyes!--[the reader may substitute a
familiar form of 'imprecation on eye-sight']--you have got a pretty sort
of a land-lubber for a judge! He wants me to tell him where _abaft the
binnacle is_!" Not less amused than the witness, Lord Mansfield
rejoined, "Well, my friend, you must fit me for my office by telling me
where _abaft the binnacle_ is; you've already shown me the meaning of
_half seas over_."

With less good-humor the same Chief Justice revenged himself on Dr.
Brocklesby, who, whilst standing in the witness-box of the Court of King's
Bench, incurred the Chief Justice's displeasure by referring to their
private intercourse. Some accounts say that the medical witness merely
nodded to the Chief Justice, as he might have done with propriety had they
been taking seats at a convivial table; other accounts, with less
appearance of probability, maintain that in a voice audible to the bar, he
reminded the Chief Justice of certain jolly hours which they had spent
together during the previous evening. Anyhow, Lord Mansfield was hurt, and
showed his resentment in his 'summing-up' by thus addressing the Jury:
"The next witness is one _R_ocklesby, or _B_rocklesby--_B_rocklesby or
_R_ocklesby, I am not sure which; and first, _he swears that he is a
physician_."

On one occasion Lord Mansfield covered his retreat from an untenable
position with a sparkling pleasantry. An old witness named _Elm_ having
given his evidence with remarkable clearness, although he was more than
eighty years of age, Lord Mansfield examined him as to his habitual mode
of living, and found that he had throughout life been an early riser and
a singularly temperate man. "Ay," observed the Chief Justice, in a tone
of approval, "I have always found that without temperance and early
habits, longevity is never attained." The next witness, the _elder_
brother of this model of temperance, was then called, and he almost
surpassed his brother as an intelligent and clear-headed utterer of
evidence. "I suppose," observed Lord Mansfield, "that you also are an
early riser." "No, my lord," answered the veteran, stoutly; "I like my
bed at all hours, and special-_lie_ I like it of a morning." "Ah; but,
like your brother, you are a very temperate man?" quickly asked the
judge, looking out anxiously for the safety of the more important part
of his theory. "My lord," responded this ancient Elm, disdaining to
plead guilty to a charge of habitual sobriety, "I am a very old man, and
my memory is as clear as a bell, but I can't remember the night when
I've gone to bed without being more or less drunk." Lord Mansfield was
silent. "Ah, my lord," Mr. Dunning exclaimed, "this old man's case
supports a theory upheld by many persons, that habitual intemperance is
favorable to longevity." "No, no," replied the Chief Justice, with a
smile, "this old man and his brother merely teach us what every
carpenter knows--that Elm, whether it be wet or dry, is a very tough
wood." Another version of this excellent story makes Lord Mansfield
inquire of the elder Elm, "Then how do you account for your prolonged
tenure of existence?" to which question Elm is made to respond, more
like a lawyer than a simple witness, "I account for it by the terms of
the original lease."

Few stories relating to witnesses are more laughable than that which
describes the arithmetical process by which Mr. Baron Perrot arrived at
the value of certain conflicting evidence. "Gentlemen of the jury," this
judge is reported to have said, in summing up the evidence in a trial
where the witnesses had sworn with noble tenacity of purpose, "there are
fifteen witnesses who swear that the watercourse used to flow in a ditch
on the north side of the hedge. On the other hand, gentlemen, there are
nine witnesses who swear that the watercourse used to flow on the south
side of the hedge. Now, gentlemen, if you subtract nine from fifteen,
there remain six witnesses wholly uncontradicted; and I recommend you to
give your verdict for the party who called those six witnesses."

Whichever of the half-dozen ways in which it is told be accepted as the
right one, the following story exemplifies the difficulty which
occasionally arises in courts of justice, when witnesses use provincial
terms with which the judge is not familiar. Mr. William Russell, in past
days deputy-surveyor of 'canny Newcastle,' and a genuine Northumbrian in
dialect, brogue, and shrewdness, was giving his evidence at an important
trial in the Newcastle court-house, when he said--"As I was going along
the quay, I saw a hubbleshew coming out of a chare-foot." Not aware that
on Tyne-side the word 'hubbleshew' meant 'a concourse of riotous
persons;' that the narrow alleys or lanes of Newcastle 'old town' were
called by their inhabitants 'chares;' and that the lower end of each
alley, where it opened upon quay-side, was termed a 'chare-foot;' the
judge, seeing only one part of the puzzle, inquired the meaning of the
word 'hubbleshew.' "A crowd of disorderly persons," answered the
deputy-surveyor. "And you mean to say," inquired the judge of assize,
with a voice and look of surprise, "that you saw a crowd of people come
out of a chair-foot?" "I do, my lord," responded the witness.
"Gentlemen of the jury," said his lordship, turning to the 'twelve good
men' in the box, "it must be needless for me to inform you--_that this
witness is insane_!"

The report of a trial which occurred at Newcastle Assizes towards the
close of the last century gives the following succession of questions
and answers:--_Barrister._--"What is your name?" _Witness._--"Adam,
sir--Adam Thompson." _Barrister._--"Where do you live?" _Witness._--"In
Paradise." _Barrister_ (with facetious tone).--"And pray, Mr. Adam, how
long have you dwelt in Paradise?" _Witness._--"Ever since the flood."
Paradise is the name of a village in the immediate vicinity of
Newcastle; and 'the flood' referred to by the witness was the inundation
(memorable in local annals) of the Tyne, which in the year 1771 swept
away the old Tyne Bridge.

CHAPTER XLIII.

CIRCUITEERS.

Exposed to some of the discomforts, if not all the dangers,[33] of
travel; required to ride over black and cheerless tracts of moor and
heath: now belated in marshy districts, and now exchanging shots with
gentlemen of the road; sleeping, as luck favored them, in way-side
taverns, country mansions, or the superior hotels of provincial
towns--the circuiteers of olden time found their advantage in
cultivating social hilarity and establishing an etiquette that
encouraged good-fellowship in their itinerant societies. At an early
date they are found varying the monotony of cross-country rides with
racing-matches and drinking bouts, cock-fights and fox-hunting; and
enlivening assize towns and country houses with balls and plays, frolic
and song. A prodigious amount of feasting was perpetrated on an ordinary
circuit-round of the seventeenth century; and at circuit-messes, judges'
dinners, and sheriffs' banquets, saucy juniors were allowed a license of
speech to staid leaders and grave dignitaries that was altogether
exceptional to the prevailing tone of manners.

In the days when Chief Justice Hyde, Clarendon's cousin, used to ride
the Norfolk Circuit, old Sergeant Earl was the leader, or, to use the
slang of the period, 'cock of the round'. A keen, close-fisted, tough
practitioner, this sergeant used to ride from town to town, chuckling
over the knowledge that he was earning more and spending less than any
other member of the circuit. One biscuit was all the refreshment which
he permitted himself on the road from Cambridge to Norwich; although he
consented to dismount at the end of every ten miles to stretch his
limbs. Sidling up to Sergeant Earl, as there was no greater man for him
to toady, Francis North offered himself as the old man's travelling
companion from the university to the manufacturing town; and when Earl
with a grim smile accepted the courteous suggestion, the young man
congratulated himself. On the following morning, however, he had reason
to question his good fortune when the sergeant's clerk brought him a
cake, and remarked, significantly, "Put it in your pocket, sir; you'll
want it; for my master won't draw bit till he comes to Norwich." It was
a hard day's work; but young Frank North was rewarded for his civility
to the sergeant, who condescended to instruct his apt pupil in the
tricks and chicaneries of their profession. "Sir," inquired North at the
close of the excursion, emboldened by the rich man's affability, "by
what system do you keep your accounts, which must be very complex, as
you have lands, securities, and great comings-in of all kinds?"
"Accounts! boy," answered the grey-headed curmudgeon; "I get as much as
I can, and I spend as little as I can; that's how I keep my accounts."

When North had raised himself to the Chiefship of the Common Pleas he
chose the Western Circuit, "not for the common cause, it being a long
circuit, and beneficial for the officers and servants, but because he
knew the gentlemen to be loyal and conformable, and that he should have
fair quarter amongst them;" and so much favor did he win amongst the
loyal and conformable gentry that old Bishop Mew--the prelate of
Winchester, popularly known as Bishop _Patch_, because he always wore a
patch of black court-plaster over the scar of a wound which he received
on one of his cheeks, whilst fighting as a trooper for Charles I.--used
to term him the "Deliciæ occidentis, or Darling of the West." On one
occasion this Darling of the West was placed in a ludicrous position by
the alacrity with which he accepted an invitation from "a busy fanatic,"
a Devonshire gentleman, of good family, and estate, named Duke. This
"busy fanatic" invited the judges on circuit and their officers to dine
and sleep at his mansion on their way to Exeter, and subsequently
scandalized his guests--all of them of course zealous defenders of the
Established Church--by reading family-prayers before supper. "The
gentleman," says the historian, "had not the manners to engage the
parish minister to come and officiate with any part of the evening
service before supper: but he himself got behind the table in his hall,
and read a chapter, and then a long-winded prayer, after the
Presbyterian way." Very displeased were the Chief Justice and the other
Judge of Assize; and their dissatisfaction was not diminished on the
following day when on entering Exeter a rumor met them, that "the judges
had been at a conventicle, and the grand jury intended to present them
and all their retinue for it."

Not many years elapsed before this Darling of the West was replaced, by
another Chief Justice who asserted the power of constituted authorities
with an energy that roused more fear than gratitude in the breasts of
local magistrates. That grim, ghastly, hideous progress, which Jeffreys
made in the plenitude of civil and military power through the Western
Counties, was not without its comic interludes; and of its less
repulsive scenes none was more laughable than that which occurred in
Bristol Courthouse when the terrible Chief Justice upbraided the Bristol
magistrates for taking part in a slave-trade of the most odious sort.
The mode in which the authorities of the western port carried on their
iniquitous traffic deserves commemoration, for no student can understand
the history of any period until he has acquainted himself with its
prevailing morality. At a time when by the wealth of her merchants and
the political influence of her inhabitants Bristol was the second city
of England, her mayor and aldermen used daily to sit in judgment on
young men and growing boys, who were brought before them and charged
with trivial offences. Some of the prisoners had actually broken the
law: but in a large proportion of the cases the accusations were totally
fictitious--the arrests having been made in accordance with the
directions of the magistrates, on charges which the magistrates
themselves knew to be utterly without foundation. Every morning the
Bristol tolsey or court-house saw a crowd of those wretched
captives--clerks out of employment, unruly apprentices, street boys
without parents, and occasionally children of honest birth, ay, of
patrician lineage, whose prompt removal from their native land was
desired by brutal fathers or vindictive guardians; and every morning a
mockery of judicial investigation was perpetrated in the name of
justice. Standing in a crowd the prisoners were informed of the offences
charged against them; huddled together in the dock, like cattle in a
pen, they caught stray sentences from the lips of the perjured rascals
who had seized them in the public ways; and whilst they thus in a frenzy
of surprise and fear listened to the statements of counsel for the
prosecution, and to the fabrications of lying witnesses, agents of the
court whispered to them that if they wished to save their lives they
must instantly confess their guilt, and implore the justices to
transport them to the plantations. Ignorant, alarmed, and powerless, the
miserable victims invariably acted on this perfidious counsel; and
forthwith the magistrates ordered their shipment to the West Indies,
where they were sold as slaves--the money paid for them by West India
planters in due course finding its way into the pockets of the Bristol
justices. It is asserted that the wealthier aldermen, through caution,
or those few grains of conscience which are often found in the breasts
of consummate rogues, forbore to share in the gains of this abominable
traffic; but it cannot be gainsaid that the least guilty magistrates
winked at the atrocious conduct of their brother-justices.

Vowing vengeance on the Bristol kidnappers Jeffreys entered their
court-house, and opened proceedings by crying aloud that "he had brought
a broom to sweep them with." The Mayor of Bristol was in those days no
common mayor; in Assize Commissions his name was placed before the
names of Judges of Assize; and even beyond the limits of his
jurisdiction he was a man of mark and influence. Great therefore was
this dignitary's astonishment when Jeffreys ordered him--clothed as he
was in official scarlet and furs--to stand in the dock. For a few
seconds the local potentate demurred; but when the Chief Justice poured
upon him a cataract of blasphemy, and vowed to hang him instantly over
the entrance to the tolsey unless he complied immediately, the
humiliated chief magistrate of the ancient borough took his place at the
felon's bar, and received such a rating as no thief, murderer or rebel
had ever heard from George Jeffrey's abusive mouth. Unfortunately the
affair ended with the storm. Until the arrival of William of Orange the
guilty magistrates were kept in fear of criminal prosecution; but the
matter was hushed up and covered with amnesty by the new government; so
that "the fright only, which was no small one, was all the punishment
which these judicial kidnappers underwent; and the gains," says Roger
North, "acquired by so wicked a trade, rested peacefully in their
pockets." It should be remembered that the kidnapping justices whom the
odious Jeffreys so indignantly denounced were tolerated and courted by
their respectable and prosperous neighbors; and some of the worst
charges, by which the judge's fame has been rendered odious to
posterity, depend upon the evidence of men who, if they were not
kidnappers themselves, saw nothing peculiarly atrocious in the conduct
of magistrates who systematically sold their fellow-countrymen into a
most barbarous slavery.

Amongst old circuit stories of questionable truthfulness there is a
singular anecdote recorded by the biographers of Chief Justice Hale,
who, whilst riding the Western Circuit, tried a half-starved lad on a
charges of burglary. The prisoner had been shipwrecked upon the Cornish
coast, and on his way through an inhospitable district had endured the
pangs of extreme hunger. In his distress, the famished wanderer broke
the window of a baker's shop and stole a loaf of bread. Under the
circumstances, Hale directed the jury to acquit the prisoner: but, less
merciful than the judge, the gentlemen of the box returned a verdict of
'Guilty'--a verdict which the Chief Justice stoutly refused to act upon.
After much resistance, the jurymen were starved into submission; and the
youth was set at liberty. Several years elapsed; and Chief Justice Hale
was riding the Northern Circuit, when he was received with such costly
and excessive pomp by the sheriff of a northern county, that he
expostulated with his entertainer on the lavish profuseness of his
conduct. "My lord," answered the sheriff, with emotion, "don't blame me
for showing my gratitude to the judge who saved my life when I was an
outcast. Had it not been for you, I should have been hanged in Cornwall
for stealing a loaf, instead of living to be the richest landowner of my
native county."

A sketch of circuit-life in the middle of the last century may be found
in 'A Northern Circuit, Described in a Letter to a Friend: a Poetical
Essay. By a Gentleman of the Middle Temple. 1751.'--a piece of doggrel
that will meet with greater mercy from the antiquary than the poetical
critic.

In seeking to avoid the customary exactions of their office, the
sheriffs of the present generation were only following in the steps of
sheriffs who, more than a century past, exerted themselves to reduce the
expenses of shrievalties, and whose economical reforms were defended by
reference to the conduct of sheriffs under the last of the Tudors.--In
the days of Elizabeth, the sheriffs demanded and obtained relief from an
obligation to supply judges on circuit, with food and lodging; under
Victoria they have recently exclaimed against the custom which required
them to furnish guards of javelin-bearers for the protection of Her
Majesty's representatives; when George II. was king, they grumbled
against lighter burdens--for instance, the cost of white kid-gloves and
payments to bell-ringers. The sheriff is still required by custom to
present the judges with white gloves whenever an assize has been held
without a single capital conviction; but in past times, on every
_maiden_ assize, he was expected to give gloves not only to the judges,
but to the entire body of circuiteers--barristers as well as officers of
court.[34] Wishing to keep his official expenditure down to the lowest
possible sum, a certain sheriff for Cumberland--called in 'A Northern
Circuit,' Sir Frigid Gripus Knapper--directed his under-sheriff not to
give white gloves on the occasion of a maiden assize at Carlisle, and
also through the mouth of his subordinate, declined to pay the officers
of the circuit certain customary fees. To put the innovator to shame,
Sir William Gascoigne, the judge before whom the case was laid, observed
in open court, "Though I can compel an immediate payment, it being a
demand of right, and not a mere gift, yet I will set him an example by
gifts which I might refuse, but will not, because they are customary,"
and forthwith addressing the steward, added--"Call the sheriff's
coachman, his pages, and musicians, singing-boys, and vergers, and give
them the accustomed gifts as soon as the sheriff comes." From this
direction, readers may see that under the old system of presents a judge
was compelled to give away with his left hand much of that which he
accepted with his right. It appears that Sir William Gascoigne's conduct
had the desired effect; for as soon as the sheriff made his appearance,
he repudiated the parsimonious conduct of the under-sheriff--though it
is not credible that the subordinate acted without the direction or
concurrence of his superior. "I think it," observed the sheriff, in
reference to the sum of the customary payments, "as much for the honor
of my office, and the country in general, as it is justice to those to
whom it is payable; and if any sheriff has been of a different opinion
it shall never bias me."

From the days when Alexander Wedderburn, in his new silk gown, to the
scandal of all sticklers for professional etiquette, made a daring but
futile attempt to seize the lead of the circuit which seventeen years
later he rode as judge, 'The Northern' had maintained the _prestige_ of
being the most important of the English circuits. Its palmiest and most
famous days belong to the times of Norton and Wallace, Jack Lee and John
Scott, Edward Law and Robert Graham; but still amongst the wise white
heads of the upper house may be seen at times the mobile features of an
aged peer who, as Mr. Henry Brougham, surpassed in eloquence and
intellectual brilliance the brightest and most celebrated of his
precursors on the great northern round. But of all the great men whose
names illustrate the annals of the circuit, Lord Eldon is the person
most frequently remembered in connexion with the jovial ways of
circuiteers in the old time. In his later years the port-loving earl
delighted to recall the times when as Attorney General of the Circuit
Grand Court he used to prosecute offenders 'against the peace of our
Lord the Junior,' devise practical jokes for the diversion of the bar,
and over bowls of punch at York, Lancaster, or Kirkby Lonsdale, argue
perplexing questions about the morals of advocacy. Just as John
Campbell, thirty years later, used to recount with glee how in the mock
courts of the Oxford Circuit he used to officiate as crier, "holding a
fire-shovel in his hand as the emblem of his office;" so did old Lord
Eldon warm with mirth over recollections of his circuit revelries and
escapades. Many of his stories were apocryphal, some of them
unquestionably spurious; but the least truthful of them contained an
element of pleasant reality. Of course Jemmy Boswell, a decent lawyer,
though better biographer, was neither duped by the sham brief, nor
induced to apply in court for the writ of 'quare adhaesit pavimento;'
but it is quite credible that on the morning after his removal in a
condition of vinous prostration from the Lancaster flagstones, his
jocose friends concocted the brief, sent it to him with a bad guinea,
and proclaimed the success of their device. When the chimney-sweeper's
boy met his death by falling from a high gallery to the floor of the
court-house at the York Assizes, whilst Sir Thomas Davenport was
speaking, it was John Scott who--arguing that the orator's dullness had
sent the boy to sleep, and so caused his fatal fall--prosecuted Sir
Thomas for murder in the High Court, alleging in the indictment that the
death was produced by a "certain blunt instrument of _no value_, called
a _long speech_." The records of the Northern Circuit abound with
testimony to the hearty zeal with which the future Chancellor took part
in the proceedings of the Grand Court--paying fines and imposing them
with equal readiness, now upholding with mock gravity the high and
majestic character of the presiding judge, and at another time
inveighing against the levity and indecorum of a learned brother who had
maintained in conversation that "no man would be such a----fool as to go
to a lawyer for advice who knew how to get on without it." The monstrous
offender against religion and propriety who gave utterance to this
execrable sentiment was Pepper Arden (subsequently Master of the Rolls
and Lord Alvanley), and his punishment is thus recorded in the archives
of the circuit:--"In this he was considered as doubly culpable, in the
first place as having offended, against the laws of Almighty God by his
profane cursing; for which, however, he made a very sufficient atonement
by paying a bottle of claret; and secondly, as having made use of an
expression which, if it should become a prevailing opinion, might have
the most alarming consequences to the profession, and was therefore
deservedly considered in a far more hideous light. For the last offence
he was fin'd 3 bottles. Pd."

One of the most ridiculous circumstances over which the Northern Circuit
men of the last generation delighted to laugh occurred at Newcastle,
when Baron Graham--the poor lawyer, but a singularly amiable and placid
man, of whom Jeckyll observed, "no one but his sempstress could ruffle
him"--rode the circuit, and was immortalized as 'My Lord 'Size,' in Mr.
John Shield's capital song--

   "The jailor, for trial had brought up a thief,
     Whose looks seemed a passport for Botany Bay;
   The lawyers, some with and some wanting a brief,
     Around the green table were seated so gay;
   Grave jurors and witnesses waiting a call;
     Attorneys and clients, more angry than wise;
   With strangers and town-people, throng'd the Guildhall,
     All watching and gaping to see my Lord 'Size.

   "Oft stretch'd were their necks, oft erected their ears,
     Still fancying they heard of the trumpets the sound,
   When tidings arriv'd, which dissolv'd them in tears,
     That my lord at the dead-house was then lying drown'd.
   Straight left _tête-a-tête_ were the jailor and thief;
     The horror-struck crowd to the dead-house quick hies;
   Ev'n the lawyers, forgetful of fee and of brief,
     Set off helter-skelter to view my Lord 'Size.

   "And now the Sandhill with the sad tidings rings,
     And the tubs of the taties are left to take care;
   Fishwomen desert their crabs, lobsters, and lings,
     And each to the dead-house now runs like a hare;
   The glassmen, some naked, some clad, heard the news,
     And off they ran, smoking like hot mutton pies;
   Whilst Castle Garth tailors, like wild kangaroos,
     Came tail-on-end jumping to see my Lord 'Size.

   "The dead-house they reach'd, where his lordship they found,
     Pale, stretch'd on a plank, like themselves out of breath,
   The coroner and jury were seated around,
     Most gravely enquiring the cause of his death.
   No haste did they seem in, their task to complete,
     Aware that from hurry mistakes often rise;
   Or wishful, perhaps, of prolonging the treat
     Of thus sitting in judgment upon my Lord 'Size.

   "Now the Mansion House butler, thus gravely deposed:--
     'My lord on the terrace seem'd studying his charge
   And when (as I thought) he had got it compos'd,
     He went down the stairs and examined the barge;
   First the stem he surveyed, then inspected the stern,
     Then handled the tiller, and looked mighty wise;
   But he made a false step when about to return,
     And souse in the river straight tumbled Lord 'Size.'

   "'Now his narrative ended, the butler retir'd,
     Whilst Betty Watt, muttering half drunk through her teeth,
   Declar'd 'in her breast great consarn it inspir'd,
     That my lord should sae cullishly come by his death;'
   Next a keelman was called on, Bold Airchy by name,
     Who the book as he kissed showed the whites of his eyes,
   Then he cut an odd caper attention to claim,
     And this evidence gave them respecting Lord 'Size;--

   "Aw was settin' the keel, wi' Dick Slavers an' Matt,
     An' the Mansion House stairs we were just alongside,
   When we a' three see'd somethin', but didn't ken what,
     That was splashin' and labberin', aboot i' the tide.
   'It's a fluiker,' ki Dick; 'No,' ki Matt, 'its owre big,
     It luik'd mair like a skyet when aw furst seed it rise;'
   Kiv aw--for aw'd getten a gliff o' the wig--
     'Ods marcy! wey, marrows, becrike, it's Lord 'Size.

   "'Sae aw huik'd him, an' haul'd him suin into the keel,
     An' o' top o' the huddock aw rowl'd him aboot;
   An' his belly aw rubb'd, an' aw skelp'd his back weel,
     But the water he'd druck'n it wadn't run oot;
   So aw brought him ashore here, an' doctor's, in vain,
     Furst this way, then that, to recover him tries;
   For ye see there he's lyin' as deed as a stane,
     An' that's a' aw can tell ye aboot my Lord 'Size.'

   "Now the jury for close consultation retir'd:
     Some '_Death Accidental_' were willing to find;
   'God's Visitation' most eager requir'd;
     And some were for 'Fell in the River' inclin'd;
   But ere on their verdict they all were agreed,
     My Lord gave a groan, and wide opened his eyes;
   Then the coach and the trumpeters came with great speed,
     And back to the Mansion House carried Lord 'Size."

Amongst memorable Northern Circuit worthies was George Wood, the
celebrated Special Pleader, in whose chambers Law, Erskine, Abbott and a
mob of eminent lawyers acquired a knowledge of their profession. It is
on record that whilst he and Mr. Holroyde were posting the Northern
round, they were accosted on a lonely heath by a well-mounted horseman,
who reining in his steed asked the barrister "What o'clock it was?"
Favorably impressed by the stranger's appearance and tone of voice, Wood
pulled out his valuable gold repeater, when the highwayman presenting a
pistol, and putting it on the cock, said coolly, "_As you have_ a watch,
be kind enough to give it me, so that I may not have occasion to trouble
you again about the time." To demur was impossible; the lawyer,
therefore, who had met his disaster by _going to the country_, meekly
submitted to circumstances and surrendered the watch. For the loss of an
excellent gold repeater he cared little, but he winced under the banter
of his professional brethren, who long after the occurrence used to
smile with malicious significance as they accosted him with--"What's the
time, Wood?"

Another of the memorable Northern circuiteers was John Hullock, who,
like George Wood, became a baron of the Exchequer, and of whom the
following story is told on good authority. In an important cause tried
upon the Northern Circuit, he was instructed by the attorney who
retained him as leader on one side not to produce a certain deed unless
circumstances made him think that without its production his client
would lose the suit. On perusing the deed entrusted to him with this
remarkable injunction, Hullock saw that it established his client's
case, and wishing to dispatch the business with all possible
promptitude, he produced the parchment before its exhibition was
demanded by necessity. Examination instantly detected the spurious
character of the deed, which had been fabricated by the attorney. Of
course the presiding judge (Sir John Bayley) ordered the deed to be
impounded; but before the order was carried out, Mr. Hullock obtained
permission to inspect it again. Restored to his hands, the deed was
forthwith replaced in his bag. "You must surrender that deed instantly,"
exclaimed the judge, seeing Hullock's intention to keep it. "My lord,"
returned the barrister, warmly, "no power on earth shall induce me to
surrender it. I have incautiously put the life of a fellow-creature in
peril; and though I acted to the best of my discretion, I should never
be happy again were a fatal result to ensue." At a loss to decide on the
proper course of action, Mr. Justice Bayley retired from court to
consult with his learned brother. On his lordship's reappearance in
court, Mr. Hullock--who had also left the court for a brief period--told
him that during his absence the forged deed had been destroyed. The
attorney escaped; the barrister became a judge.

[33] Lord Eldon, when he was handsome Jack Scott of the Northern
Circuit, was about to make a short cut over the sands from Ulverstone to
Lancaster at the of the tide, when he was restrained from acting on his
rash resolve by the representations of an hotel keeper. "Danger,
danger," asked Scott, impatiently--"have you ever _lost_ anybody there?"
Mine host answered slowly, "Nae, sir, nae body has been _lost_ on the
sands, _the puir bodies have been found at low water_."

[34] With regard to the customary gifts of white gloves Mr. Foss
says:--"Gloves were presented to the judges on some occasions: viz.,
when a man, convicted for murder, or manslaughter, came and pleaded the
king's pardon; and, till the Act of 4 & 5 William and Mary c. 18, which
rendered personal appearance unnecessary, an outlawry could not be
reversed, unless the defendant came into court, and with a present of
gloves to the judges implored their favor to reverse it. The custom of
giving the judge a pair of white gloves upon a maiden assize has
continued till the present time." An interesting chapter might be
written on the ancient ceremonies and usages obsolete and extant, of our
courts of law. Here are a few of the practices which such a chapter
would properly notice:--The custom, still maintained, which forbids the
Lord Chancellor to utter any word or make any sign, when on Lord Mayor's
Day the Lord Mayor of London enters the Court of Chancery, and by the
mouth of the Recorder prays his lordship to honor the Guildhall banquet
with his presence; the custom--extant so late as Lord Brougham's
Chancellorship--which required the Holder of the Seals, at the
installation of a new Master of Chancery, to install the new master by
placing a cap or hat on his head; the custom which in Charles II.'s
time, on motion days at the Chancellor's, compelled all barristers
making motions to contribute to his lordship's 'Poor's Box'--barristers
within the bar paying two shillings, and outer barristers one
shilling--the contents of which box were periodically given to
magistrates, for distribution amongst the deserving poor of London; the
custom which required a newly-created judge to present his colleagues
with biscuits and wine; the barbarous custom which compelled prisoners
to plead their defence, standing in fetters, a custom enforced by Chief
Justice Pratt at the trial of the Jacobite against Christopher Layer,
although at the of trial of Cranburne for complicity in the
'Assassination Plot,' Holt had enunciated the merciful maxim, "When the
prisoners are tried they should stand at ease;" the custom which--in
days when forty persons died of gaol fever caught at the memorable Black
Sessions (May, 1759) at the Old Bailey, when Captain Clark was tried for
killing Captain Innes in a duel--strewed rue, fennel, and other herbs on
the ledge of the dock, in the faith that the odor of the herbage would
act as a barrier to the poisonous exhalations from prisoners sick of
gaol distemper, and would protect the assembly in the body of the court
from the contagion of the disease.

CHAPTER XLIV.

LAWYERS AND SAINTS.

Notwithstanding the close connexion which in old times existed between
the Church and the Law, popular sentiment holds to the opinion that the
ways of lawyers are far removed from the ways of holiness, and that the
difficulties encountered by wealthy travellers on the road to heaven are
far greater with rich lawyers than with any other class of rich men. An
old proverb teaches that wearers of the long robe never reach paradise
_per saltum_, but 'by slow degrees;' and an irreverent ballad supports
the vulgar belief that the only attorney to be found on the celestial
rolls gained admittance to the blissful abode more by artifice than
desert. The ribald broadside runs in the following style:---

   "Professions will abuse each other;
   The priests won't call the lawyer brother;
   While _Salkeld_ still beknaves the parson,
   And says he cants to keep the farce on.
   Yet will I readily suppose
   They are not truly bitter foes,
   But only have their pleasant jokes,
   And banter, just like other folks.
   And thus, for so they quiz the law,
   Once on a time th' Attorney Flaw,
   A man to tell you, as the fact is,
   Of vast chicane, of course of practice;
   (But what profession can we trace
   Where none will not the corps disgrace?
   Seduced, perhaps, by roguish client,
   Who tempt him to become more pliant),
   A notice had to quit the world,
   And from his desk at once was hurled.
   Observe, I pray, the plain narration:
   'Twas in a hot and long vacation,
   When time he had but no assistance.
   Tho' great from courts of law the distance,
   To reach the court of truth and justice
   (Where I confess my only trust is);
   Though here below the special pleader
   Shows talents worthy of a leader,
   Yet his own fame he must support,
   Be sometimes witty with the court
   Or word the passion of a jury
   By tender strains, or full of fury;
   Misleads them all, tho' twelve apostles,
   While with the new law the judge he jostles,
   And makes them all give up their powers
   To speeches of at least three hours--
   But we have left our little man,
   And wandered from our purpos'd plan:
   'Tis said (without ill-natured leaven)
   "If ever lawyers get to heaven,
   It surely is by slow degrees"
   (Perhaps 'tis slow they take their fees).
   The case, then, now I fairly state:
   Flaw reached at last to heaven's high gate;
   Quite short he rapped, none did it neater;
   The gate was opened by St. Peter,
   Who looked astonished when he saw,
   All black, the little man of law;
   But charity was Peter's guide.
   For having once himself denied
   His master, he would not o'erpass
   The penitent of any class;
   Yet never having heard there entered
   A lawyer, nay, nor ever ventured
   Within the realms of peace and love,
   He told him mildly to remove,
   And would have closed the gate of day,
   Had not old Flaw, in suppliant way,
   Demurring to so hard a fate,
   Begg'd but a look, tho' through the gate.
   St. Peter, rather off his guard,
   Unwilling to be thought too hard,
   Opens the gate to let him peep in.
   What did the lawyer? Did he creep in?
   Or dash at once to take possession?
   Oh no, he knew his own profession:
   He took his hat off with respect,
   And would no gentle means neglect;
   But finding it was all in vain
   For him admittance to obtain,
   Thought it were best, let come what will,
   To gain an entry by his skill.
   So while St. Peter stood aside,
   To let the door be opened wide,
   He skimmed his hat with all his strength
   Within the gate to no small length.
   St. Peter stared; the lawyer asked him
   "Only to fetch his hat," and passed him;
   But when he reached the jack he'd thrown,
   Oh, then was all the lawyer shown;
   He clapt it on, and arms akembo
   (As if he had been the gallant Bembo),
   Cry'd out--'What think you of my plan?
   Eject me, Peter, if you can.'"

The celestial courts having devised no process of ejectment that could
be employed in this unlooked-for emergency, St. Peter hastily withdrew
to take counsel's opinion; and during his absence Mr. Flaw firmly
established himself in the realms of bliss, where he remains to this day
the black sheep of the saintly family.

But though a flippant humorist in these later times could deride the
lawyer as a character who had better not force his way into heaven,
since he would not find a single personal acquaintance amongst its
inhabitants, in more remote days lawyers achieved the honors of
canonization, and our forefathers sought their saintly intercession with
devout fervor. Our calendars still regard the 15th of July as a sacred
day, in memory of the holy Swithin, who was tutor to King Ethelwulf and
King Alfred, and Chancellor of England, and who certainly deserved his
elevation to the fellowship of saints, even had his title to the honor
rested solely on a remarkable act which he performed in the exercise of
his judicial functions. A familiar set of nursery rhymes sets forth the
utter inability of all the King's horses and men to reform the shattered
Humpty-Dumpty, when his rotund highness had fallen from a wall; but when
a wretched market-woman, whose entire basketful of new-laid eggs had
been wilfully smashed by an enemy, sought in her trouble the aid of
Chancery, the holy Chancellor Swithin miraculously restored each broken
shell to perfect shape, each yolk to soundness. Saith William of
Malmesbury, recounting this marvellous achievement--"statimque porrecto
crucis signo, fracturam omnium ovorum consolidat."

Like Chancellor Swithin before him, and like Chancellor Wolsey in a
later time, Chancellor Becket was a royal tutor;[35] and like Swithin,
who still remains the pluvious saint of humid England, and unlike
Wolsey, who just missed the glory of canonization, Becket became a
widely venerated saint. But less kind to St. Thomas of Canterbury than
to St. Swithin, the Reformation degraded Becket from the saintly rank by
the decision which terminated the ridiculous legal proceedings
instituted by Henry VIII. against the holy reputation of St. Thomas.
After the saint's counsel had replied to the Attorney-General, who, of
course, conducted the cause for the crown, the court declared that
"Thomas, sometime Archbishop of Canterbury, had been guilty of
contumacy, treason and rebellion; that his bones should be publicly
burnt, to admonish the living of their duty by the punishment of the
dead; and that the offerings made at his shrine should be forfeited to
the crown."

After the conclusion of the suit for the saint's degradation--a suit
which was an extravagant parody of the process for establishing at Rome
a holy man's title to the honors of canonization--proclamation was made
that "forasmuch as it now clearly appeared that Thomas Becket had been
killed in a riot excited by his own obstinacy and intemperate language,
and had been afterwards canonized by the Bishop of Rome as the champion
of his usurped authority, the king's majesty thought it expedient to
declare to his loving subjects that he was no saint, but rather a rebel
and traitor to his prince, and therefore strictly charged and commanded
that he should not be esteemed or called a saint; that all images and
pictures of him should be destroyed, the festivals in his honor be
abolished, and his name and remembrance be erased out of all books,
under pain of his majesty's indignation and imprisonment at his grace's
pleasure."

But neither St. Swithin nor St. Thomas of Canterbury, lawyers though
they were, deigned to take the legal profession under especial
protection, and to mediate with particular officiousness between the
long robe and St. Peter. The peculiar saint of the profession was St.
Evona, concerning whom Carr, in his 'Remarks of the Government of the
Severall Parts of Germanie, Denmark, &c.,' has the following passage:
And now because I am speaking of Petty-foggers, give me leave to tell
you a story I mett with when I lived in Rome. Goeing with a Romane to
see some antiquityes, he showed me a chapell dedicated to St. Evona, a
lawyer of Brittanie, who, he said, came to Rome to entreat the Pope to
give the lawyers of Brittanie a patron, to which the Pope replied, that
he knew of no saint but what was disposed to other professions. At which
Evona was very sad, and earnestly begd of the Pope to think of one for
him. At last the Pope proposed to St. Evona that he should go round the
church of St. John de Latera blindfold, and after he had said so many
Ave Marias, that the first saint he laid hold of should be his patron,
which the good old lawyer willingly undertook, and at the end of his Ave
Maryes he stopt at St. Michael's altar, where he layed hold of the
Divell, under St. Michael's feet, and cry'd out, this is our saint, let
him be our patron. So being unblindfolded, and seeing what a patron he
had chosen, he went to his lodgings so dejected, that a few moneths
after he died, and coming to heaven's gates knockt hard. Whereupon St.
Peter asked who it was that knockt so bouldly. He replied that he was
St. Evona the advocate. Away, away, said St. Peter, here is but one
advocate in Heaven; here is no room for you lawyers. O but, said St.
Evona, I am that honest lawyer who never tooke fees on both sides, or
pleaded in a bad cause, nor did I ever set my Naibours together by the
ears, or lived by the sins of the People. Well, then, said St. Peter,
come in. This newes coming down to Rome, a witty poet wrote on St.
Evona's tomb these words:--

   'St. Evona un Briton,
   Advocat non Larron.
             Hallelujah.'

This story put me in mind of Ben Jonson goeing throw a church in Surrey,
seeing poore people weeping over a grave, asked one of the women why
they wept. Oh, said shee, we have lost our pretious lawyer, Justice
Randall; he kept us all in peace, and always was so good as to keep us
from goeing to law; the best man ever lived. Well, said Ben Jonson, I
will send you an epitaph to write upon his tomb, which was--

   'God works wonders now and then,
   Here lies a lawyer an honest man.'

An important vestige of the close relations which formerly existed
between the Law and the Church is still found in the ecclesiastical
patronage of the Lord Chancellor; and many are the good stories told of
interviews that took place between our more recent chancellors and
clergymen suing for preferment. "Who sent you, sir?" Thurlow asked
savagely of a country curate, who had boldly forced his way into the
Chancellor's library in Great Ormond Street, in the hope of winning the
presentation to a vacant living. "In whose _name_ do you come, that you
venture to pester me about your private affairs? I say, sir--what great
lords sent you to bother me in my house?" "My Lord," answered the
applicant, with a happy combination of dignity and humor, "no great man
supports my entreaty; but I may say with honesty, that I come to you in
the name of the Lord of Hosts." Pleased by the spirit and wit of the
reply, Thurlow exclaimed, "The Lord of Hosts! the Lord of Hosts! you are
the first parson that ever applied to me in that Lord's name; and though
his title can't be found in the Peerage, by ---- you shall have the
living." On another occasion the same Chancellor was less benign, but
not less just to a clerical applicant. Sustained by Queen Charlotte's
personal favor and intercession with Thurlow, the clergyman in question
felt so sure of obtaining the valuable living which was the object of
his ambition, that he regarded his interview with the Chancellor as a
purely formal affair. "I have, sir," observed Lord Thurlow, "received a
letter from the curate of the parish to which it is my intention to
prefer you, and on inquiry I find him to be a very worthy man. The
father of a large family, and a priest who has labored zealously in the
parish for many years, he has written to me--not asking for the living,
but modestly entreating me to ask the new rector to retain him as
curate. Now, sir, you would oblige me by promising me to employ the poor
man in that capacity." "My lord," replied Queen Charlotte's pastor, "it
would give me great pleasure to oblige your lordship in this matter, but
unfortunately I have arranged to take a personal friend for my curate."
His eyes flashing angrily, Thurlow answered, "Sir, I cannot force you to
take this worthy man for your curate, but I can make him the rector; and
by ---- he shall have the living, and be in a position to offer you the
curacy."

Of Lord Loughborough a reliable biographer records a pleasant and
singular story. Having pronounced a decision in the House of Lords,
which deprived an excellent clergyman of a considerable estate and
reduced him to actual indigence, the Chancellor, before quitting the
woolsack, addressed the unfortunate suitor thus:--"As a judge I have
decided against you, whose virtues are not unknown to me; and in
acknowledgment of those virtues I beg you to accept from me a
presentation to a living now vacant, and worth £600 per annum."

Capital also are the best of many anecdotes concerning Eldon and his
ecclesiastical patronage. Dating the letter from No. 2, Charlotte
Street, Pimlico, the Chancellor's eldest son sent his father the
following anonymous epistle:--

   "Hear, generous lawyer! hear my prayer,
   Nor let my freedom make, you stare,
             In hailing you Jack Scott!
   Tho' now upon the woolsack placed,
   With wealth, with power, with title graced,
             _Once_ nearer was our lot.

   "Say by what name the hapless bard
   May best attract your kind regard--
             Plain Jack?--Sir John?--or Eldon?
   Give from your ample store of giving,
   A starving priest some little living--
             The world will cry out 'Well done.'

   "In vain, without a patron's aid,
   I've prayed and preached, and preached and prayed--
             _Applauded_ but _ill-fed_.
   Such vain _éclat_ let others share;
   Alas, I cannot feed on air--
             I ask not _praise_, but _bread_."

Satisfactorily hoaxed by the rhymer, the Chancellor went to Pimlico in
search of the clerical poetaster, and found him not.

Prettier and less comic is the story of Miss Bridge's morning call upon
Lord Eldon. The Chancellor was sitting in his study over a table of
papers when a young and lovely girl--slightly rustic in her attire,
slightly embarrassed by the novelty of her position, but thoroughly in
command of her wits--entered the room, and walked up to the lawyer's
chair. "My dear," said the Chancellor, rising and bowing with old-world
courtesy, "who _are_ you?" "Lord Eldon," answered the blushing maiden,
"I am Bessie Bridge of Weobly, the daughter of the Vicar of Weobly, and
papa has sent me to remind you of a promise which you made him when I
was a little baby, and you were a guest in his house on the occasion of
your first election as member of Parliament for Weobly." "A promise, my
dear young lady?" interposed the Chancellor, trying to recall how he had
pledged himself. "Yea, Lord Eldon, a promise. You were standing over my
cradle when papa said to you, 'Mr. Scott, promise me that if ever you
are Lord Chancellor, when my little girl is a poor clergyman's wife, you
will give her husband a living;' and you answered, 'Mr. Bridge, my
promise is not worth half-a-crown, but I give it to you, wishing it were
worth more.'" Enthusiastically the Chancellor exclaimed, "You are quite
right. I admit the obligation. I remember all about it;" and, then,
after a pause, archly surveying the damsel, whose graces were the
reverse of matronly, he added, "But surely the time for keeping my
promise has not yet arrived? You cannot be any one's wife at present?"
For a few seconds Bessie hesitated for an answer, and then, with a blush
and a ripple of silver laughter she replied, "No, but I do so wish to be
_somebody's_ wife. I am engaged to a young clergyman; and there's a
living in Herefordshire near my old home that has recently fallen
vacant, and if you'll give it to Alfred, why then, Lord Eldon, we shall
marry before the end of the year." Is there need to say that the
Chancellor forthwith summoned his Secretary, that the secretary
forthwith made out the presentation to Bessie's lover, and that having
given the Chancellor a kiss of gratitude, Bessie made good speed back to
Herefordshire, hugging the precious document the whole way home?

A bad but eager sportsman, Lord Eldon used to blaze away at his
partridges and pheasants with such uniform want of success that Lord
Stowell had truth as well as humor on his side when he observed, "My
brother has done much execution this shooting season; with his gun he
has _killed a great deal of time_." Having ineffectually discharged two
barrels at a covey of partridges, the Chancellor was slowly walking to
the gate of one of his Encome turnip-fields when a stranger of clerical
garb and aspect hailed him from a distance, asking, "Where is Lord
Eldon?" Not anxious to declare himself to the witness of his ludicrously
bad shot, the Chancellor answered evasively, and with scant courtesy,
"Not far off." Displeased with the tone of this curt reply, the
clergyman rejoined, "I wish you'd use your tongue to better purpose than
you do your gun, and tell me civily where I can find the Chancellor."
"Well," responded the sportsman, when he had slowly approached his
questioner, "here you see the Chancellor--I am Lord Eldon." It was an
untoward introduction to the Chancellor for the strange clergyman who
had traveled from the North of Lancashire to ask for the presentation to
a vacant living. Partly out of humorous compassion for the applicant who
had offered rudeness, if not insult to the person whom he was most
anxious to propitiate; partly because on inquiry he ascertained the
respectability of the applicant; and partly because he wished to seal by
kindness the lips of a man who could report on the authority of his own
eyes that the best lawyer was also the worst shot in all England, Eldon
gave the petitioner the desired preferment. "But now," the old
Chancellor used to add in conclusion, whenever he told the story, "see
the ingratitude of mankind. It was not long before a large present of
game reached me, with a letter from my new-made rector, purporting that
he had sent it to me, because _from what he had seen of my shooting he_
supposed I must be badly off for game. Think of turning upon me in this
way, and wounding me in my tenderest point."

Amongst Eldon's humorous answers to applications for preferment should
be remembered his letter to Dr. Fisher of the Charterhouse: on one side
of a sheet of paper, "Dear Fisher, I cannot, to-day, give you the
preferment for which you ask.--I remain your sincere friend,
ELDON.--_Turn over_;" and on the other side, "I gave it to you
yesterday." This note reminds us of Erskine's reply to Sir John
Sinclair's solicitation for a subscription to the testimonial which Sir
John invited the nation to present to himself. On the one side of a
sheet of paper it ran, "My dear Sir John, I am certain there are few in
this kingdom who set a higher value on your services than myself, and I
have the honor to subscribe," and on the other side it concluded,
"myself your obedient faithful servant, ERSKINE."

[35] Swithin was tutor to Ethelwulf and Alfred. Becket was tutor to
Henry II.'s eldest son. Wolsey--who took delight in discharging
scholastic functions from the days when he birched schoolboys at
Magdalen College, Oxford, till the time when in the plenitude of his
grandeur he framed regulations for Dean Colet's school of St. Paul's and
wrote an introduction to a Latin Grammar for the use of children--acted
as educational director to the Princess Mary, and superintended the
studies of Henry VIII.'s natural son, the Earl of Richmond. Amongst
pedagogue-chancellors, by license of fancy, may be included the Earl of
Clarendon, whose enemies used to charge him with 'playing the
schoolmaster to his king,' and in their desire to bring him into
disfavor at court used to announce his approach to Charles II. by
saying, "Here comes your schoolmaster."

PART IX.

AT HOME: IN COURT: AND IN SOCIETY.

CHAPTER XLV.

LAWYERS AT THEIR OWN TABLES.

A long list, indeed, might be made of abstemious lawyers; but their
temperance is almost invariably mentioned by biographers as matter for
regret and apology, and is even made an occasion for reproach in cases
where it has not been palliated by habits of munificent hospitality. In
the catalogue of Chancellor Warham's virtues and laudable usages,
Erasmus takes care to mention that the primate was accustomed to
entertain his friends, to the number of two hundred at a time: and when
the man of letters notices the archbishop's moderation with respect to
wines and dishes--a moderation that caused his grace to eschew suppers,
and never to sit more than an hour at dinner--he does not omit to
observe that though the great man "made it a rule to abstain entirely
from supper, yet if his friends were assembled at that meal he would sit
down along with them and promote their conviviality."

Splendid in all things, Wolsey astounded envious nobles by the
magnificence of his banquets, and the lavish expenses of his kitchens,
wherein his master-cooks wore raiment of richest materials--the _chef_
of his private kitchen daily arraying himself in a damask-satin or
velvet, and wearing on his neck a chain of gold. Of a far other kind
were the tastes of Wolsey's successor, who, in the warmest sunshine of
his power, preferred a quiet dinner with Erasmus to the pompous display
of state banquets, and who wore a gleeful light in his countenance when,
after his fall, he called his children and grandchildren about him, and
said: "I have been brought up at Oxford, at an Inn of Chancery, at
Lincoln's Inn, and in the King's Court--from the lowest degree to the
highest, and yet have I in yearly revenues at this present, little left
me above a hundred pounds by the year; so that now, if we wish to live
together, you must be content to be contributaries together. But my
counsel is that we fall not to the lowest fare first; we will not,
therefore, descend to Oxford fare, nor to the fare of New Inn, but we
will begin with Lincoln's Inn diet, where many right worshipful men of
great account and good years do live full well; which if we find
ourselves the first year not able to maintain, then will we in the next
year come down to Oxford fare, where many great, learned, and ancient
fathers and doctors are continually conversant; which if our purses
stretch not to maintain neither, then may we after, with bag and wallet,
go a-begging together, hoping that for pity some good folks will give us
their charity and at every man's door to sing a _Salve Regina_, whereby
we shall keep company and be merry together."

Students recalling the social life of England should bear in mind the
hours kept by our ancestors in the fourteenth and two following
centuries. Under the Plantagenets noblemen used to sup at five P.M., and
dine somewhere about the breakfast hour of Mayfair in a modern London
season. Gradually hours became later; but under the Tudors the ordinary
dinner hour for gentlepeople was somewhere about eleven A.M., and their
usual time for supping was between five P.M. and six P.M., tradesmen,
merchants and farmers dining and supping at later hours than their
social superiors. "With us," says Hall the chronicler, "the nobility,
gentry, and students, do ordinarily go to dinner at eleven before noon,
and to supper at five, or between five and six, at afternoon. The
merchants dine and sup seldom before twelve at noon and six at night.
The husbandmen also dine at high noon as they call it, and sup at seven
or eight; but out of term in our universities the scholars dine at ten."
Thus whilst the idlers of society made haste to eat and drink, the
workers postponed the pleasures of the table until they had made a good
morning's work. In the days of morning dinners and afternoon suppers,
the law-courts used to be at the height of their daily business at an
hour when Templars of the present generation have seldom risen from bed.
Chancellors were accustomed to commence their daily sittings in
Westminster at seven A.M. in summer, and at eight A.M. in winter months.
Lord Keeper Williams, who endeavored to atone for want of law by
extraordinarily assiduous attention to the duties of his office, used
indeed to open his winter sittings by candlelight between six and seven
o'clock.

Many were the costly banquets of which successive Chancellors invited
the nobility, the judges, and the bar, to partake at old York House; but
of all the holders of the Great Seal who exercised pompous hospitality
in that picturesque palace, Francis Bacon was the most liberal,
gracious, and delightful entertainer. Where is the student of English
history who has not often endeavored to imagine the scene when Ben
Jonson sat amongst the honored guests of

   "England's high Chancellor, the destin'd heir,
   In his soft cradle, to his father's chair,"

and little prescient of the coming storm, spoke of his host as one

   "Whose even thread the Fates spin round and full,
   Out of their choicest and their whitest wool."

Even at the present day lawyers have reason to be grateful to Bacon for
the promptitude with which, on taking possession of the Marble Chair, he
revived the ancient usages of earlier holders of the seal, and set an
example of courteous hospitality to the bar, which no subsequent
Chancellor has been able to disregard without loss of respect and
_prestige_. Though a short attack of gout qualified the new pleasure of
his elevation--an attack attributed by the sufferer to his removal "from
a field air to a Thames air," _i.e._, from Gray's Inn to the south side
of the Strand--Lord Keeper Bacon lost no time in summoning the judges
and most eminent barristers to his table; and though the gravity of his
indisposition, or the dignity of his office, forbade him to join in the
feast, he sat and spoke pleasantly with them when the dishes had been
removed. "Yesterday," he wrote to Buckingham, "which was my weary day, I
bid all the judges to dinner, which was not used to be, and entertained
them in a private withdrawing chamber with the learned counsel. When the
feast was past I came amongst them and sat me down at the end of the
table, and prayed them to think I was one of them, and but a foreman."
Nor let us, whilst recalling Bacon's bounteous hospitalities, fail in
justice to his great rival, Sir Edward Coke---who, though he usually
held himself aloof from frivolous amusements, and cared but little for
expensive repasts, would with a liberal hand place lordly dishes before
lordly guests; and of whom it is recorded in the 'Apophthegmes,' that
when any great visitor dropped in upon him for pot-luck without notice
he was wont to say, "Sir, since you sent me no notice of your coming,
you must dine with me; but if I had known of it in due time I would have
dined with you."

From such great men as Lord Nottingham and Lord Guildford, who
successively kept high state in Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, to
fat _puisnes_ occupying snug houses in close proximity to the Inns of
Court, and lower downwards to leaders of the bar and juniors sleeping as
well as working in chambers, the Restoration lawyers were conspicuous
promoters of the hilarity which was one of the most prominent and least
offensive characteristics of Charles II.'s London. Lord Nottingham's
sumptuous hospitalities were the more creditable, because he voluntarily
relinquished his claim to £4000 per annum, which the royal bounty had
assigned him as a fund to be expended in official entertainments.
Similar praise cannot be awarded to Lord Guildford; but justice compels
the admission that, notwithstanding his love of money, he maintained the
_prestige_ of his place, so far as a hospitable table and profuse
domestic expenditure could support it.

Contrasting strongly with the lawyers of this period, who copied in
miniature the impressive state of Clarendon's princely establishments,
were the jovial, catch-singing, three-bottle lawyers--who preferred
drunkenness to pomp; an oaken table, surrounded by jolly fellows, to
ante-rooms crowded with obsequious courtiers; a hunting song with a
brave chorus to the less stormy diversion of polite conversation. Of
these free-living lawyers, George Jeffreys was a conspicuous leader. Not
averse to display, and not incapable of shining in refined society, this
notorious man loved good cheer and jolly companions beyond all other
sources of excitement; and during his tenure of the seals, he was never
more happy than when he was presiding over a company of sharp-witted
men-about-town whom he had invited to indulge in wild talk and choice
wine at his mansion that overlooked the lawns, the water, and the trees
of St. James's Park. On such occasions his lordship's most valued boon
companion was Mountfort, the comedian, whom he had taken from the stage
and made a permanent officer of the Duke Street household. Whether the
actor was required to discharge any graver functions in the Chancellor's
establishment is unknown; but we have Sir John Reresby's testimony that
the clever mimic and brilliant libertine was employed to amuse his
lordship's guests by ridiculing the personal and mental peculiarities of
the judges and most eminent barristers. "I dined," records Sir John,
"with the Lord Chancellor, where the Lord Mayor of London was a guest,
and some other gentlemen. His lordship having, according to custom,
drunk deep at dinner, called for one Mountfort, a gentleman of his, who
had been a comedian, an excellent mimic; and to divert the company, as
he was pleased to term it, he made him plead before him in a feigned
cause, during which he aped the judges, and all the great lawyers of the
age, in tone of voice and in action and gesture of body, to the very
great ridicule, not only of the lawyers, but of the law itself, which to
me did not seem altogether prudent in a man in his lofty station in the
law; diverting it certainly was, but prudent in the Lord Chancellor I
shall never think it." The fun of Mountfort's imitations was often
heightened by the presence of the persons whom they held up to
derision--some of whom would see and express natural displeasure at the
affront; whilst others, quite unconscious of their own peculiarities,
joined loudly in the laughter that was directed against themselves.

As pet buffoon of the tories about town, Mountfort was followed, at a
considerable distance of time, by Estcourt--an actor who united wit and
fine humor with irresistible powers of mimicry; and who contrived to
acquire the respect and affectionate regard of many of those famous
Whigs whom it was alike his pleasure and his business to render
ridiculous. In the _Spectator_ Steele paid him a tribute of cordial
admiration; and Cibber, noticing the marvellous fidelity of his
imitations, has recorded, "This man was so amazing and extraordinary a
mimic, that no man or woman, from the coquette to the privy counsellor,
ever moved or spoke before him, but he could carry their voice, look,
mien, and motion instantly into another company. I have heard him make
long harangues, and form various arguments, even in the manner of
thinking of an eminent pleader at the bar, with every the least article
and singularity of his utterance so perfectly imitated, that he was the
very _alter ipse_, scarce to be distinguished from the original."

With the exception of Kenyon and Eldon, and one or two less conspicuous
instances of judicial penuriousness, the judges of the Georgian period
were hospitable entertainers. Chief Justice Lee, who died in 1754,
gained credit for an adequate knowledge of law by the sumptuousness and
frequency of the dinners with which he regaled his brothers of the bench
and learned counsellors. Chief Justice Mansfield's habitual temperance
and comparative indifference to the pleasures of the table did not cause
him to be neglectful of hospitable duties. Notwithstanding the cold
formality of Lord Hardwicke's entertainments, and the charges of
niggardliness preferred against Lady Hardwicke's domestic system by
Opposition satirists, Philip Yorke used to entertain the chiefs of his
profession with pomp, if not with affability. Thurlow entertained a
somewhat too limited circle of friends with English fare and a
superabundance of choice port in Great Ormond Street. Throughout his
public career, Alexander Wedderburn was a lavish and delightful host,
amply atoning in the opinion of frivolous society for his political
falsity by the excellence and number of his grand dinners. On entering
the place of Solicitor-General, he spent £8000 on a service of plate;
and as Lord Loughborough he gratified the bar and dazzled the
fashionable world by hospitality alike sumptuous and brilliant.

Several of the Georgian lawyers had strong predilections for particular
dishes or articles of diet. Thurlow was very fanciful about his fruit;
and in his later years he would give way to ludicrous irritability, if
inferior grapes or faulty peaches were placed before him. At Brighton,
in his declining years, the ex-Chancellor's indignation at a dish of
defective wall-fruit was so lively that--to the inexpressible
astonishment of Horne Tooke and other guests--he caused the whole of a
very fine dessert to be thrown out of the window upon the Marine Parade.
Baron Graham's weakness was for oysters, eaten as a preparatory whet to
the appetite before dinner; and it is recorded of him that on a certain
occasion, when he had been indulging in this favorite pre-prandial
exercise, he observed with pleasant humor--"Oysters taken before dinner
are said to sharpen the appetite; but I have just consumed half-a-barrel
of fine natives--and speaking honestly, I am bound to say that I don't
feel quite as hungry as when I began." Thomas Manners Button's peculiar
_penchant_ was for salads; and in a moment of impulsive kindness he gave
Lady Morgan the recipe for his favorite salad--a compound of rare merit
and mysterious properties. Bitterly did the old lawyer repent his unwise
munificence when he read 'O'Donnell.' Warmly displeased with the
political sentiments of the novel, he ordered it to be burnt in the
servants' hall, and exclaimed, peevishly, to Lady Manners, "I wish I
had not given her the secret of my salad." In no culinary product did
Lord Ellenborough find greater delight than lobster-sauce; and he gave
expression to his high regard for that soothing and delicate compound
when he decided that persons engaged in lobster-fishery were exempt from
legal liability to impressment. "Then is not," inquired his lordship,
with solemn pathos, "the lobster-fishery a fishery, and a most important
fishery, of this kingdom, though carried on in shallow water? The
framers of the law well knew that the produce of the deep sea, without
the produce of the shallow water, would be of comparatively small value,
and intended that turbot, when placed upon our tables, should be flanked
by good lobster-sauce." Eldon's singular passion for fried 'liver and
bacon' was amongst his most notorious and least pleasant peculiarities.
Even the Prince Regent condescended to humor this remarkable taste by
ordering a dish of liver and bacon to be placed on the table when the
Chancellor dined with him at Brighton. Sir John Leach, Master of the
Rolls, was however less ready to pander to a depraved appetite. Lord
Eldon said, "It will give me great pleasure to dine with you, and since
you are good enough to ask me to order a dish that shall test your new
_chef's_ powers--I wish you'd tell your Frenchman to fry some liver and
bacon for me." "Are you laughing at me or my cook?" asked Sir John
Leach, stiffly, thinking that the Chancellor was bent on ridiculing his
luxurious mode of living. "At neither," answered Eldon, with equal
simplicity and truth; "I was only ordering the dish which I enjoy beyond
all other dishes."

Although Eldon's penuriousness was grossly exaggerated by his
detractors, it cannot be questioned that either through indolence, or
love of money, or some other kind of selfishness, he was very neglectful
of his hospitable duties to the bench and the bar. "Verily he is
working off the arrears of the Lord Chancellor," said Romilly, when Sir
Thomas Plummer, the Master of the Rolls, gave a succession of dinners to
the bar; and such a remark would not have escaped the lips of the
decorous and amiable Romilly had not circumstances fully justified it.
Still it is unquestionable that Eldon's Cabinet dinners were suitably
expensive; and that he never grudged his choicest port to the old
attorneys and subordinate placemen who were his obsequious companions
towards the close of his career. For the charges of sordid parsimony so
frequently preferred against Kenyon it is to be feared there were better
grounds. Under the steadily strengthening spell of avarice he ceased to
invite even old friends to his table; and it was rumored that in course
of time his domestic servants complained with reason that they were
required to consume the same fare as their master deemed sufficient for
himself. "In Lord Kenyon's house," a wit exclaimed, "all the year
through it is Lent in the kitchen, and Passion Week in the Parlor."
Another caustic quidnunc remarked, "In his lordship's kitchen the fire
is dull, but the spits are always bright;" whereupon Jekyll interposed
with an assumption of testiness, "Spits! in the name of common sense I
order you not to talk about _his_ spits, for nothing turns upon them."

Very different was the temper of Erskine, who spent money faster than
Kenyon saved it, and who died in indigence after holding the Great Seal
of England, and making for many years a finer income at the bar than any
of his contemporaries not enjoying crown patronage. Many are the bright
pictures preserved to us of his hospitality to politicians and lawyers,
wits, and people of fashion; but none of the scenes is more
characteristic than the dinner described by Sir Samuel Romilly, when
that good man met at Erskine's Hampstead villa the chiefs of the
opposition and Mr. Pinkney, the American Minister. "Among the light,
trifling topics of conversation after dinner," says Sir Samuel Romilly,
"it may be worth while to mention one, as it strongly characterizes Lord
Erskine. He has always expressed and felt a strong sympathy with
animals. He has talked for years of a bill he was to bring into
parliament to prevent cruelty towards them. He has always had some
favorite animals to whom he has been much attached, and of whom all his
acquaintance have a number of anecdotes to relate; a favorite dog which
he used to bring, when he was at the bar, to all his consultations;
another favorite dog, which, at the time when he was Lord Chancellor, he
himself rescued in the street from some boys who were about to kill it
under the pretence of its being mad; a favorite goose, which followed
him wherever he walked about his grounds; a favorite macaw, and other
dumb favorites without number. He told us now that he had got two
favorite leeches. He had been blooded by them last autumn when he had
been taken dangerously ill at Portsmouth; they had saved his life, and
he had brought them with him to town, had ever since kept them in a
glass, had himself every day given them fresh water, and had formed a
friendship for them. He said he was sure they both knew him and were
grateful to him. He had given them different names, 'Home' and 'Cline'
(the names of two celebrated surgeons), their dispositions being quite
different. After a good deal of conversation about them, he went
himself, brought them out of his library, and placed them in their glass
upon the table. It is impossible, however, without the vivacity, the
tones, the details, and the gestures of Lord Erskine, to give an
adequate idea of this singular scene." Amongst the listeners to Erskine,
whilst he spoke eloquently and with fervor of the virtues of his two
leeches, were the Duke of Norfolk, Lord Grenville, Lord Grey, Lord
Holland, Lord Ellenborough, Lord Lauderdale, Lord Henry Petty, and
Thomas Grenville.

CHAPTER XLVI.

WINE.

From the time when Francis Bacon attributed a sharp attack of gout to
his removal from Gray's Inn Fields to the river side, to a time not many
years distant when Sir Herbert Jenner Fust[36] used to be brought into
his court in Doctors' Commons and placed in the judicial seat by two
liveried porters, lawyers were not remarkable for abstinence from the
pleasures to which our ancestors were indebted for the joint-fixing,
picturesque gout that has already become an affair of the past.
Throughout the long period that lies between Charles II.'s restoration
and George III.'s death, an English judge without a symptom of gout was
so exceptional a character that people talked of him as an interesting
social curiosity. The Merry Monarch made Clarendon's bedroom his
council-chamber when the Chancellor was confined to his couch by
_podagra_. Lord Nottingham was so disabled by gout, and what the old
physicians were pleased to call a 'perversity of the humors,' that his
duties in the House of Lords were often discharged by Francis North,
then Chief Justice of the Common Pleas; and though he persevered in
attending to the business of his court, a man of less resolution would
have altogether succumbed to the agony of his disease and the burden of
his infirmities. "I have known him," says Roger North, "sit to hear
petitions in great pain, and say that his servants had let him out,
though he was fitter for his chamber." Prudence saved Lord Guildford
from excessive intemperance; but he lived with a freedom that would be
remarkable in the present age. Chief Justice Saunders was a confirmed
sot, taking nips of brandy with his breakfast, and seldom appearing in
public "without a pot of ale at his nose or near him." Sir Robert Wright
was notoriously addicted to wine; and George Jeffreys drank, as he
swore, like a trooper. "My lord," said King Charles, in a significant
tone, when he gave Jeffreys the _blood-stone_ ring, "as it is a hot
summer, and you are going the circuit, I desire you will not drink too
much."

Amongst the reeling judges of the Restoration, however, there moved one
venerable lawyer, who, in an age when moralists hesitated to call
drunkenness a vice, was remarkable for sobriety. In his youth, whilst he
was indulging with natural ardor in youthful pleasures, Chief Justice
Hale was so struck with horror at seeing an intimate friend drop
senseless, and apparently lifeless, at a student's drinking-bout, that
he made a sudden but enduring resolution to conquer his ebrious
propensities, and withdraw himself from the dangerous allurements of
ungodly company. Falling upon his knees he prayed the Almighty to
rescue his friend from the jaws of death, and also to strengthen him to
keep his newly-formed resolution. He rose an altered man. But in an age
when the barbarous usage of toast-drinking was in full force, he felt
that he could not be an habitually sober man if he mingled in society,
and obeyed a rule which required the man of delicate and excitable
nerves to drink as much, bumper for bumper, as the man whose sluggish
system could receive a quart of spirits at a sitting and yet scarcely
experience a change of sensation. At that time it was customary with
prudent men to protect themselves against a pernicious and tyrannous
custom, by taking a vow to abstain from toast-drinking, or even from
drinking wine at all, for a certain stated period. Readers do not need
to be reminded how often young Pepys was under a vow not to drink; and
the device by which the jovial admiralty clerk strengthened an infirm
will and defended himself against temptation was frequently employed by
right-minded young men of his date. In some cases, instead of _vowing_
not to drink, they _bound_ themselves not to drink within a certain
period; two persons, that is to say, agreeing that they would abstain
from wine and spirits for a certain period, and each _binding_ himself
in case he broke the compact to pay over a certain sum of money to his
partner in the bond. Young Hale saw that to effect a complete
reformation of his life it was needful for him to abjure the practice of
drinking healths. He therefore vowed _never again_ to drink a health;
and he kept his vow. Never again did he brim his bumper and drain it at
the command of a toast-master, although his abstinence exposed him to
much annoyance; and in his old age he thus urged his grandchildren to
follow his example--"I will not have you begin or pledge any health, for
it is become one of the greatest artifices of drinking, and occasions of
quarrelling in the kingdom. If you pledge one health you oblige
yourself to pledge another, and a third, and so onwards; and if you
pledge as many as will be drunk, you must be debauched and drunk. If
they will needs know the reason of your refusal, it is a fair answer,
'that your grandfather that brought you up, from whom, under God, you
have the estate you enjoy or expect, left this in command with you, that
you should never begin or pledge a health.'"

Jeffrey's _protégé_, John Trevor, liked good wine himself, but emulated
the virtuous Hale in the pains which he took to place the treacherous
drink beyond the reach of others--whenever they showed a desire to drink
it at his expense. After his expulsion from the House of Commons, Sir
John Trevor was sitting alone over a choice bottle of claret, when his
needy kinsman, Roderic Lloyd, was announced. "You rascal," exclaimed the
Master of the Rolls, springing to his feet, and attacking his footman
with furious language, "you have brought my cousin, Roderic Lloyd,
Esquire, Prothonotary of North Wales, Marshal to Baron Price, up my back
stairs. You scoundrel, hear ye, I order you to take him this instant
down my _back stairs_, and bring him up my _front stairs_." Sir John
made such a point of showing his visitor this mark of respect, that the
young barrister was forced to descend and enter the room by the state
staircase; but he saw no reason to think himself honored by his cousin's
punctilious courtesy, when on entering the room a second time he looked
in vain for the claret bottle.

On another occasion Sir John Trevor's official residence afforded
shelter to the same poor relation when the latter was in great mental
trouble. "Roderic," saith the chronicler, "was returning rather elevated
from his club one night, and ran against the pump in Chancery Lane.
Conceiving somebody had struck him, he drew and made a lunge at the
pump. The sword entered the spout, and the pump, being crazy, fell
down. Roderic concluded he had killed his man, left, his sword in the
pump, and retreated to his old friend's house at the Rolls. There he was
concealed by the servants for the night. In the morning his Honor,
having heard the story, came himself to deliver him from his
consternation and confinement in the coal-hole."

Amongst the eighteenth century lawyers there was considerable difference
of taste and opinion on questions relating to the use and abuse of wine.
Though he never, or very seldom, exceeded the limits of sobriety, Somers
enjoyed a bottle in congenial society; and though wine never betrayed
him into reckless hilarity, it gave gentleness and comity to his
habitually severe countenance and solemn deportment--if reliance may be
placed on Swift's couplet--

   "By force of wine even Scarborough is brave,
   Hall grows more pert, and Somers not so grave."

A familiar quotation that alludes to Murray's early intercourse with the
wits warrants an inference that in opening manhood he preferred
champagne to every other wine; but as Lord Mansfield he steadily adhered
to claret, though fashion had taken into favor the fuller wine
stigmatized as poison by John Home's famous epigram--

   "Bold and erect the Caledonian stood;
   Old was his mutton, and his claret good.
   'Let him drink port,' an English statesman cried:
   He drunk the poison and his spirit died."

Unlike his father, who never sinned against moderation in his cups,
Charles Yorke was a deep drinker as well as a gourmand. Hardwicke's
successor, Lord Northington, was the first of a line of
port-wine-drinking judges that may at the present time be fairly said
to have come to an end--although a few reverend fathers of the law yet
remain, who drink with relish the Methuen drink when age has deprived it
of body and strength. Until Robert Henley held the seals, Chancellors
continued to hold after-dinner sittings in the Court of Chancery on
certain days of the week throughout term. Hardwicke, throughout his long
official career, sat on the evenings of Wednesdays and Fridays hearing
causes, while men of pleasure were fuddling themselves with fruity
vintages. Lord Northington, however, prevailed on George III. to let him
discontinue these evening attendances in court. "But why," asked the
monarch, "do you wish for a change?" "Sir," the Chancellor answered,
with delightful frankness, "I want the change in order that I may finish
my bottle of port at my ease; and your majesty, in your parental care
for the happiness of your subjects, will, I trust, think this a
sufficient reason." Of course the king's laughter ended in a favorable
answer to the petition for reform, and from that time the Chancellor's
evening sittings were discontinued. But ere he died, the jovial
Chancellor paid the penalty which port exacts from all her fervent
worshippers, and he suffered the acutest pangs of gout. It is recorded
that as he limped from the woolsack to the bar of the House of Lords, he
once muttered to a young peer, who watched his distress with evident
sympathy--"Ah, my young friend, if I had known that these legs would one
day carry a Chancellor, I would have taken better care of them when I
was at your age." Unto this had come the handsome legs of young
Counsellor Henley, who, in his dancing days, stepped minuets to the
enthusiastic admiration of the _belles_ of Bath.

Some light is thrown on the manners of lawyers in the eighteenth century
by an order made by the authorities of Barnard's Inn, who, in November,
1706, named two quarts as the allowance of wine to be given to each
mess of four men by two gentlemen on going through the ceremony of
'initiation.' Of course, this amount of wine was an 'extra' allowance,
in addition to the ale and sherry assigned to members by the regular
dietary of the house. Even Sheridan, who boasted that he could drink any
_given_ quantity of wine, would have thought twice before he drank so
large a given quantity, in addition to a liberal allowance of stimulant.
Anyhow, the quantity was fixed--a fact that would have elicited an
expression of approval from Chief Baron Thompson, who, loving port wine
wisely, though too well, expressed at the same time his concurrence with
the words, and his dissent from the opinion of a barrister, who
observed--"I hold, my lord, that after a good dinner a certain quantity
of wine does no harm." With a smile, the Chief Baron rejoined--"True,
sir; it is the _uncertain_ quantity that does the mischief."

The most temperate of the eighteenth-century Chancellors was Lord
Camden, who required no more generous beverage than sound malt liquor,
as he candidly declared, in a letter to the Duke of Grafton, wherein he
says--"I am, thank God, remarkably well, but your grace must not seduce
me into my former intemperance. A plain dish and a draught of porter
(which last is indispensable), are the very extent of my luxury." For
porter, Edward Thurlow, in his student days, had high respect and keen
relish; but in his mature years, as well as still older age, full-bodied
port was his favorite drink, and under its influence were seen to the
best advantage those colloquial powers which caused Samuel Johnson to
exclaim--"Depend upon it, sir, it is when you come close to a man in
conversation that you discover what his real abilities are; to make a
speech in a public assembly is a knack. Now, I honor Thurlow, sir;
Thurlow is a fine fellow: he fairly puts his mind to yours." Of
Thurlow, when he had mounted the woolsack, Johnson also observed--"I
would prepare myself for no man in England but Lord Thurlow. When I am
to meet him, I would wish to know a day before." From the many stories
told of Thurlow and ebriosity, one may be here taken and brought under
the reader's notice--not because it has wit or humor to recommend it,
but because it presents the Chancellor in company with another
port-loving lawyer, William Pitt, from whose fame, by-the-by, Lord
Stanhope has recently removed the old disfiguring imputations of
sottishness. "Returning," says Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, a poor authority,
but piquant gossip-monger, "by way of frolic, very late at night, on
horseback, to Wimbledon, from Addiscombe, the seat of Mr. Jenkinson,
near Croydon, where the party had dined, Lord Thurlow, the Chancellor,
Pitt, and Dundas, found the turnpike gate, situate between Tooting and
Streatham, thrown open. Being elevated above their usual prudence, and