Part 7 (2/2)
As far as good taste and dignity were concerned, the gentleman of the West Country was the victor in this absurd contest: on the other hand, Hale had the venison for nothing, and was relieved of the trouble of hearing the cause.
In the same manner Hale insisted on paying for six loaves of sugar which the Dean and Chapter of Salisbury sent to his lodgings, in accordance with ancient usage. Similar cases of the judge's readiness to construe courtesies as bribes may be found in notices of trials and books of _ana_.
_A propos_ of these stories of Hale's squeamishness, Lord Campbell tells the following good anecdote of Baron Graham: ”The late Baron Graham related to me the following anecdote to show that he had more firmness than Judge Hale:--'There was a baronet of ancient family with whom the judges going the Western Circuit had always been accustomed to dine.
When I went that circuit I heard that a cause, in which he was plaintiff, was coming on for trial: but the usual invitation was received, and lest the people might suppose that judges could be influenced by a dinner; I accepted it. The defendant, a neighboring squire, being dreadfully alarmed by this intelligence, said to himself, 'Well, if Sir John entertains the judge hospitably, I do not see why I should not do the same by the jury.' So he invited to dinner the whole of the special jury summoned to try the cause. Thereupon the baronet's courage failed him, and he withdrew the record, so that the cause was not tried; and although I had my dinner, I escaped all suspicion of partiality.”
This story puts the present writer in mind of another story which he has heard told in various ways, the wit of it being attributed by different narrators to two judges who have left the bench for another world, and a Master of Chancery who is still alive. On the present occasion the Master of Chancery shall figure as the humorist of the anecdote.
Less than twenty years since, in one of England's southern counties, two neighboring landed proprietors differed concerning their respective rights over some unenclosed land, and also about certain rights of fis.h.i.+ng in an adjacent stream. The one proprietor was the richest baronet, the other the poorest squire of the county; and they agreed to settle their dispute by arbitration. Our Master in Chancery, slightly known to both gentlemen, was invited to act as arbitrator after inspecting the localities in dispute. The invitation was accepted and the master visited the scene of disagreement, on the understanding that he should give up two days to the matter. It was arranged that on the first day he should walk over the squire's estate, and hear the squire's uncontradicted version of the case, dining at the close of the day with both contendents at the squire's table; and that on the second day, having walked over the baronet's estate, and heard without interruption the other side of the story, he should give his award, sitting over wine after dinner at the rich man's table. At the close of the first day the squire entertained his wealthy neighbor and the arbitrator at dinner.
In accordance with the host's means, the dinner was modest but sufficient. It consisted of three fried soles, a roast leg of mutton, and vegetables; three pancakes, three pieces of cheese, three small loaves of bread, ale, and a bottle of sherry. On the removal of the viands, three magnificent apples, together with a magnum of port, were placed on the table by way of dessert. At the close of the second day the trio dined at the baronet's table, when it appeared that, struck by the simplicity of the previous day's dinner, and rightly attributing the absence of luxuries to the narrowness of the host's purse, the wealthy disputant had resolved not to attempt to influence the umpire by giving him a superior repast. Sitting at another table the trio dined on exactly the same fare,--three fried soles, a roast leg of mutton, and vegetables; three pancakes, three pieces of cheese, three small loaves of bread, ale, and a bottle of sherry; and for dessert three magnificent apples, together with a magnum of port. The dinner being over, the apples devoured, and the last gla.s.s of port drunk, the arbitrator (his eyes twinkling brightly as he spoke) introduced his award with the following exordium:--”Gentlemen, I have with all proper attention considered your _sole_ reasons: I have taken due notice of your _joint_ reasons, and I have come to the conclusion that your _des(s)erts_ are about equal.”
[17] Of these renderings the subjoined may be taken as favorable specimens:--”Breve originale, original sinne; capias, a catch to a sad tune; alias capias, another to the same (sad tune); habeas corpus, a trooper; capias ad satisfaciend., a hangman: lat.i.tat, bo-peep; nisi prius, first come first served; demurrer, hum and haw; scandal. magnat., down with the Lords.”
[18] Even vacations stink in the nostrils of Mr. Rogers; for he maintains that they are not so much periods when lawyers cease from their odious practices, as times of repose and recreation wherein they gain fresh vigor and daring for the commission of further outrages, and allow their unhappy victims to acquire just enough wealth to render them worth the trouble of despoiling.
CHAPTER XVII.
CHIEF JUSTICE POPHAM.
One of the strangest cases of corruption amongst English Judges still remains to be told on the slender authority which is the sole foundation of the weighty accusation. In comparatively recent times there have not been many eminent Englishmen to whom 'tradition's simple tongue' has been more hostile than Queen Elizabeth's Lord Chief Justice, Popham. The younger son of a gentle family, John Popham pa.s.sed from Oxford to the Middle Temple, raised himself to the honors of the ermine, secured the admiration of ill.u.s.trious contemporaries, in his latter years gained abundant praise for wholesome severity towards footpads, and at his death left behind him a name--which, tradition informs us, belonged to a man who in his reckless youth, and even after his call to the bar, was a cut-purse and highwayman. In mitigation of his conduct it is urged by those who credit the charge, that young gentlemen of his date were so much addicted to the lawless excitement of the road, that when he was still a beardless stripling, an act (1 Ed. VI. c. 12, s. 14) was pa.s.sed, whereby any peer of the realm or lord of parliament, on a first conviction for robbery, was ent.i.tled to benefit of clergy, though he could not read. But bearing in mind the liberties which rumor is wont to take with the names of eminent persons, the readiness the mult.i.tude always display to attribute light morals to grave men, and the infrequency of the cases where a dissolute youth is the prelude to a manhood of strenuous industry and an old age of honor--the cautious reader will require conclusive testimony before he accepts Popham's connection with 'the road' as one of the una.s.sailable facts of history.
The authority for this grave charge against a famous judge is John Aubrey, the antiquary, who was born in 1627, just twenty years after Popham's death. ”For severall yeares,” this collector says of the Chief Justice, ”he addicted himself but little to the studie of the lawes, but profligate company, and was wont to take a purse with them. His wife considered her and his condition, and at last prevailed with him to lead another life and to stick to the studie of the lawe, which, upon her importunity, he did, being then about thirtie yours old.” As Popham was born in 1531, he withdrew, according to this account, from the company of gentle highwaymen about the year 1561--more than sixty years before Aubrey's birth, and more than a hundred years before the collector committed the scandalous story to writing. The worth of such testimony is not great. Good stories are often fixed upon eminent men who had no part in the transactions thereby attributed to them. If this writer were to put into a private note-book a pleasant but unauthorized anecdote imputing _kleptomania_ to Chief Justice Wiles (who died in 1761), and fifty years hence the note-book should be discovered in a dirty corner of a forgotten closet and published to the world--would readers in the twentieth century be justified in holding that Sir John Willes was an eccentric thief?
But Aubrey tells a still stranger story concerning Popham, when he sets forth the means by which the judge made himself lord of Littlecote Hall in Wilts.h.i.+re. The case must be given in the narrator's own words.
”Sir Richard Dayrell of Littlecot in com. Wilts. having got his lady's waiting-woman with child, when her travell came sent a servant with a horse for a midwife, whom he was to bring hoodwinked. She was brought, and layd the woman; but as soon as the child was born, she saw the knight take the child and murther it, and burn it in the fire in the chamber. She having done her business was extraordinarily rewarded for her paines, and went blindfold away. This horrid action did much run in her mind, and she had a desire to discover it, but knew not where 'twas.
She considered with herself the time she was riding, and how many miles she might have rode at that rate in that time, and that it must be some great person's house, for the roome was twelve foot high: and she should know the chamber if she sawe it. She went to a justice of peace, and search was made. The very chamber found. The knight was brought to his tryall; and, to be short, this judge had this n.o.ble house, park, and manor, and (I think) more, for a bribe to save his life. Sir John Popham gave sentence according to lawe, but being a great person and a favorite, he procured a _nolle prosequi_.”
This ghastly tale of crime following upon crime has been reproduced by later writers with various exaggerations and modifications. Dramas and novels have been founded upon it; and a volume might be made of the ballads and songs to which it has given birth. In some versions the corrupt judge does not even go through the form of pa.s.sing sentence, but secures an acquittal from the jury; according to one account, the mother, instead of the infant, was put to death; according to another, the erring woman was the murderer's daughter, instead of his wife's waiting-woman; another writer, a.s.suming credit as a conscientious narrator of facts, places the crime in the eighteenth instead of the sixteenth century, and transforms the venal judge into a clever barrister.
In a highly seasoned statement of the repulsive tradition communicated by Lord Webb Seymour to Walter Scott, the murder is described with hideous minuteness.
Changing the midwife into 'a Friar of orders grey,' and murdering the mother instead of the baby, Sir Walter Scott revived the story in one of his most popular ballads. But of all the versions of the tradition that have come under this writer's notice, the one that departs most widely from Aubrey's statement is given in Mr. G.L. Rede's 'Anecdotes and Biography,' (1799).
CHAPTER XVIII.
JUDICIAL SALARIES.
For the last three hundred years the law has been a lucrative profession, our great judges during that period having in many instances left behind them large fortunes, earned at the bar or acquired from official emoluments. The rental of Egerton's landed estates was 8,000 per annum--a royal income in the days of Elizabeth and James. Maynard left great wealth to his grand-daughters, Lady Hobart and Mary Countess of Stamford. Lord Mansfield's favorite investment was mortgage; and towards the close of his life the income which he derived for moneys lent on sound mortgages was 30,000 per annum. When Lord Kenyon had lost his eldest son, he observed to Mr. Justice Allan Park--”How delighted George would be to take his poor brother from the earth and restore him to life, although he receives 250,000 by his decease.” Lord Eldon is said to have left to his descendants 500,000; and his brother, Lord Stowell, to whom we are indebted for the phrase 'the elegant simplicity of the Three per Cents.,' also acquired property that at the time of his death yielded 12,000 per annum.
Lord Stowell's personalty was sworn under 230,000, and he had invested considerable sums in land. It is noteworthy that this rich lawyer did not learn to be contented with the moderate interest of the Three per Cents. until he had sustained losses from bad speculations. Notable also is it that this rich lawyer--whose notorious satisfaction with three per cent. interest has gained for him a reputation of n.o.ble indifference to gain--was inordinately fond of money.
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