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led the king up into the empty throne. The king made his prayers on his knees before it, and then delivered a speech, first to the prelates, and then to the lords, and then to the commons, and so sat him down on his seat. He sat a good while in silence, and so did all the rest, for they were in prayer for his prosperity; and when they had ended, he filled up such offices of state as had become vacant. After this, the archbishop spake certain things in Latin, praying for the king's prosperity and for the realm's; and afterwards, in English, he exhorted all present to pray the like, after which every man sat down. With all this, there were shouts and acclamations, and it was announced that a parliament should be held in the same place on the Monday next following, and that on St. Edward's day the coronation should be celebrated.

Another irregular succession to the crown occurred in the case of Richard III. Entering the Hall in great state, he placed himself in the marble chair, and declared he would take the crown in that place, where the laws were administered, in the king's name, and where of old the king did preside in person. Dwelling upon the evils of discord, and the blessings of union, this royal fisher for popularity proclaimed his forgetfulness of enmities and his pardon of all who had offended him. In proof of sincerity, he sent for one Fog, towards whom he had long had a deadly enmity, and publicly took him by the hand, "which thing the common people rejoiced at and praised, but wise men took it for a vanity."

Almost every parliament from the 28th of Edward III. was opened in the Painted Chamber, and the general place of assembly for the peers and great men was the White Chamber. The commons often sat in the Painted Chamber, but in the last two parliaments they were directed to withdraw to their ancient place, in the Chapter House at Westminster. St. Stephen's Chapel did not become appropriated, as the place for the Commons house, until the dissolution of the abbeys in the reign of Henry VIII.

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V. BENCH AND BAR.

It is remarked that through Chancery-lane, "the connecting link of all the Inns of Court, there must have passed all the great and imminent lawyers, from Coke and Hale to Erskine and Romilly; Sir Thomas More with his weighty aspect, Bacon with his eye of intuition, the coarse Thurlow, and the elegant Mansfield." The silent shadows of the men do very solemnly come before us as we enter that busy thoroughfare. With thoughtful countenance—with looks deeply fixed in meditation— principles, cases, opinions, revolving in their minds-the great ones of the bench and bar cross our path in mute majesty, as, in our walks from Fleet-street to Holborn, we turn from the present to the past-from the crowds of the unknown living to the assemblage of the illustrious dead. We see them there as students-students in the conventional sense, as young men reading law before entering on practice-or as students in the general sense, as men matured and aged, with their hands full of business, but with their intellects still, and, especially just now, tasked to the very utmost in the severest exercises of acquisition or application, preparing some momentous plea or great decision. They are seen there on the way to speech and action. The inward treasure is being just unlocked. The fountain is rising from its hidden depths. The fire is kindling up-the flame will

come.

The remark about Chancery-lane is true of Westminster Hall, with this difference-that in the latter case we find these same great men in the midst of the arena, where they display before the world the results of their learning and experience. The

thinkers are actors here.

Those who have studied in the Inns of Court speak in the Courts of Westminster. They wrestle in hard conflict. Earnest are their debates; pleas are urged; appeals are uttered; decisions are claimed and expressed; thought is embodied in eloquence; the jurist becomes orator. There are words of wisdom; treasures are poured forth; streams gush from the spring; the fire blazes as it burns. The past at Westminster is not a region of calmness and silence, like that in the City. There are not merely forms peopling it; it rings with voices. Westminster has its echoes, as well as its shadows. Perhaps no spot on the face of the earth has so resounded with eloquence; certainly not any, if we connect St. Stephen's Chapel with the law courts. When the much-talked-of New Zealander, after sitting on the ruins of London Bridge, soliloquizing on St. Paul's, shall come down to Westminster to do his duty there, he will have illustrations of the beauty, music, and power of human words associated with the spot, which will surpass even those which now occur to the classical traveller, as, at Athens, he makes his way through fields of bearded barley to the bema of Demosthenes.

"The bench and the bar," in even something like their present meaning, are terms inapplicable to the early days of judicial proceeding in this country, when the king sat in person in his hall to dispense justice; but we may employ them in reference to the early times, when the distinct judicatures were developed out of their primitive normal condition. The words "bench and bar," as now commonly used to denote judges and barristers, seem to be derived from the Inns of Court, which originated when the common pleas were established at Westminster. Those Inns constituted, in fact, a university for the study of law-such a university being rendered needful by the prejudices at Oxford and Cambridge against the studies necessary for preparing men to practise in the new court. There were benchers in those inns, the superiors of the

house, who occupied the upper end of the hall on public occasions, and sat on a daïs.

This part of the building was separated from the rest by a bar; below that sat the students who had attained a certain proficiency and position, and were called out of the body of the hall to sit near the bar, for the purpose of taking part in the mootings or disciplinary pleadings-exercises which formed a part of legal education, with a view to preparing men for their appearance in the courts at Westminster. Those so distinguished were termed utter or outer barristers; while the rest of the students, who sat in the centre of the hall, were styled inner barristers. At first this arrangement did not regulate the method of proceeding at Westminster. The utter barrister, as such, had no right to practise there. They do not appear to have attained that right till the time of Elizabeth. In old law reports, the term "barrister" is not used. Pleaders are called serjeants and apprentices at law.

The terms "bench and bar," then, strictly speaking, belong to the Inns of Court, rather than to the Courts of Westminster, till the time of Elizabeth; but as the words, in the sense we use them, are derived from usages in those Inns almost as ancient as the origin of those courts, and as men connected with those Inns, though not simply by virtue of that connection, practised in those courts, we shall take the liberty of employing the words in relation to early times at Westminster. Even in the Aula Regis there were serjeants at law who were assessors with the chief justiciar, and advocates for the suitors. When distinct courts were instituted, the judges were chosen from among these serjeants. From the Conquest to the time of Edward I. serjeants were the only advocates; from that time to the fifteenth century, law apprentices, as they were called, were allowed to practise in certain courts; then, these law apprentices were merged in the utter barristers.

The medley dress worn by the serjeant in Dugdale's time was of

three colours, murrey or dark red, black furred with white, and scarlet. Dress, indeed, seems to have been a grand study with the old lawyers, if we may judge from the sumptuary regulations enacted respecting them:-"To check the grievance of long beards, an order was issued by the Inner Temple that no fellow of that house should wear his beard above three weeks' growth, on pain of forfeiting 208." The Middle Temple enacted that none of that society should wear great breeches in their hose, made after the Dutch, Spanish, or Almain fashion, or lawn upon their caps, or cut doublets, under a penalty of 38. 4d., and expulsion for the second offence. "In 3 & 4 Philip and Mary, it was ordained by all the four Inns of Court that none, except knights and benchers, should wear in their doublets or hose any light colours, save scarlet and crimson, nor wear any upper velvet cap, or any scarf or wings in their gowns, white jerkins, buskins, or velvet shoes, doubles, cuffs in their shirts, feathers or ribbons in their caps; and that none should wear their study gowns in the city, any further than Fleet Bridge or Holborn Bridge; nor, while in commons, wear Spanish cloaks, sword and buckler, or rapier, or gowns and hats, or gowns girded with a dagger on the back."

The distinguishing head-gear was the coif or black cloth cap. Barristers' wigs were inventions imported from France after the Restoration; and it appears that at first the bench frowned on these now cherished ornaments of the bar. When a celebrated lawyer once argued a great privilege case, having to speak sixteen hours, he obtained leave to speak without a wig, but under the condition that "this was not to be drawn into a precedent."

Coifed and robed, in the old time the serjeant might be seen, deep in official business, not only at the Inns of Court and in Westminster Hall, but in St. Paul's Cathedral, where, by a chosen pillar, he listened to his clients, and took notes of their causes on his knee. There were his "chambers," and without the inter

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