Chief Justice himself on horseback in his robes, the Earl of Huntingdon on his right hand and the Lord Willoughby of Eresby on his left, with above fifty knights and gentlemen of quality following. On entering the court of King's Bench, he first presented himself at the bar, with a serjeant on each hand. The Lord Chancellor, on the bench, produced the writ by which he was constituted Chief Justice, and delivered a speech on the duties of the office, to which Montague replied. The writ being read, he took the oaths, mounted the bench, and was placed in the seat of Chief Justice.

Among all the names which occur in connection with bench and bar, no one is equal in combined greatness and excellence to that of Matthew Hale, "What but Christianity," said the late Mr. Knox, "could have given to Judge Hale that uniform ascendancy over everything selfish and secular, by means of which he so undeviatingly kept the path of pure heroic virtue, as to be alike looked up to and revered by parties and interests the most opposite to each other? Is there in human history any fact more extraordinary than that the advocate of Strafford and Laud, and of king Charles (had liberty been given for pleading), should be raised to the bench by Cromwell? And, again, that a judge of Cromwell's should be not only reinstated by Charles II., but compelled by him, against his own will, to accept of the very highest judicial trust? Such is the triumph of genuine Christianity, a triumph which is in some degree renewed wherever the name of Hale is even professionally repeated; since the appeal is evidently made not more to the authority of the judge than to the integrity of the man.'

Once a duke called on Chief Baron Hale, pretending to inform him respecting a case shortly to be tried in his court. "Your Grace," said the judge, "does not deal fairly to come to my chamber about such an affair, for I never receive any information of causes but in open court, where both parties are to be heard

alike." The duke reported this to the king, who replied: "Your Grace may well content yourself that it is no worse; and I verily believe that he would have used myself no better, if I had gone to solicit him in any of my own causes."

Once a banker, who was Lord Mayor of London and a courtier to boot, delayed making a return to a mandamus, whereupon the prosecutor moved for an attachment. Howel, the Recorder, appeared on the behalf of the city chief magistrate, and urged the inconvenience of such a personage being imprisoned. But all mayors and all men were alike to Hale on the bench. Putting his thumb to his girdle, as he was wont, he said: "Tell me of the Mayor of London; tell me of the Mayor of Queenborough.”

He neither clung to a judgeship from selfishness and pride, nor resigned it from idleness and the prospect of pension. When enfeebled by disease, he might be seen slowly walking into Westminster Hall, supported by his servants, or retiring oppressed with fatigue from the bench he so much adorned. He at length applied for a "writ of ease," which the king unwillingly granted, offering to let him hold his place and do what business he could in his chamber; but he answered, that he could not any longer, with a good conscience, continue in it, since he was no longer able to discharge the duty belonging to it. There was no allowance for retiring judges then, but the king insisted upon the continuance of Hale's salary as long as he lived. as he lived. He died very shortly after his resignation of office. Wonderful was the sanctity attached to his name; people regarded him as a saint, and "they thought there was virtue in touching his coffin." "In popish times," says Lord Campbell, "miracles would have been worked at his tomb, and he would have been canonized as St. Matthew of Alderly," the village where he died and was buried.

Westminster Hall, in term time, was a century-busy in more senses than one.

busy place during the last The law courts occupied

a large space at the upper end of the great hall; but there was also a range of counters, stalls, and cases for the sale of books, prints, and mathematical instruments. This would remind us of a modern railway station; but the traffic in Westminster Hall went further still, and we are informed that sempstresses and others there exposed their wares, giving to the great judicial vestibule the appearance of a market or fair. Then, amidst all this bustle there was a side bar, where certain formal motions might be made, of which a vestige remains in the phrase "side bar motions." The black robe and the wig intermixed with the booksellers, sempstresses, and haberdashers, strike us as an odd variety; and then, as we go on to think of those times, the shadows of Lord Hardwicke, and Chief Justice Sir Dudley Ryder pass by, with others less known to fame, and whose voices have left a fainter echo behind them.

Proceeding to the latter half of the last century, as we enter the old court of King's Bench, we see occupying the bench, the most remarkable by far of the modern wearers of the scarlet robe and ermine, the coif and SS collar. Lord Mansfield was perhaps the most maligned of any judge that ever lived. Junius fixed his fangs on him with merciless severity; and we remember, in our younger days, after reading the eloquent diatribes of that most factious writer, picturing Lord Mansfield to ourselves as a very monster of injustice. But true history tells quite another tale; and Lord Brougham justly pronounces, that it may be doubted if, taking both the externals and the more essential qualities into the account that go to form a great judge, any one has ever administered the laws in this country whom we can fairly name as his equal. To a calm, clear, and winning manner, more suited to the repose of the bench than the excitement of the bar, he added the strictest justice, as well as very extensive juridical learning. Lord Campbell follows on the same side, acquiescing fully in the eulogium pronounced on him in his life-time as "the

great Lord Mansfield." The estimate of contemporaries in general must not be judged of by the abuse of Junius, for the greatest homage was done to Mansfield as a judge, from the first experience which the public had of his eminent merits. Crowds flocked to hear him pronounce judgment; and in his time began the practice of reporting in newspapers charges addressed to juries, from the very beautiful, correct, and impressive manner in which he discharged that function of his office. So great was the public confidence in his integrity, that suitors crowded his court with business, so as to leave the rest almost forsaken.

Approaching the end of the century, we meet with one at the the bar as pre-eminent there as Mansfield had been on the bench. This was Mr. Erskine, whose noble figure, expressive countenance, sparkling eye, and graceful form, so kindles the eloquence of Lord Brougham in describing the statesmen of the time of George III. "Juries have declared that they felt it impossible to remove their looks from him, when he had rivetted and as it were fascinated them by his first glance; and it used to be a common remark of men who observed his motions, that they resembled those of a blood-horse, as light as limber, as much betokening strength as speed, as free from all gross superfluity or encumbrance. Then hear his voice of surpassing sweetness, clear, flexible, strong, exquisitely fitted to strains of serious earnestness; deficient in compass indeed, and much less fitted to express indignation, or even scorn, than pathos, but wholly free from either harshness or monotony." And this was but the outer frame of high intellectual qualities, penetration, memory, reason, and fancy; this was but the vehicle which conveyed consummate knowledge, argument, pathos, and persuasion, and all employed in the service of the cause of liberty against injustice, tyranny, and oppression. No echo rings in old Westminster Hall more rich and noble than that of Erskine's eloquence.

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VI. STATE TRIALS.

It is the 7th of June, 1380, and all London is astir. Not only are citizens, high and low, hastening down to Westminster, but lords and country folk of all degrees are coming in from every quarter. Kentish men, and men of Kent, are jostling each other on London Bridge, where other southern counties are contributing to the troops of sight-seers. They are coming from Essex and Hertfordshire down to the Strand, where the crowd thickens: and then, what tributary streams roll in at Charing Cross, out of the Oxford and Windsor roads; and there they are in bright array and holiday costume-knights and squires, yeomen and peasants, all glittering in the summer sun, with the fresh green trees, oak, elm, and ash, and picturesque hostels, here and there, forming a background to the animated pageant. There are more people here, they say to one another, than were seen at the king's coronation.

Before the palace at Westminster there is to be a grand judicial combat between a knight and a squire, the latter charged by the former with treason. The knight is Sir John Annesley, and the squire is Thomas Katrington; and the treason charged is, that the said squire has delivered up the castle of St. Sauveur le Vicomte, in Normandy, of which he was governor, into the hands of the French. The castle would have come to Annesley, if it had not been given up by Katrington: so Annesley has accused Katrington before the lord the king, and thrown down his gauntlet in the court, offering, by duel, to justify his accusation; and now the two are going to fight it out in the presence of his Majesty king Richard II., and the lords of the realm. All the preliminaries