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YOU have no doubt, at some time or other, walked through
the Royal Courts
of Justice and admired the judges in their
scarlet or other bravery. One
odd little detail may have caught
your eye : the wigs of three seniors are
differenced from those
of their brethren by a black patch on the top. It
signifies that
the wearers are serjeants-at-law, and when the last of them
goes
to return no more, with him, it seems, will vanish the Order of
the Coif. Verily, it will be the "end o' an auld sang," of a
record
stretching back to the beginning of English jurisprudence,
of an order
whose passing had at one time seemed the passing ot
the law itself. Here,
in bare outline, I set forth its ancient and
famous history. And, first,
as to the name. Under the feudal
system land was held from the Crown upon
various tenures.
Sometimes special services were required from the holders
; these
were called Serjeants, and the tenure was said to be by serjeanty.
Special services, though usually military, now and again had to
do
with the administration of justice. A man enjoyed his plot
because he was
coroner, keeper of the peace, summoner, or what
not ; and, over and above
the land, he had the fees of the office.
A few offices, chiefly legal,
came to have no land attached—were
only paid in fees. Such a
business was a serjeanty in gross, or at
large, as one might say. Again, after the Conquest, whilst the
records of
our law courts were Latin, the spoken language was
Norman-French—a
fearful and wondrous tongue that grew to
be ; "as ill an hearing in the
mouth as law-French," says Milton
scornfully, and indeed Babel had scarce
matched it. But from
the first it must have been a sore vexation to the
thick-witted
Saxon haled before the tribunal of his conqueror. He needs
must employ a
ing was called. The
business was a lucrative one, so the
Crown assumed the right of regulation
and appointment. It was
held for a serjeanty in gross, and its holders
were
those specially retained for the royal
service. The literal trans-
lation of the other words is serjeants-at-law,
still the designation
of the surviving fellows of the order. The
serjeant-at-law was
appointed, or in form at least, commanded to take
office by writ
under the Great Seal. He was courteously addressed as
"you,"
whilst the sheriff was commonly plain "thou " or "thee." The
King's or Queen's Serjeants were appointed by letters patent; and
though
this official is extinct as the dodo he is mentioned after the
Queen's
Attorney-General as public prosecutor in the proclamation
still mumbled at
the opening of Courts like the Old Bailey.
Now, in early Norman times the
was simply the king acting as judge with the assistance of his
great officers of state. In time there developed therefrom among
much else the three old common law courts ; whereof the
Common Pleas
settled the disputes of subjects, the King's Bench
suits concerning the
king and the realm, the Exchequer revenue
matters. Though the two last by
means of quaint fictions
afterwards acquired a share of private
litigation, yet such was
more properly for the Court of Common Pleas. It
was peculiarly
the Serjeants' court, and for many centuries, up to fifty years ago,
they
had the right to exclusive audience. Until the Judicature
Acts they were
the body of men next to the judges, each being
addressed from the bench as
brother, and from them the judges
must be chosen ; also until 1850 the
assizes must be held before a
judge or a serjeant of the coif.
A clause in Magna Charta provided that the Common Pleas
should not follow
the king's wanderings but sit in a fixed place ;
this "fixed place" came
to be near the great door of the Hall at
Westminster. When the wind was in
the north, the spot was
cold and draughty, so after the Restoration some
daring innovator
proposed "to let it (the Court) in through the wall into
a back
room which they called the treasury." Sir Orlando Bridgeman,
the chief justice, would on no account hear of this. It was a
flagrant
violation of Magna Charta to move it an inch. Might
not, he darkly hinted,
all its writs be thus rendered null and void ?
Was legal pedantry ever
carried further ? one wonders. In a
later age the change was made without
comment, and in our own
time the Common Pleas itself has gone to the
lumber-room. No
doubt this early fixing of the Court helped to develop a
bar
attendant on it. Other species of practitioners, barristers,
attorneys,
solicitors in time arose, and the appointment of Queen's
Counsel,
of whom Lord Bacon was the earliest, struck the first real blow
at the Order of the Coif, but the detail of such things is not for
this page. In later days every serjeant was a more fully developed
barrister, and then and now, as is well known, every barrister
must belong
to one of the four Inns of Court—the two temples,
Gray's Inn and
Lincoln's Inn to wit, whose history cannot be
told here ; suffice it to
say they were voluntary associations of
lawyers, which gradually acquired
the right of calling to the bar
those who wished to practise.
Now the method of appointment of Serjeants was as follows :
The judges,
headed by the chief justice of the Common Pleas,
picked out certain
eminent barristers as worthy of the dignity,
their names were given in to
the Lord Chancellor, and in due
time each had his writ whereof he formally
gave his Inn notice.
His House entertained him at a public breakfast,
presented him
with a gold or silver net purse with ten guineas or so as a
retain-
ing fee, the chapel bell was tolled, and he was solemnly rung out
of the bounds. On the day of his call he was harangued (often at
preposterous length) by the chief justice of the King's Bench, he
knelt
down, and the white coif of the order was fitted on his head ;
he went in
procession to Westminster and "counted" in a real
action in the Court of
Common Pleas. For centuries he did so
in law-French. Lord Hardwicke was
the first serjeant who
"counted" in English. The new-comer was admitted a
member
of Serjeants Inn, in Chancery Lane, in ancient times called
Farringdon Inn, whereof all the members were Serjeants. Here
they dined
together on the first and last days of term : their
clerks also dined in
hall, though at a separate table—a survival, no
doubt, from the
days when the retainer feasted, albeit "below the
salt," with his master.
Dinner done and the napery removed,
the board of green cloth was
constituted, and under the presidency
of the chief judge the business of
the House was transacted.
There was a second Serjeants' Inn in Fleet
Street, but in 1758 its
members joined the older institution in Chancery
Lane. When
the Judicature Acts practically abolished the order, the Inn
was
sold and its property divided among the members, a scandalous
proceeding and poor result of "the wisdom of an heep of lernede
men !"
The Serjeant's feast on his appointment was a magnificent affair,
days , one of the largest palaces in the metropolis was selected,
and kings
and queens graced its quaint ceremonial. Stow
chronicles one such
celebration at the call of eleven Serjeants in
1531. There were consumed
"twenty- four great beefes, one
hundred fat muttons, fifty-one great
veales, thirty-four porkes,"
not to mention the swans, the larkes, the
"capons of Kent," the
"carcase of an ox from the shambles," and so forth.
One fancies
these solids were washed down by potations proportionately
long
and deep. And there were other attractions and other expenses.
At the feast in October 1552, "a standing dish of wax represent-
ing the
Court of Common Pleas" was the admiration of the
guests ; again, a year or
two later, it is noted that each serjeant
was attended by three gentlemen
selected by him from among the
members of his own Inn to act as his sewer,
his carver, and his
cup-bearer. These Gargantuan banquets must have proved
a
sore burden : they were cut down to one day, and, on the union
of
the Inns in 1758, given up as unsuited to the newer time.
One expense remained. Serjeants on their call must give gold
rings to the
sovereign, the lord chancellor, the judges, and many
others. From about
the time of Elizabeth mottoes or "posies"
were engraved thereon. Sometimes
each serjeant had his own
device, more commonly the whole call adopted the
same motto,
which was usually a compliment to the reigning monarch or an
allusion to some public event. Thus, after the Restoration the
words
ran :
and twisting the Roman numerals for 1660 were extracted from
this, to the huge delight of the learned triflers.
1714, which was as
neat as any. The rings were presented to
the judges by the serjeant's
"colt," as the barrister attendant on
him through the ceremony was called
(probably from colt, an
apprentice) ; he also had a ring. In the ninth of Geo. II. the
fourteen new
Serjeants gave as of duty 1409 rings, valued at
£773- That call
cost each serjeant nearly £200. This ring-
giving continued to the
end ; another custom, that of giving
liveries to relatives and friends,
was discontinued in 1759.
In mediaeval times the new Serjeants went in procession to
St. Paul's, and
worshipped at the shrine of Thomas à Becket ; then
to each was allotted a
pillar so that his clients might know where
to find him. The Reformation
put a summary end to the wor-
ship of St. Thomas, but the formality of the
pillar lingered on till
Old St. Paul's and Old London blazed in the Great
Fire of 1666.
The mediaeval lawyer lives for us to-day in Chaucer's famous
picture :
How lifelike that touch of the fussy man, who "seemede besier
than he was
!" But each line might serve as text for a long dis-
sertation ! The old
court hours were early : the judges sat from
eight till eleven, when your
busy serjeant would, after bolting his
dinner, hie him to his pillar where
he would hear his client's
story, "and take notes thereof upon his knee."
The parvys or
pervyse of Paul's—properly, only the church
door—had come to
mean the nave of the cathedral, called also
"Paul's Walk," or
"Duke Humphrey's Walk," from the supposed tomb of Duke
Humphrey that stood there. In Tudor times it was the great
lounge
and common newsroom of London. Here the needy ad-
venturer "dined with Duke
Humphrey," as the quaint euphemism
ran ; here spies garnered in the
popular opinion for the authorities.
It was the very place for the lawyer
to meet his client, yet had he
other resorts : the round of the Temple
Church and Westminster
are noted as in use for consultations.
Chaucer's serjeant "rood but hoomly" because he was travel-
ling ; in court
he had a long priest-like robe, with a furred cape
about his shoulders and
a scarlet hood. The gowns were various,
and sometimes parti-coloured. Thus
in 1555 we find each new
serjeant possessed of one robe of scarlet, one of
violet, one of
brown and blue, one of mustard and murrey, with tabards
(short
sleeveless coats) of cloths of the same colours. The cape was
edged, first with lambskin, afterwards with more precious stuff.
In
Langland's
of this dress of the Serjeants, they are jibed at for their love
of
fees and so forth, after a fashion that is not yet extinct ! But
covering made of white lawn or silk. A badge of honour, it was
worn on all
professional occasions, nor was it doffed even in the
king's presence. In
monumentnl effigies it is ever clearly shown.
When a serjeant resigned his
dignity he was formally discharged
from the obligation of wearing it. To
discuss its exact origin
were fruitless, yet one ingenious if mistaken
conjecture may be
noticed. Our first lawyers were churchmen, but in 1217
these
were finally debarred from general practice in the courts. Many
were unwilling to abandon so lucrative a calling, but what about
the
tonsure ? "They were for decency and comeliness allowed
to cover their
bald pates with a coif, which has been ever since
retained." Thus the
learned Serjeant Wynne in his tract on the
antiquity and dignity of the
order (1765). In Tudor times, if
not before, fashion required the serjeant
to wear a small skull-cap
of black silk or velvet on the top of the coif.
This is very clearly
shown in one of Lord Coke's portraits. Under Charles
II.
lawyers, like other folk, began to wear wigs, the higher they were
the bigger their perukes. It was wittily said that bench and bar
went into mourning on Queen Anne's death, and so remained,
since their
present dress is that then adopted. Serjeants were un-
willing to lose
sight of their coifs altogether, and it was suggested
on the wig by a
round patch of black and white, representing the
white coif and the cap
which had covered it. The limp cap of
black cloth known as the "black cap"
which the judge assumes
when about to pass sentence of death was, it
seems, put on to veil
the coif, and as a sign of sorrow. It was also
carried in the hand
when attending divine service, and was possibly
assumed in pre-
Reformation times when prayers were said for the dead.
A few words will tell of the fall of the order. As far back as
1755 Sir
John Willis, chief justice of the Common Pleas, pro-
posed to throw open
that Court as well as the office of judge to
barristers who were not Serjeants, but the suggestion came to
nothing. In
1834, the bill for the establishment of a Central
Criminal Court contained
a clause to open the Common Pleas ;
this was dropped, but the same object
was attained by a royal
warrant, 25th April 1834. The legality of this was
soon
questioned and, after solemn argument before the Privy Council,
it was declared invalid. In 1846 a statute (the 9 & 10 Viet.
c. 54)
to the same effect settled the matter, and the Judicature Act
of 1873
provided that no judge need in future be a serjeant. On
the dissolution of
Serjeants' Inn its members were received back
into the Houses whence they
had come.
As for centuries all the judges were Serjeants, the history of the
order is
that of the bench and bar of England ; yet some famous
men rose no higher,
or for one reason or other became representa-
tive members. Such a one was
Sir John Maynard (1602-1690).
In his last years William III. commented on
his venerable appear-
ance : "He must have outlived all the lawyers of his
time." "If
your Highness had not come I should have outlived the law
itself,"
was the old man's happy compliment. Pleading in a Chancery
case, he remarked that he had been counsel in the same case half
a century
before ; he had steered a middle course in those troubled
times, but he
had leant to the side of freedom against King
and Protector alike. His
share in the impeachment of Stafford
procured him a jibe in Butler's
all parties seemed
willing to employ him, and that he seemed
willing to be employed by all.
Jeffreys, who usually deferred to
him, once blustered out, "You are so old
as to forget your law,
Brother Maynard." "True, Sir George, I have
forgotten more
law than ever you knew," was the crushing retort. Macaulay
has justly praised his conduct at the Revolution for that he urged
his party to disregard legal technicalities and adopt new methods
for new and unheard-of circumstances. Edmund Plowden (1518-
1585) deserves
at least equally high praise. He was so determined
a student that "for
three years he went not once out of the
Temple." He is said to have
refused the chancellorship offered
him by Elizabeth as he would not desert
the old faith. He was
attacked again and again for nonconformity, but his
profound
knowledge of legal technicalities enabled him on each occasion to
escape the net spread for him. He was an Englishman loyal to
the
core, and, Catholic as he was, opposed in 1555 the violent
proceedings of
Queen Mary's parliament. The attorney-general
filed a bill against him for
contempt, but "Mr. Plowden traversed
fully, and the matter was never
decided." "A traverse full of
pregnancy," is Lord Coke's enthusiastic
comment. On his death
in 1585 they buried him in that Temple Church whose
soil
must have seemed twice sacred to this oracle of the law. An
alabaster monument whereon his effigy reposes remains to this
day. A less
distinguished contemporary was William Bendloes
(1516-1584), Old Bendloes
men called him. A quaint legend
reports him the only serjeant at the
Common Pleas bar in the
first year of Elizabeth's reign. Whether there was
no business,
or merely half-guinea motions of course, or the one man
argued
on both sides, or whether the whole story be a fabrication, 'tis
scarce
worth while to inquire.
I pass to more modern times. William Davy was made serjeant-
at-law in
1754. His wit combats with Lord Mansfield are still
remembered. His
lordship was credited with a desire to sit on
Good Friday ; our serjeant
hinted that he would be the first
judge that had done so since Pontius
Pilate ! Mansfield scouted
one of Davy's legal propositions. "If that be
law I must
burn all my books." "Better read them first," was the quiet
answer.
In recent days two of the best known Serjeants were Parry and
Ballantine,
the first a profound lawyer, the second a great advocate,
but both are
vanished from the scene. Three Serjeants yet
remain : Lord Esher (Master
of the Rolls), Lord Justice Lindley,
and Mr. Baron Pollock.