Old and New London, A Narrative of its History, its People and its Places. Illustrated with Numerous Engravings from the Most Authentic Sources. vol 3
Thornbury, Walter
1872-78
Chapter LXIII: The Law Courts and Old Palace Yard.
Chapter LXIII: The Law Courts and Old Palace Yard.
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The seats of justice, or courts of common law and chancery, which both before and after the Norman Conquest followed the sovereign, were in the reign of Henry III. made stationary, and appointed to be held in Hall. John Whiddon, a justice of this Court, in the reign of Queen Mary, is said to have been the judge who rode to Hall on a horse or gelding, before which time the judges rode on mules | |
At the upper end of the new Hall stood the statues of the kings of England, from Edward the Confessor to Stephen, and also, on the south-east side, a marble bench, feet long and feet broad, upon which the king sat at his coronation feast, and at other times the Lord Chancellor. This was the King's Bench for pleas of the Crown. In the south-west angle sat the Lord Chancellor, the Master of the Rolls, and men learned in the civil law, called Masters of the Chancery. says Mr. Mackenzie Walcott, This screen was taken down before the coronation of George IV. Near the King's Bench, in front of the large chamber called the White Hall, was the Court of Wards and Liveries. In this chamber, originally called the Treasury, were kept many valuable state papers. Adjoining the Chancery was the Equity Court of Requests or Conscience, for trying suits made by way of petition to the sovereign; it was sometimes called the Poor Man's Court, It is difficult to accept this statement literally. | |
In , Henry III. sat in person in the King's Court, and in in the Court of Exchequer. Not long after, Henry de Bath, of the judges, was accused of sedition; but he, summoned his friends, and so went attended into the Hall. No sooner had he entered than the king, in a transport of disappointed rage, cried out, The more prudent Council, however, we are told, dissuaded the angry monarch from so perilous a venture. | |
The present law courts are situated on the west side of the Hall, and are all contained in the Italian-fronted building erected from the designs of Sir John Soane. They each have an entrance from the Hall, and also from the street. The various courts, as at present constituted, are the Court of Queen's Bench, the Bail Court, the Court for Crown Cases Reserved, the Court of Common Pleas, the Court of Exchequer, the Rolls Court, the Arches Court, the High Court of Admiralty, the Vice-Chancellor's Court, and the Court of Probate and Divorce. | |
Of the courts of law adjoining the Hall, the author of &c., speaks as presenting a slovenly appearance, and utterly wanting in that pomp and magnificence which is necessary to enforce the respect which should ever attend on the administration of justice. In this observation most competent persons will agree with the writer, and at the same time regret that he did not live to the reign of Victoria to see the new Law Courts rise by St. Clement Danes' Church. | |
Previously to the year , when it was discontinued, a curious ancient tenure custom had been for centuries performed, on the occasion of the presentation of the sheriffs of London and Middlesex in the Court of Exchequer. After the ceremony of presentation, proclamation was made by the Crier of the Court for the service as follows:-- The senior alderman below the chair then cut fagot (small twigs) with a hatchet, and another with a billhook. The Crier then made this proclamation:-- The alderman then counted certain horseshoes and hobnails, and was questioned by the Queen's Remembrancer thus:--
Then the alderman counted the nails.
And so the ceremony ended. | |
Mr. Nichols, in the for , describes the custom as performed in that year, and adds this explanation:--
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Mr. Sheriff Hoare, in the journal of his shrievalty, -, in his own autograph writes :--
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The Court of Exchequer, be it observed, is the legal court of accounts; and, moreover, pursuant to the charter Henry III., the high officers of the City are, on their appointment, to be presented to the sovereign, or, in the absence of majesty, to the sovereign's Justices or Barons of the Royal Exchequer. | |
In the Court of Common Pleas came on for hearing, on the , the celebrated [extra_illustrations.3.562.1] --so called. The lawsuit was technically an action for the purpose of ejecting Colonel Lushington from Tichborne House, Hampshire, which had been let to him, and was instituted by a person named Orton or Castro, who some time previously had arrived in England from Australia, and who represented himself to be Sir Roger Charles Doughty-Tichborne, Bart.; the latter having been lost at sea in the , in . Tichborne House still remained the property of the Tichborne family, and the action at once raised the question whether the was or was not identical with the young man who was so long believed to have perished in the . The case was heard before Lord Chief Justice Bovill; Mr. Serjeant Ballantine and Mr. Giffard were retained as counsel for the and on the side of the defendant was Sir John Coleridge, then Solicitor- General, supported by Mr. Hawkins. Owing to frequent adjournments, it was not until the , that the trial was concluded, the proceedings having extended to days. The advisers, to avoid an inevitable verdict for their opponents, elected to be nonsuited, and thus the case came to a somewhat abrupt termination. This, however, was not to be the last the public were to hear of it, for the Lord Chief Justice at once committed the to Newgate on a charge of wilful and corrupt perjury and forgery. | |
After a few weeks' delay the was released from Newgate on bail, in the sum of , the sureties being Lord Rivers, Mr. Guildford Onslow, M.P., Mr. Whalley, M.P., and Mr. Attwood, a medical man residing at Bayswater. From this time till the commencement of the criminal trial--a period of months--a systematic agitation on the behalf was kept up throughout the country, and public appeals were made for subscriptions to defray the expenses of his defence. The great trial itself commenced in the Court of Queen's Bench, at , on the , the proceedings being conducted under what is called a and by that means was invested with some show of pomp and ceremony, and a dignity which it could not rightly claim, for it is only a trial of that nature before judges that can be continued without regard to the ordinary periods of sessions or legal terms. The trial was presided over by Sir Alexander Cockburn, Lord Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench, Mr. Justice Mellor, and Mr. Justice Lush. On the side of the Crown were Mr. Hawkins and Mr. Serjeant Parry; on that of the defendant, Dr. Kenealy and Mr. MacMahon, M.P. The defendant was indicted under the name of and the trial ended on the -a period of days having been occupied in the proceedings. Throughout this extraordinary trial-so great had become the public excitement and curiosity in connection with the case--the arrival and departure of the in the carriage provided for him by his supporters were witnessed by thousands of persons, shouting lustily for while the object of their attentions, bowing to right and left, gracefully acknowledged these tokens of popularity. The number of witnesses examined amounted to , and the trial ended with a verdict of and a sentence of years' penal servitude. The foreman of the jury publicly declared that there was no doubt in the mind of any of the jurymen that the man who had for years assumed the name and title of the gentleman in whose unhappy fate the majority of the family had long believed was an impostor, who had added slander of the wickedest | |
p.563 | kind to his many other crimes. But not only were they satisfied of this; they were equally agreed that he was Arthur Orton, the son of a butcher at ! And so ended another chapter in the history of great popular delusions. There are, however, still, it is to be feared, especially among the uneducated classes, those who believe Arthur Orton to be a Tichborne, just as there are those who believe in Johanna Southcote. |
The Court of Augmentations was formerly held in a portion of the Old Palace, on or near the site of the present Law Courts. It was founded by Henry VIII., for the purpose of surveying and governing all the forfeited ecclesiastical property secularised to the use of the king. Queen Mary dissolved this court, by letters patent, in . All the deeds and resignations of abbeys, priories, and lands, and their valuations, were kept here. The judicial proceedings of the Courts of Augmentation and Surveys-General, which lasted for a short period after their creation by Henry VIII., and those of the Parliamentary Survey made under the Commonwealth, were also preserved here. These records were exposed to great danger at the burning of the Houses of Parliament. | |
At the southern end of Hall, and occupying the space between the Houses of Parliament and the Abbey, is Old . It was anciently bounded on the north by the south gate in Lane; on the west by the Abbey; on the east by some of the inferior offices of the Palace, with .a little court, in which, in , was the king's fishmonger's house; and on the south by a gateway at the north end of the present , then called Lindsay Lane. At the southwest end of this lane was Lindsay House, afterwards the residence of the Earl of Abingdon (from whom the present street received its name), and in the residence of Dormer, Earl of Carnarvon. | |
In the year , Geoffrey Chaucer, entered into an agreement for the lease of a house adjoining the Tavern, which abutted on the old Lady Chapel of the Abbey. Chaucer held the office of Clerk of the King's Works, and was robbed (more than once) by Richard Brerelay and others, probably as he was going to or returning from Eltham. Brerelay, though he escaped punishment on this occasion, was afterwards tried for another highway robbery, pleaded and as Mr. W. Selby tells us in the Introduction to his thus demanding A duel was accordingly fought between Brereley and Clerk (the said ) at Tothill on the ; the result being that the was vanquished, and forthwith received judgment to be hanged. | |
It is probable that it was in his house at that Chaucer ended his . We have already spoken of his burial and of his tomb in the Abbey. His house, the tavern, and Chapel were demolished in , to give place to the gorgeous mausoleum of Henry VII. | |
In a house which stood between the churchyard and the Old Palace, lived in his later years and here he died; so that of the greatest of England's poets breathed their last almost upon the same spot. | |
In the south-east corner of Old was a house which was at time occupied as the Ordnance Office, and afterwards served as the entrance to the . This house was hired by Percy, a gentleman-pensioner of the Court, and through it the conspirators in the carried their barrels into a vault which formed part of the kitchens of the Old Palace. | |
This is perhaps a proper place for putting on record correct account of the famous [extra_illustrations.3.563.1] which for nearly centuries has made the name of Guido or Guy Fawkes a through the length and breadth of England: we will therefore condense it from the authentic pages of Dodd's an acknowledged authority with the Roman Catholic body. It appears that, on the accession of James I., rightly or wrongly, the hopes of the Roman Catholics in England were raised by Cecil's assurance that the persecutions with which Elizabeth had visited them as rebels and traitors would be discontinued. In this hope, however, they were disappointed, and the discontent of some members of their body soon found means to express itself. says Dodd, he continues,
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It is added by Winwood, more circumstantially, that
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The rest of the story is well known. The conspirators, finding that their designs were suspected, quitted London, and made their rendezvous at Dunchurch, in Warwickshire; driven thence, they beat a retreat towards Stourbridge, where Catesby, Percy, and more of their comrades were killed in defending the house where they took shelter; the rest, including Fawkes, were captured, brought to London, tried for treason, and executed in Old . We need scarcely add that the old custom of examining the cellars underneath the , about hours before Her Majesty's arrival to open Parliament, still continues to be observed, or that the custom had its origin in the infamous Gunpowder Plot. | |
A good story of the Gunpowder Plot is told in the but we cannot undertake to pledge ourselves to its truth. A former Lord Chamberlain was sent to examine the vaults under the Parliament House, and, returning with his report, said that
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It was in Old that, on a chill October morning in the year , Sir Walter Raleigh was led forth to die by the headsman's axe. On the morning of Raleigh's execution his keeper brought a cup of sack to him, and inquired how he was pleased with it. answered the knight, and said,
cried he to his old friend Sir Hugh, who was repulsed from the scaffold by the sheriff, A man bald from extreme age pressed forward he said, Raleigh took a richly embroidered cap from his own head, and placing it on that of the old man, said,
was his cheerful parting to a courtly group who affectionately took their leave of him,
said that heroic spirit, as he trod the scaffold; and, gently touching the axe, added, The very headsman shrank from beheading so illustrious and brave, until the unquailing soldier addressed him, In another moment the mighty soul had fled from its mangled tenement. Cayley, after describing Sir Walter's execution, adds,
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p.567 | |
In the Pepysian Collection at Magdalen College, Cambridge, is a ballad with this title,
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In Old , about half way between Hall and the Peers' Entrance, is the statue of Richard Coeur de Lion, by the late Baron Marochetti, somewhat hastily pronounced by the , It stands on a pedestal a little over feet in height, with bassi-relievi on its panels. The king is seated on the back of a charger; but both the rider and the horse are open to grave criticism. The following critique may be taken, on the whole, as fair and just:
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Footnotes: [extra_illustrations.3.562.1] Tichborne case [extra_illustrations.3.563.1] Gunpowder Plot, |