Page:Man Who Laughs (Estes and Lauriat 1869) v2.djvu/114

94 The carriage drawn up before the jail in Southwark had four horses and two postilions, which displayed princely state. Another thing which excited and disconcerted conjectures to the utmost was the circumstance that the carriage was sedulously closed. The blinds were drawn up. The glasses in front were darkened by blinds; every opening through which the eye might have penetrated was masked. From without, nothing inside could be seen; and most probably from within, nothing outside could be seen. However, it did not seem probable that there was any one in the carriage.

Southwark being in Surrey, the prison was within the jurisdiction of the sheriff of that county. Such distinct jurisdictions were very frequent in England. Thus, for example, the Tower of London was not supposed to be situated in any county; that is to say, legally, it was considered to be in the air. The Tower recognized no authority of jurisdiction except in its own constable, who was qualified as custos turris. The Tower had its own special jurisdiction, church, court of justice, and government. The authority of its custos or constable extended, outside of London, over twenty-one hamlets. As in Great Britain legal peculiarities are engrafted one upon another, the office of the master gunner of England was derived from the Tower of London. Other legal customs seem still more whimsical. Thus, the English Court of Admiralty consults and applies the laws of Rhodes and of Oleron, a French island which was once English.

The sheriff of a county was a person of high consideration. He was always an esquire, and sometimes a knight. He was called spectabilis in the old deeds, "a man to be looked at," a kind of intermediate title between illustris and clarissimus,—less than the first, more than the second. Long ago the sheriffs of the