Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/398

 390

NOTES AND QUERIES. r* h s. ix. MAY 17, 1002.

the Inns of Court, their order of government, and duties and powers, both in regard to legal educa- tion, the admission and rejection of members, and the preserving proper discipline among them ; and none of such regulations dates back beyond the seventeenth century. No ordinance with reference to these institutions emanating from the Crown or the Privy Council, the Judges or the Benchere has an earlier date than the reign of Philip and Mary ; and the Inns of Court are not even mentioned in any Act of Parliament before the next reign. There is no reference in any law report before that time to the Inns of Court as legally constituted institu- tions ; and a sort of return made to the Crown in the time of Henry VIII. on this subject seems very distinctly to show that there was not any reliable previous account of the Inns of Court or their system of rule."

The talented and industrious author further appends, inter alia, the following foot-note :

" In the Cott. MS. Vitellius C 9, pp. 319b-321b, is the description given to Henry VIII. ' of the Inns of Court and the manner of study and prefer- ment therein.' This MS. was much damaged in the fire that took place some years ago, but Dug- dale, p. 193, gives all that relates to the Middle Temple. It is not easy to make out, from what remains of the MS., what this information was as to the other Inns."

Pulling, created a serjeant-at-law in 1864, was, if not the survivor, one of the last of the serjeants-at-law not raised to the judicial bench, and he continued from his creation to his decease one of the most zealous up- holders of all the dignities, precedence, and privileges pertaining to his order. It was interesting and delightful to converse with him thereon, and to hear him refer with pride and pleasure to his call "ad statum et gradum servientis ad legem," as he termed it, and his assertion that the Order of the Coif came into being prior to the oldest title in the English peerage, and centuries before any order conferring a title of honour was instituted in England.

In Herbert's 'Antiquities of the Inns of Court and Chancery' (London, printed for Vernor & Hood, Poultry, and others, 1804), chap, iv., under headings of ' Inns of Chancery belonging to the Temple,' 'Clifford's Inn,' pp. 272-3, what Mr. Neville, K.C., men- tioned in the Court of Appeal on 19 March is corroborated ; also the sale to Nicholas Sulyard, Esq., the Principal of the House and a Bencher of Lincoln's Inn, Nicholas Guybon, Robert Clinche, and others, the then seniors of it. Mr. Herbert also states (p. 274) :

"This Society was governed by a principal and twelve Rulers. The Gentlemen were to be in commons a fortnight in every term ; and those that were not, paid about 4-s. a week, but not always certain. They sell their chambers for one life, and formerly had mootings. Their armorial ensigns are

Chequy or and az., a fess gules, within a border of the third."

And after speaking of the Hall of the Inn he proceeds (p. 275) :

" In this Hall Sir Matthew Hale and the principal judges sat after the great fire of London, to settle the various differences that occurred between Land- lord and Tenant, and to ascertain the several divi- sions of property ; which difficult and important business was performed by them so much to the satisfaction of the City, that the mayor and com- monalty, in gratitude for so signal a service, ordered their portraits to be painted and hung in the Guild- hall. In this momentous employment it is but justice to the memory of Judge Hale to say, that he was the first that offered his service to the City: and this measure certainly obviated numerous diffi- culties that would otherwise have occurred con- cerning the rebuilding of it ; insomuch, says the Author of his life, ' that the sudden and quiet build- ing of the City, which is justly to be reckoned among the wonders of the age, is in no small measure due to the great care which he and Sir Orlando Bridge- man, then Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, used, and to the judgment they shewed in that affair.' "

G. GREEN SMITH.

MOURNING SUNDAY (9 th S. ix. 366). I have seen this ceremony within the last ten years at St. Briavels. The male members of the family wear crape weepers on their tall hats, even longer than those of undertakers' "mutes." Mutes themselves are, however, disappearing. I am told that in Warwickshire the family still all go, sit together, and wear their funeral " trappings," but rise and kneel with others. CHARLES W. DILKE.

BLACK MALIBRAN (9 th S. ix. 367). Madame Malibran was, of course, not black. The lady meant by MR. DENHAM was, doubtless, a later singer of negro race, thought by admirers to be comparable with the great operatic artist of the previous generation.

D.

JOHN GARRATT, LORD MAYOR OF LONDON (9 th S. vii. 447). This gentleman died at Cleevemont, Cheltenham, in February, 1859, aged seventy-two (Gent. Mag., March, 1859, p. 334). His name is in the ' London Direc- tory ' as well as the ' Royal Kalendar ' up to 1861. There is a pedigree of his family in Burke's 'Landed Gentry,' ninth edition, vol. i. p. 571 (1898). FREDERIC BOASE.

'OLD FRIENDS AND NEW FRIENDS' (9 th S. ix. 328). The following lines, I presume, are those which MR. MEREDITH desires to obtain. I chanced upon the "poem, "if the lines may be so designated, in a provincial paper some weeks ago. Underneath it there was what I supposed to be a familiar signa- ture, and on chaffing a lady friend on becom-