Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/682

 668 V. BENCH AND BAR kill all the lawyers." Cade : " Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment ; that parchment being scribbled o'er should undo a man." It is, perhaps, needless to say that Shakespeare is here completely astray in chro- nology, for this hatred of lawyers belongs to the revolt of Wat Tyler in 1381, not to Cade's rebellion in 1450. Out in Suffolk was living the venerable Chief Justice Cavendish. The mob attacked his domain, and finding the Chief Justice, they dragged him forth, gave him a mock trial, and then beheaded him. This fine old lawyer was from the Norman house of De Gernum. Under the name Candish he was in immense practice in the Year Books of Edward III., along with Belknap, Charlton, and Knivet. After serv- ing as a puisne in the Common Pleas he became Chief Justice of the King's Bench. One of his dicta from the bench is a gallant utterance upon the appearance of women : " II rCad nul home en Engleterre," he says in barbarous French, " que puy adjudge a droit deins age ou de plein age, car ascun femes qme sent de age xxx ans voilent apperer de age de arviii." ^ When he was murdered he had just been made Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, after a service on the bench for over ten years, with a great reputation for learning and fair dealing. His descendants in the elder line were Earls of Devonshire, now Dukes of Devonshire. An- other descendant in the younger line was the celebrated commander in the Civil War, who became Marquis and Duke of Newcastle; but the estates of this line now belong to the Dukes of Portland, who are Cavendish-Bentincks. The successor of Chief Justice Cavendish was Robert Tresilian. He had sat as Cavendish's only puisne; and when he held the assizes after Wat Tyler's rebellion, he made a record that was never equaled until Jeffreys held the " Bloody Assizes " after Monmouth's rebellion. Later in the reign of Richard IT., Tresilian became involved in the political troubles. Parliament had practically supplanted or of full age, for some women who are thirty years old will appear to be only eighteen."
 * " There is no man in England who can tell whether she is within age