Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/689

 19. ZANE: THE FIVE AGES 675 his great impoverishment, for they were the substance of his hvehhood." He modestly requested, since he was the poorest of the justices, a hfe estate in lands of £25 12s. 10^. per year. Even the summons to serjeantcy was sometimes refused, since it might result in an elevation to the bench. It is certain that prior to this time the Serjeants had a mo- nopoly of the Common Pleas, for in 1415, William Babing- ton, John Juyn, John Martyn, and William Westbury were called to the degree of the coif. These four with several others declined to qualify and thereupon complaint was made in Parliament that there was an insufficiency of Serjeants to carry on the business of the courts. Parliament responded by imposing a large penalty upon any one who refused a summons to become a serjeant. So the persons called as- sumed the degree, and the four named above afterwards became judges. A judge who, served under Henry VI. in the trying time of Cade's rebellion has served for centuries to add to the gayety of nations. Sir John Fastolf, who held the Kent assizes in 1451, was a gallant soldier and a lover of learn- ing. For some reason Shakespeare pictured him, under the name of FalstaflP or Fastolfe, in his Henry VI., as a con- temptible coward and craven. Later, in his Henry IV., when he changed the name of the fat knight Oldcastle so as not to offend Puritan prejudices, Shakespeare substituted the name of the character in his older play. In this way the blameless Fastolf has been handed down by the plays of Henry IV. and the Merry Wives of Windsor as the richest comic character in dramatic literature. The real man left a will, of which Judge Yelverton was an executor. It is said in the Paston letters that in a suit over the will Yel- verton came down from the bench and pleaded the matter ! But this extraordinary conduct of Yelverton was sur- passed by that of Serjeant Fairfax. On one occasion he was employed to prosecute certain defendants ; but he de- clared at the bar that he knew that the men were not guilty, that he would labor their deliverance for alms, not taking a penny, whereupon the prosecutor naturally retained other counsel. It is to be hoped that this professional betrayal