Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 05.pdf/59

 Green Bag. AN EPISODE IN LORD COLERIDGE'S COURT. the month of August, during a short stay in London, I dropped into Lord' Chief-Justice Coleridge's court. The case of Harrison against the Duke of Rutland, Lord Edward Manners, and others was on trial before the Chief-Justice and a jury, and the court-room was stuffed. As I stood in the crowded aisle listening to Sir Henry James's able argument of a question of highway law, my eye suddenly rested on the faces of one of the judges of my home circuit and of a brother member of the bar of my home city, and I felt the thrill that a familiar and be loved face unexpectedly seen in »a strange land always gives one. I elbowed my way to the Judge's side, and after a hearty hand shake, and the " Where in the d 1 did you come from?" from the Judge, we stood listening to the trial of the case. After another hour of standing I thought the Judge seemed weary, and turning to a junior in the stall beside me, I said : " That elderly gentle man just in front of you is an American judge. Don't you think you could find him a seat?" "I am very sorry," he replied, "but there is not a vacant seat in the court-room except those three seats on the Queen's Counsel bench just in front, and none but Q. С 's. are ever permitted to sit there. You see six or seven peers on that backless bench in front, and even they could not occupy the bench reserved for 'silks.'" He then whispered to his brother juniors, then to a "silk " in front of him; some word was passed to Lord Coleridge and back, and the junior said to me, " If the American Judge will hand up his card, Lord Coleridge will ask him up on the bench." I told the Judge to give me his card and go up. This he positively declined to do; more whispering, and at last a Q. C. arose and invited the Judge, Brother D , and myself to seats on the Q. C.'s bench beside him. The case on trial was of unusual interest. It was for £500 damages for an assault.

Harrison, the plaintiff, a combination of poacher and gamekeeper, having some spite against the Duke of Rutland, proceeded to make it hot for the noble Lord in the manner following : The Duke, with Lord Edward Manners and several other noblemen, went to the Duke's preserves near Sheffield one fine October morning to shoot grouse; the butts — or blinds, as an American sportsman would call them — were near an unfrequented high way, and the gamekeepers were about to drive the grouse across the highway towards the deadly guns of the noble lords behind the butts, when Harrison, the plaintiff, planted himself in the highway between the butts and the gamekeepers, and when they tried to drive the grouse, threw up his hat, opened his umbrella, etc., thereby frightening and turning the grouse and completely spoil ing the sport. The noble Lords gently pleaded with him, telling him they had no objection to his viewing the sport, but they wished he would not spoil it, and warning him that he was in danger from a chance shot if he insisted on standing just where he was. Harrison replied that the Queen's highway was for the use of her Majesty's subjects to pass and repass upon according to their sweet will, and he proposed to suit himself as to his location in the highway and preferred that particular spot. The hot blood of young Lord Edward Manners arose, and he told Harrison not to come into the butts; if he did he would get shot, and if he was shot his blood would be on his own head, pointing his lordly periods with an occasional "big D," all to no purpose. Harrison stood pat, and seemed to be an artist at making a nuisance of himself and to enjoy doing so. The Duke at last ordered his gamekeepers to gently place their hands (manus mollientcr imponere) upon the obnoxious Harrison, throw him upon the ground, and sit upon his legs and abdomen until the thirst of his noble guests for grouse's blood had been