that arise are considered upon the paper book. All the rest of the business of the court is wrangling about process and amendments, whereof the latter had been mostly prevented, if the court (as formerly) had considered the first acts of the cause at the bar when offered by the serjeants. And this way also the skill of pleading lies not in a student's notice for him to gather up together with the law part of the case; but he must read over records and entries, a discipline that would split a brisk gentleman by making a jade of his patience. And really forms are better understood and learned by writing than by reading; for that exercise allows time: which consideration hath made clerkship so recommendable to beginners that most enter the profession of the law that way. It was not moroseness, but reason, that inclined his lordship to deal so much as he did with the year-books; and however at present that sort of reading is obsolete and despised, I guess there will not be found a truly learned, judicious, common lawyer without it.

:

23. After a good foundation out of books, his lordship together with his farther studies joined an attendance on the courts of justice. For an observation of the practice gave a great life and spirit to what had been gained by reading. His design, with the community of his profession, was to enter his claim to business at the King's Bench bar which inclined him to make his preparatory attendance there; but yet he thought fit, as he had been also advised, to attend as a student most at the Common Pleas for there all suits are drawn forth upon the ancient and genuine process of the common law; and, as the Lord Nottingham in one of his speeches expresseth, the law is there at home. The time of that court is not taken up with factious contentions, as at the King's Bench where more news than law is stirring. And his lordship, whenever he was in the way of learning any thing never failed to have his note-book, pen and ink ready: and in that he wrote as a reporter and afterwards, generally that very day, he posted his gatherings into a fair book; for then he could supply out of his memory what was imperfectly taken, and recover things that had not been noted and dispose all into some tolerable order: for a young reporter's

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note book is so disorderly wrote, or rather scratched that none but himself, nor he after a few days, can make any thing of it.

24. I do not find that he had opinion enough of his early reports taken while he was a student, to preserve them either fair or foul; for none such have come to my hand. But just upon his coming to the bar he attended at the Common Pleas whilst Hales' was a judge there. And some cases are found at the beginning of his reports taken there. And I perceive by that book, that one year's reports to Hil. 1657-8, are of the Common Pleas, and from thence they run all as of the King's Bench. By this time he found his strength at that exercise and began to be very careful of his reports. He was also an attendant (as well as exerciser) at the ordinary moots in the Middle Temple and at New Inn; whereof the former is the superior and governs the exercises; and took notes. In those days the moots were carefully performed, and it is hard to give a good reason (bad ones are prompt enough) why they are not so now. And he contrived to stay in London to be present at famous pleadings, as particularly that of Sir Heneage Finch, and some others. The ready use of the law French came easily to him, because he well understood the vernacular; and he had acquired such a dexterity in writing it with the ordinary abbreviations, that he seldom wrote hastily in any other dialect: for, to say truth, barbarous as it is thought to be it is concise, aptly abbreviated, and significative. And I believe his aptness, when in haste or writing to himself only, to write in law French, proceeded from his long use and practice of noting at the bar; which had created in him both an ease and a dexterity in it. When he had time and place to write at his ease he usually wrote English, and accordingly drew up his reports.

25. His lordship, long before he was called to the bar, undertook the practice of court-keeping. His grandfather thought he preferred him mainly, when he made him

Hales. It is thus Roger North always spells Sir Matthew Hale's

name.

Previous to the Revolution, the law reports were taken down and published in French,

steward of his courts. And the young lawyer procured of other neighbours and relations to have the charge of their manors; and so made the employment considerable to him. He did not, as many others of late, take a share of the profits and make some attorney a kind of substitute to do all the business; but kept all his courts himself and wrote all his court rolls and made out his copies with his own hands; for he pretended to no clerk then. His grandfather had a venerable old steward, careful by nature and faithful to his lord, employing all his thoughts and time to manage for supply of his house and upholding his rents: in short, one of a race of human kind heretofore frequent but now utterly extinct; and there is scarce any of the breed left that is affectionate as well as faithful, and diligent for love rather than for self-interest. This old gentleman, with his boot-hose and beard, used to accompany his young master to his court-keeping; and observing him reason the country people out of their pence for essoins, &c., he commended him, saying, "if he could be contented to be a great while getting a little he would be a little while getting a great deal," wherein he was no false prophet. I have heard his lordship say, "he thought this court-keeping business" (which he used to recommend to others) "did him a great deal of service; for it showed him the humours of the country people and accustomed him to talk readily with. them and to meet with their subtilties." They seldom came forward without some formed stratagem to be too hard for Mr. Steward. Some would insist to know their fine, which he would not tell till they were admitted and then he insisted for his fees; no, they would know the fine, and some cunning fellow would jog and advise them to pay the fees, and not dispute that. And abundance more of their contrivances he used to speak of.

26. He was most put to it in cases of infancy and uses declared in deeds that did not appear. As for the former, if none came for the infant to be admitted, he seized, not as for a forfeiture but quousque, &c., and made a warrant to the bailiff, quod respondeat domino de proficuis: which did not, as he said, make the lord accountable who in that respect had a prerogative, as, upon a reversal of an outlawry, no money goes out of the king's coffers; but if any friend

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would pay the fine he admitted the infant and him guardian. As to latent uses, which often happen in wills (and sometimes referring to deeds of settlement) for long terms of years, he would not admit at all, and no action lay because he had the lord's order: For though he might fine to the value it did not answer, because at that rate men might enfranchise the copyhold in spite of the lord's teeth. He hath said that the greatest trouble he had in those affairs, was to satisfy some greedy lords, or rather ladies of manors, in setting the fines and in being in some measure an executioner of their cruelty upon poor men. And in very good earnest, it is a miserable thing to observe how sharpers that now are commonly court-keepers pinch the poor copy. holders in their fees. Small tenements and pieces of land that have been men's inheritances for divers generations, to say nothing of the fines, are devoured by fees. So that, if it were only to relieve the poorest of the land owners of the nation from such extortions and oppressions without more, there is reason enough to abolish the tenure. It was somewhat unequal, when the Parliament took away the royal tenures in capite, that the lesser tenures of the gentry were left exposed to as grievous abuses as the former. The state of that matter seems now at the worst, for copyhold tenures continually waste and cannot be renewed or in-. creased, so that most manors are more than half lost. Either abolish all base tenures or let gentlemen enlarge them as they please; and that perhaps may tend to some repopulation, which is more needed than any means of extortion.

27. His lordship while he was a student and during his incapacity to practise above-board, was contented to underpull, as they call it, and managed divers suits for his country friends and relations, "which," he said, "was useful to him in letting him into a knowledge of the offices and the methods used there;" for he was always in person present at every turn in whatever business he undertook. In a cause for his father against Sir John Lawrence, he recovered £300 and brought in a very moderate bill of charges; which pleased his father who expected a great deal more. He made use of Mr. Baker, a solicitor in Chancery who for his singular integrity was famous, and

on this occasion ought to be remembered with honour. His lordship had a veneration for this Mr. Baker as long as he lived. When his lordship paid his bill, the virtuous solicitor laid by a sum (according to an usual rate) for him, saying that it was their way and they were allowed at the offices somewhat for encouragement to them that brought business. By this we see what country and other attornies get by Chancery suits. But his lordship would not touch a penny but turned it back upon the good man's hands.

28. He also managed a suit for his grandfather with the like success, and in the close of that somewhat comical happening I am provoked to relate it. And indeed what have we to remember of a young man, but things that really fell out and in his circumstances not inconsiderable? After this suit ended, his lordship sent to his grandfather the bitter pill, the solicitor's bill of costs, and the old man sent him the money and he paid it. And afterwards the noble client reviewed his bill over and over, for however moderately and husbandly the cause was managed he thought the sum total a great deal too much for the lawyers. And among other items, he observed great numbers of sheets in the bill and so for the answer and depositions, besides many breviates, orders, &c., as belong to a Chancery case. And he had heard in the country of such bills whereof no entry at all was in the offices (no miracle in our days), and then knowing Frank North to be a nimble spark, he concluded that these items were suppositions and that he had swallowed the money, and after the way of wilful people, upon a bare suspicion concluding a certainty, he deliberated how to catch him (as it were) in the fact and then to expose him to perpetual shame and ruin. And pursuant to this pious resolution, he writes to Mr. Langhorn of the Temple (who afterwards suffered in Oates's plot) to cause searches to be made and to send him word if any such proceedings, of which he gave him the account, were entered in the offices. Whether it was by guess, perfunctory

man.

"He was in all respects," says Burnet, "a very extraordinary He was learned and honest in his profession, but was out of measure bigoted in his religion. He died with great constancy." (Own Times, vol. ii. p. 810. See his trial, Howel's State Trials, vol. vii. p. 418.)