Moreover by this act the second judge of the King's Bench was entitled as in the preceding reign, to £40 for giving charge to the grand jury in each term, and pronouncing judgment on malefactors.

The changes with regard to judicial salaries under William IV. were comparatively unimportant. By 2 and 3 Will. IV. c. 116, the salaries of puisne judges and barons were reduced to £5,000 a year; and by 2 and 3 Will. IV. c. III, the Chancellor's pension, on retirement, was raised to £5,000, the additional £1,000 per annum being assigned to him in compensation of loss of patronage occasioned by the abolition of certain offices. These were the most noticeable of William's provisions with regard to the payment of his judges.

The present reign, which has generously given the country two new judges called Lords Justices, two additional Vice-Chancellors, and a swarm of paid justices, in the shape of county-court judges and stipendiary magistrates, has exercised economy with regard to judicial salaries. The annual stipends of the two Chief Justices, fixed in 1825 at £10,000 for the chief of the King's Bench, and £8,000 for the chief of the Common Pleas, have been reduced, in the former case to £8,000 per annum, in the latter to £7,000 per annum. The Chancellor's salary for his services as Speaker of the House of Lords, has been made part of the £10,000 assigned to his legal office; so that his income is no more than ten thousand a year. The salary of the Master of the Rolls has been reduced from £7,000 to £6,000 a year; the same stipend, together with a pension on retirement of £3,750 being assigned to each of the Lords Justices. The salary of a Vice-Chancellor is £5,000 per annum; and after fifteen years' service, or in case of incurable sickness rendering him unable to discharge the functions. of his office, he can retire with a pension of £3,500.

Thurlow had no pension on retirement; but with much justice Lord Campbell observes: "Although there was no parliamentary retired allowance for ex-Chancellor's, they were better off than at present. Thurlow was a Teller of the Exchequer, and had given sinecures to all his relations, for one of which his nephew now receives a commutation of £9,000 a year." Lord Loughborough was the first ex-Chancellor who enjoyed, on retirement, a pension of £4,000 per annum, under Stat. 39 Geo. III. C. IIO. The next claimant for an ex-Chancellor's pension was Eldon, on his ejection from office in 1806; and the third claimant was Erskine, whom the possession of the pension did not preserve from the humiliations of indigence.

Eldon's obstinate tenacity of office was attended with one good result. It saved the nation much money by keeping down the number of ex-Chancellors entitled to £4,000 per annum. The frequency with which governments have been changed during the last forty years has had a contrary effect, producing such a strong bevy of lawyers who are pensioners as well as peers-that financial reformers are loudly asking if some scheme can not be devised for lessening the number of these costly and comparatively useless personages. At the time when this page is written there are four ex-Chancellors in receipt. of pensions—Lords Brougham, St. Leonards, Cranworth, and Westbury; but death has recently diminished the roll of Chancellors by removing Lords Truro and Lyndhurst. Not long since the present writer read a very able but one-sided article in a liberal newspaper that gave the sum total spent by the country since Lord Eldon's death in ex-Chancellors' pensions; and in simple truth it must be admitted that the bill was a fearful subject for contemplation.

VII.

WIGS AND GOWNS.

F

CHAPTER XXXVI.

ROM the days of the Conqueror's Chancellor, Bald

rick, who is reputed to have invented and christened the sword-belt that bears his name, lawyers have been conspicuous among the best-dressed men of their times. For many generations clerical discipline restrained the members of the bar from garments of lavish costliness and various colors, unless high rank and personal influence placed them above the fear of censure and punishment; but as soon as the law became a lay-profession, its members-especially those who were still young--eagerly seized the newest fashions of costume, and expended so much time and money on personal decoration that the governors of the Inns deemed it expedient to make rules with a view to check the inordinate love of gay apparel.

By these enactments foppish modes of dressing the hair were discountenanced or forbidden, not less than the use of gaudy clothes and bright arms. Some of these regulations have a quaint air to readers of this generation; and as indications of manners in past times they deserve attention.

From Dugdale's "Origines Juridiciales " it appears that in the earlier part of Henry VII.'s reign the students and barristers of the Inns were allowed great license in settling for themselves minor points of costume; but before

that paternal monarch died this freedom was lessened. Accepting the statements of a previous chronicler, Dugdale observes of the members of the Middle Temple under Henry-" They have no order for their apparell; but every man may go as him listeth, so that his apparell pretend no lightness or wantonness in the wearer; for, even as his apparell doth shew him to be, even so he shall be esteemed among them." But at the period when this license was permitted in respect of costume, the general discipline of the Inn was scandalously lax; the very next paragraph of the “Origines" showing that the templars forbore to shut their gates at night, whereby" their chambers were often-times robbed, and many other misdemeanors used."

But measures were taken to rectify the abuses and evil manners of the schools. In the thirty-eighth year of Henry VIII. an order was made "that the gentlemen of this company" (i. e., the Inner Temple) "should reform themselves in their cut or disguised apparel, and not to have long beards. And that the Treasurer of this society should confer with the other Treasurers of Court for an uniform reformation." The authorities of Lincoln's Inn had already bestirred themselves to reduce the extravagances of dress and toilet which marked their younger and more frivolous fellow-members. "And for decency in Apparel," writes Dugdale, concerning Lincoln's Inn, "at a council held on the day of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, 23 Hen. VIII. it was ordered that for a continual rule, to be thenceforth kept in this house, no gentleman, being a fellow of this house should wear any cut or pansid hose, or bryches; or pansid doublet, upon pain of putting out of the house."

Ten years later the authorities of Lincoln's Inn (33 Hen. VIII.) ordered that no member of the society “being in commons, or at his repast, should wear a beard;

and whoso did, to pay double commons or repasts in this house during such time as he should have any beard."

By an order of 5 Maii, 1 and 2 Philip and Mary, the gentlemen of the Inner Temple were forbidden to wear long beards, no member of the society being permitted to wear a beard of more than three weeks' growth. Every breach of this law was punished by the heavy fine of twenty shillings. In 4 and 5 of Philip and Mary it was ordered that no member of the Middle Temple "should thenceforth wear any great bryches in their hoses, made after the Dutch, Spanish, or Almon fashion; or lawnde upon their capps; or cut doublets, upon pain of iii" iiiia forfaiture for the first default, and the second time to be expelled the house." At Lincoln's Inn, “in 1 and 2 Philip and Mary, one M' Wyde, of this house, was (by special order made upon Ascension day) fined at five groats, for going in his study gown in Cheap-side, on a Sunday, about ten o'clock before noon; and in Westminster Hall, in the Term time, in the forenoon." Mr. Wyde's offense was one of remissness rather than of excessive care for his personal appearance. With regard to beards in the same reign, Lincoln's Inn exacted that such members" as had beards should pay 12d. for every meal they continued them; and every man was required "to be shaven upon pain of putting out of commons."

The orders made under Elizabeth with regard to the same or similar matters are even more humorous and diverse. At the Inner Temple "it was ordered in 36 Elizabeth (16 Junii), that if any fellow in commons, or lying in the house, did wear either hat or cloak in the Temple church, hall, buttry, kitchin, or at the buttrybarr, dresser, or in the garden, he should forfeit for every such offense vis viiid. And in 42 Eliz. (8 Febr.) that they go not in cloaks, hatts, bootes, and spurrs into the city, but when they ride out of the town." This order