churchmen by the favors which she distributed amongst her relations; narrowly escaped death at the hands of the London citizens who would fain have drowned her for a witch; and, after countless strange experiences, closed her career in the religious quietude of a holy house. Legend and chronicle preserve the memory of her singular grace and lively humor, the brightness of her jewels, and the splendor of her state, her unjust acts and evil fame. Piers of Langtoft sings—

Henry, owre Kynge, at Westminster tuke to wyfe

Th' Earle's daughter of Provence, the fayrest Maye in life.

Her name Elinor, of gentle nurture;

Beyond the sea there was no suche creature."

But of all the strange accidents which befel the fair and false mother of Edward I., her elevation to the post of Lady Keeper was perhaps the most laughable. Having occasion to cross the sea and visit Gascony, A. D. 1253 Henry III. made her Keeper of the Seal during his absence; and in that character she in her own person presided in the Aula Regia, hearing causes and, it is to be feared, forming her decisions less in accordance with justice than her own private interests. Never did judge set law and equity more fearfully at nought. Not content with the exorbitant sums which she wrung from the merchants whom she compelled to unload their ships at her royal hythe, the Lady Keeper required the City to pay her a large sum-due to her, as she pretended, from arrears of " queen gold;" and when Richard Picard and John de Northampton, sheriffs of London, had the presumption to resist this claim, she very promptly packed them off to the Marshalsea. Having thus disposed of the sheriffs, she, on equally unlawful grounds, subjected the Lord Mayor to like treatment.

But the great event during her tenure of the seals was the birth of her daughter Catherine, on St. Catherine's

Day, 1253. The Keeper of the Seals was not actually delivered on the bed of justice; but with only a slight departure from literal truth, the historian may affirm that the little princess was born upon the woolsack.

II.

LAWYERS IN ARMS.

OR centuries the majority of our English lawyers were ecclesiastics; and for centuries our mitred judges evinced no reluctance to mount horse and wear mail. Chief Justiciar Odo, a type of these holy and martial lawyers, certainly contributed as much as William to the success of the Norman invasion. It was his voice that, thundering from Norman pulpits, stirred grim barons and impetuous knights to support their feudal chieftain; it was his purse that equipped a fleet for the cause, and armed a company of chosen warriors; and having giving words and money, he was no less willing to give his blood. When the French lines. covered the Sussex coast, his clear, tremulous, earnest utterances assured them that the God of Hosts was on their side, that those of them who outlived the battle would be victors, and that those who fell would join the blessed saints. And having thus spoken and celebrated the holy mass, the bishop laid aside his sacred vestments, mounted his white war-horse, and grasping his bâton, rode in the van of that fierce flood of chivalry which swept a nation to the earth, and bore the victor to a throne. The Bayeux tapestry preserves the story of this man of God and war; and history tells how, when the

battle had been won, he became his brother's chief justiciar, and spoke cruel judgments from the seat to which he had climbed over the bodies of dead men. Alternately fighting and preaching, he harried rebellious districts with fire and sword, and scattered words of ban

and blessing over hard-fought fields. "In seculari ejus functione," says the historian, "non solum rem exercuit judiciariam; sed bellis utique assuefactus exercitum, Randulphi Comitis Estangliæ, suorumque confæderatorum, profligavit; et in ultione necis Walteri Dunelmensis Episcopi, Northumbriam latè populatus est."

Like Odo, the Conqueror's Chancellor, Osmond was a soldier and a bishop. Like Francis North and George Jeffreys, he was also a musician; and as the author of the "Life and Miracles of Alden, a Saxon Saint, the First Bishop of Sherborne," he won a name in letters.

Ralph de Hengham (Chief Justice of the King's Bench under Edward I., and Chief Justice of the Common Pleas under Edward II.) is generally regarded as the first of our non-military common law judges; but it would be difficult to prove that the author of the quaint old lawbook, "Randulphi de Hengham Edward Regis I Capitalis Olim Justitiarii summæ,” never spurred horse against a foe. Lord Campbell says, roundly, "He may truly be considered the father of the common law judges. He was the first of them who never put on a coat of mail; and he has had a long line of illustrious successors contented with the ermine robe." It is, however, scarcely credible that this chief justice of a migratory court in the thirteenth century never wore mail. When it is borne in mind that even within the memory of living men lawyers riding circuit deemed it prudent to carry firearms for their personal security, it is not to be imagined that De Hengham never donned such steel clothing as was worn by all gentlemen of his time.

He may, however, be ranked with non-military lawyers; and army men may be allowed to tell with glee how the first non-militant Chief Justice became a famous rogue. On his return from France in 1289, after an absence of three years, Edward I. was received with complaints against the corruption and venality of his judges. An investigation followed, which resulted in the punishment of De Hengham and other offenders.

Long after the ancient military functions of the Grand Justiciar had ceased to exist, chief justices, during occasions of especial emergency, exercised military as well as civil powers. When the Percies rose in rebellion, Henry IV. empowered Chief Justice Gascoigne to raise forces for the subjugation of the insurgents; and in the subsequent rising of Scrope, Archbishop of York, and Thomas Mowbray Gascoigne was sent to aid in subduing the malcontents.

A later instance of this union of civil and military power in the person of a chief justice occurred in 1685, when Jeffreys set out for the Western Circuit on his "campaign," "armed not only with a commission of Oyer and Terminer, but also an authority to command the forces in chief" in the disaffected counties. Thus appointed to destroy on the battle-field, as well as the judgment seat, Jeffreys was styled the "General of the West."

A more humorous instance of a lawyer in arms was Sir Edward Coke in the summer of 1617, when he donned a breast-plate and equipped for battle rode at the head of an armed company, from London to Oatlands, where Lady Hatton had secreted the lovely girl of whom she was the vexatious mother, and he the indignant father. The

Roger North's expression, “to command the forces in chief," is worthy of notice, being used at a time long prior to the title "commander-in-chief." -Vide "Life of Lord Keeper Guildford."