words of doom, "And noo, Matthew, ye'll admit that's checkmate for you."

   To Lord Chancellor Hatton, also an Elizabethan judge who aimed at sprightliness on the Bench, a clever

    mot

   is attributed. The case before him was one concerning the limits of certain land. The counsel having remarked with emphasis, 'We lie on this side, my lord,' and the opposing counsel with equal vehemence having interposed, 'And we lie on this side, my lord'—the Lord Chancellor dryly observed, "If you lie on both

   sides, whom am I to believe?" It would seem that punning was as great a power in the Law Courts of that time as it is at the present day. When Egerton as Master of the Rolls was asked to commit a cause—refer it to a Master in Chancery—he would reply, "What has the cause done that it should be committed?"

   Many witticisms of Westminster Hall, attributed to barristers of the Georgian and Victorian periods, are traceable to a much earlier date. There is the story of Serjeant Wilkins, whose excuse for drinking a pot of stout at mid-day was, that he wanted to fuddle his brain down to the intellectual standard of a British jury. Two hundred and fifty years earlier, Sir John Millicent, a Cambridgeshire judge, on being asked how he got on with his brother judges replied, "Why, i' faithe, I have no way but to drink myself down to the capacity of the Bench." And this merry thought has also been attributed to one eminent barrister who became Lord Chancellor, and to more than one Scottish advocate who ultimately attained to a seat on the Bench.

   And to various celebrities of the later Georgian period has been attributed Lord Shaftesbury's reply to Charles II. When the king exclaimed, "Shaftesbury, you are the most profligate man in my dominions," the Chancellor answered somewhat recklessly, "Of a subject, sir, I believe I am."

   Bullying witnesses is an old practice of the Bar, but

   for instances of it emanating from the Bench one has to go very far back. A witness with a long beard was giving evidence that was displeasing to Jeffreys, when judge, who said: "If your conscience is as large as your beard, you'll swear anything." The old man retorted: "My lord, if your lordship measures consciences by beards, your lordship has none at all."

   A somewhat similar story of Jeffreys' bullying manner, when at the Bar, is that of 

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