DOCTOR'S COMMONS.
ONE of the queerest old rookeries in London is the little old edifice
in Great Knight-Rider street, just back of St. Paul's Churchyard, with
its nest of courts and its ancient quadrangle, where people go to get
licenses to marry--or to have divorces granted them, or to examine
or prove wills--or perhaps to have a suite entered for salvage or
flotsam, or jetsam,--where David Copperfield paid a thousand pounds to
receive his matriculation as a proctor. This curious old relic of Roman
Catholic England, where the wills of the British nation are preserved,
is known as Doctors' Commons.
It is a college of civil, canon, and maritime law, and here all cases
that belong to these three divisions of English law, as also divorce
suits, are entered, argued, and decided.
The lawyers who practice here are all well to do, snug, aristocratic
old fellows, and enjoy good living and nothing to do as no other
disciples of the legal profession can.
It is called Doctor's Commons because the doctors or students at law
used to eat in common, or dine together in a hall in the old days when
the Archbishop of Canterbury acknowledged the supremacy of the See of
St. Peter.
In the Doctors' Commons are--the Court of Arches, named from having
been formerly kept in Bow Church, Cheapside, originally built upon
arches, and the Supreme Ecclesiastical Court of the Province of
Canterbury--the other English Ecclesiastical Province being that of
York; the Prerogative Court, where all contentions arising out of
testamentary causes, are tried; the Consistory Court of the Bishop of
London; and the High Court of Admiralty; all these courts hold their
sittings in the college hall, the walls of which are covered with the
richly-emblazoned coats of arms of all the doctors who have practiced
here for two hundred years past.
The Court of Arches has a jurisdiction over thirteen parishes, or
"peculiars," which form a "Deanery," exempt from the authority of the
Bishop of London, and attached to the Province of the Archbishop of
Canterbury, who is Primate of England. This court decides, as in the
days of Wolsey, in all cases of usury, simony, heresy, sacrilege,
blasphemy, apostacy from Christianity, adultery, fornication, bastardy,
partial and entire divorce, and many exploded offenses, which in the
Nineteenth century become farcical when tried in an ecclesiastical
court. Fighting or brawling in church or vestry are also offenses under
the jurisdiction of this absurd old court, but they are seldom or ever
brought up in these days, as the newspapers are sure to seize upon such
trials as subjects for derision and satire. Still the statutes are in
existence and will probably never be repealed until the Established
Church of England is abolished.
There are several Registries in Doctors' Commons, under the
jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the bishops. Some of
the very old documents connected with them are deposited for security
in St. Paul's Cathedral and Lambeth Palace. At the Bishop of London's
Registry, and the Registry for the Commission of Surrey, wills are
proved for the respective dioceses, and marriage licences are granted.
At the Vicar-General's Office and the Faculty Office, marriage licences
are granted for any part of England. The Faculty Office also grants
Faculties to notaries public, and dispensations to the clergy; and
formerly granted privilege to eat flesh on prohibited days. At the
Vicar-General's Office, records are kept of the confirmation and
consecration of bishops.
[Sidenote: MARRIAGE LICENSES.]
Marriage licences, when required by persons who profess the faith of
the Established Church of England, are always procured in Doctors'
Commons upon personal application to one of these old fogy Proctors,
whom I saw running around the quaint quadrangle, like a hen on a hot
griddle, with a roll of papers in his fleshy, fat hands. A residence of
fifteen days is necessary to either bride or bridegroom, in the parish
in which the marriage is to be solemnized, or not much longer than it
takes a repeater to become a useful if not a legal voter in New York
City. This little antique court of Doctors' Commons is in fine one of
the pious swindles that the English people delight in perpetuating and
groaning under, while the sinecurists make pots of money, and laugh and
grow fat on the pious plunder. There are all kinds of little dodges in
Doctors Commons, so that when a suitor enters here it is like a dip
into chancery litigation; the victim being plucked before he leaves.
Even to get married is very expensive in Doctors' Commons. The expense
of an ordinary license is £2 12s. 6d.; but if either party is a minor,
there is 10s. 6d. further charge; and if the party appearing swears
that he has obtained the consent of the proper person having authority
in law to give it, there is no necessity for either parents or minor
to attend. A special license for marriage is issued after a fiat or
consent has been obtained from the Archbishop, and is granted only to
persons of rank, judges, and members of parliament, the Archbishop
having a right to exercise his own discretion.
The expense of a Special License is usually twenty-eight guineas. This
gives privilege to marry at any time or place, in private residence, or
at any church or chapel situate in England; but the ceremony must be
performed by a priest in holy orders, and of the Established Church.
With the marriages of Dissenters, including Roman Catholics, Jews,
and Quakers, the Commons has nothing to do, their licenses being
obtainable of the Superintendent-Registrar. A Divorce when sought is
carried through one of the courts in this profession (according to the
diocese), and is conducted by a proctor; the evidence of witnesses
is taken privately before an examiner of the court, and neither the
husband, wife, nor any of the witnesses, need appear personally in
court. A suit is seldom conducted at an expense less than £200.
Then there is the High Court of Admiralty, a "precious old swindle," as
a seafaring man told me it had proved to him. He was a seaman before
the mast, and to get a sum of eight pounds six and four-pence, he was
compelled to pay eleven pounds of costs and fees. It comprises the
"Instance Court," and the "Prize Court," where the famous Lord Stowell,
in one year, adjudicated upon 2,206 cases connected with the high seas.
[Illustration: DOCTOR'S COMMONS.]
The Instance Court has a criminal and civil jurisdiction; to the former
belong piracy and other indictable offences on the high seas, which are
now tried at the Old Bailey; to the latter, suits arising from ships
running foul of each other, disputes about seamen's wages, bottomry,
and salvage. The Prize Court applies to naval captures in war, proceeds
of captured slave-vessels, &c. A silver oar is carried before the
Judge as an emblem of his office. The business is very onerous, as in
embargoes and the provisional detention of vessels, when incautious
decision might involve the country in war; the right of search is
another weighty question.
[Sidenote: PAYING THE PIPER.]
The practitioners in this court are advocates (D.D.C.L.) or counsel,
and proctors or solicitors. The judge and advocates wear in court,
if of Oxford, scarlet robes and hoods lined with taffety; and if of
Cambridge, white minever and round black velvet caps. The proctors wear
black robes and hoods lined with fur.
The College has a good library in civil law and history, bequeathed by
an ancestor of Sir John Gibson, judge of the Prerogative Court; and
every bishop at his consecration makes a present of books.
After a case has been worked slowly through one of these ecclesiastical
courts, it is then transferred to another, and after bowling the cause
about for years it is just possible that it will be lost for the
suitor. Suits are brought in Doctors' Commons for the most ridiculous
and trivial causes, and once a man gets into the Commons, he is made
to pay the piper while the sleek, fat proctors, dance right merrily to
the music paid for by their unhappy victims. A case in point I will
mention. The cause had just been tried in the Archdeacon's Court, at
Totness, and from thence an appeal had been sought in the Court at
Exeter, thence it went to the Court of Arches, and from there to the
Court of Delegates, and after all this fuss and expense, the question
in discussion was to know which of two persons had the legal right to
hang a hat on a certain peg! This is sober truth, and no exaggeration.
But the great perfection of legal scoundrelism was, in a case where
a man, named Russell, whose wife's character had been impugned by a
person named Bentham, at Yarmouth, was tried. This gentleman could
find no remedy in Common Law for the defamation, so he must needs go
to Doctors' Commons and the Ecclesiastical Courts. The Proctor's bill
amounted to £700 after the case had gone through several courts, and
finally each party had to pay his own costs after the case had been
continued six or seven years; the special beauty of Ecclesiastical
Courts being, that once a victim brings a suit, he is never allowed to
withdraw it until it has gone the rounds of every court, thus giving
fees to a score of persons, one-half of whom never hear of the case
until they make up their minds to send in a bill for money. Finally,
after seven years of this pious warfare, Mr. Russell, being a poor man,
was ruined, and his wife's character was not half as good as when he
began the suit.
The Prerogative Will Office is, however, the busiest and most
interesting place in Doctor's Commons. Wills are always to be found
here at half an hour's notice, and generally in a few minutes. They are
kept in a fire-proof, strong room. The original wills begin with the
year 1483, and the copies date from 1383. The latter are on parchment,
strongly bound, with brass clasps. Here I saw the will of Shakespeare,
on three folios of paper, each with his signature, and with the
inter-lineation in his own handwriting: "I give unto my wife my brown,
best bed, with the furniture." There is kept, also, the will of Milton,
which was written when the poet was blind, and set aside by a decree
of Sir Leoline Jenkins. And I saw alongside of Milton's will, the last
testament of the soldier of democracy, Napoleon Bonaparte, made at St.
Helena, April, 1821.
In one year 40,000 searches were made here for wills, and 7,000
extracts were made from testaments. There were, also, 5,000 commissions
issued for the country. Some of the entries of wills made by the early
Monks are beautiful specimens of illumination, the colors remaining
fresh to this day.
Let us take a look into the Will Office, and give a glance to one of
the most interesting phases of the drama of human life.
[Sidenote: THE FORGOTTEN SAILOR.]
People are passing rapidly in and out of the narrow court, their bustle
alone disturbing the marked quiet of the neighborhood. At the end
of the court, we ascend a few steps and open a door, when the scene
exhibited in the sketch is before us. All seems hurry and confusion,
the solicitors turning over the leaves of bulky volumes and folios at
the desks, long practice having taught them to discover at a glance the
object of their search; rapidly to and fro move those who are bringing
the tomes and taking them back to the shelves where they belong, and as
rapidly glide the pens of the numerous copyists who are transcribing or
making extracts from wills, in all their little boxes, along both sides
of the room.
But as we begin to look a little more closely into the densely packed
occupants' faces, we see persons who are certainly not solicitors'
clerks, nor officials of Doctor's Commons, but parties whose interests
in a worldly point of view may be materially benefited or damaged by
the investigations they are ordering to be made.
Even the weather-beaten sailor, whose rugged face one would take to be
proof against any fortune, betrays a good deal of sensibility. He has
just returned probably from some long voyage, and one can fancy him to
have come to Doctor's Commons to see whether the relative, whom the
newspapers have informed him is dead, has left him, as he expected, the
means to settle down quietly in a little box at Deptford, Greenwich, or
Camberwell, or some other sailor's paradise.
He steps up to the box on the right hand as directed, pays his
shilling, and gets a ticket, with a direction to the calendar, in
which he is to search for the name of his deceased relative. He must
surely be spelling every name in that page he has turned over--ah,
there it is at last; and now he hurries off, as directed to, with the
calendar, to the person pointed out to him as the Clerk of Searches. A
volume from one of the shelves is laid before him, the place is found,
and there lies the object of his hopes and fears--the great hopeful
or threatening will. Line by line his face begins to grow darker--a
ghastly grin at last appears--he has not been forgotten--there is
a ring perhaps, or five pounds to buy one, or some such trifle; he
closes the book with a bang and a curse, and the sailor hurries back
to his ship and to storm and danger on the deep, deprived of all the
contentment that had so long made him satisfied with his hard lot.
But here is another picture. A lady dressed in a style of the most
gorgeous splendor, whose business is of a more important kind than
a mere search--she is probably an executrix of a will--and is just
leaving the office, when she meets at the door another lady, to whom
she makes a low courtesy, with an expression of decided malice on her
showy countenance. The successful legatee can be seen in her face,
while blank and startled disappointment appears in the other woman's
features.
Such is Doctors' Commons--and Such is Life.
[Illustration]