_Hats and Bonnets._
On the 7th of November, 1615, (Michaelmas Term, 13 Jac. I.) when Ann
Turner, a physician’s widow, was indicted at the bar of the court of
king’s bench, before sir Edward Coke (as an accessary before the fact)
for the murder of sir Thomas Overbury, the learned judge observing she
had a hat on, told her “to put it off; that a woman might be covered in
a church, but not when arraigned in a court of justice.” Whereupon she
said, she thought it singular that she might be covered in the house of
God, and not in the judicature of man. Sir Edward told her, “that from
God no secrets were hid; but that it was not so with man, whose
intellects were weak; therefore, in the investigation of truth, and
especially when the life of a fellow creature is put in jeopardy, on the
charge of having deprived another of life, the court should see all
obstacles removed; and, because the countenance is often an index to the
mind, all covering should be taken away from the face.” Thereupon the
chief justice ordered her hat to be taken off, and she covered her hair
with her handkerchief.
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On Sunday, the 7th of November, 1824, being the hundredth anniversary of
the death of the celebrated John Eyrle, Esq., Pope’s “_Man of Ross_,”
the new society of ringers in that town rung a “muffled peal” on the
occasion.--_Hereford Paper._[380]
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