Walking without any definite object through St. Paul’s Churchyard, a
little while ago, we happened to turn down a street entitled
‘Paul’s-chain,’ and keeping straight forward for a few hundred yards,
found ourself, as a natural consequence, in Doctors’ Commons. Now
Doctors’ Commons being familiar by name to everybody, as the place
where they grant marriage-licenses to love-sick couples, and divorces
to unfaithful ones; register the wills of people who have any property
to leave, and punish hasty gentlemen who call ladies by unpleasant
names, we no sooner discovered that we were really within its
precincts, than we felt a laudable desire to become better acquainted
therewith; and as the first object of our curiosity was the Court,
whose decrees can even unloose the bonds of matrimony, we procured a
direction to it; and bent our steps thither without delay.
Crossing a quiet and shady court-yard, paved with stone, and frowned
upon by old red brick houses, on the doors of which were painted the
names of sundry learned civilians, we paused before a small,
green-baized, brass-headed-nailed door, which yielding to our gentle
push, at once admitted us into an old quaint-looking apartment, with
sunken windows, and black carved wainscoting, at the upper end of
which, seated on a raised platform, of semicircular shape, were about a
dozen solemn-looking gentlemen, in crimson gowns and wigs.
At a more elevated desk in the centre, sat a very fat and red-faced
gentleman, in tortoise-shell spectacles, whose dignified appearance
announced the judge; and round a long green-baized table below,
something like a billiard-table without the cushions and pockets, were
a number of very self-important-looking personages, in stiff
neckcloths, and black gowns with white fur collars, whom we at once set
down as proctors. At the lower end of the billiard-table was an
individual in an arm-chair, and a wig, whom we afterwards discovered to
be the registrar; and seated behind a little desk, near the door, were
a respectable-looking man in black, of about twenty-stone weight or
thereabouts, and a fat-faced, smirking, civil-looking body, in a black
gown, black kid gloves, knee shorts, and silks, with a shirt-frill in
his bosom, curls on his head, and a silver staff in his hand, whom we
had no difficulty in recognising as the officer of the Court. The
latter, indeed, speedily set our mind at rest upon this point, for,
advancing to our elbow, and opening a conversation forthwith, he had
communicated to us, in less than five minutes, that he was the
apparitor, and the other the court-keeper; that this was the Arches
Court, and therefore the counsel wore red gowns, and the proctors fur
collars; and that when the other Courts sat there, they didn’t wear red
gowns or fur collars either; with many other scraps of intelligence
equally interesting. Besides these two officers, there was a little
thin old man, with long grizzly hair, crouched in a remote corner,
whose duty, our communicative friend informed us, was to ring a large
hand-bell when the Court opened in the morning, and who, for aught his
appearance betokened to the contrary, might have been similarly
employed for the last two centuries at least.
The red-faced gentleman in the tortoise-shell spectacles had got all
the talk to himself just then, and very well he was doing it, too, only
he spoke very fast, but that was habit; and rather thick, but that was
good living. So we had plenty of time to look about us. There was one
individual who amused us mightily. This was one of the bewigged
gentlemen in the red robes, who was straddling before the fire in the
centre of the Court, in the attitude of the brazen Colossus, to the
complete exclusion of everybody else. He had gathered up his robe
behind, in much the same manner as a slovenly woman would her
petticoats on a very dirty day, in order that he might feel the full
warmth of the fire. His wig was put on all awry, with the tail
straggling about his neck; his scanty grey trousers and short black
gaiters, made in the worst possible style, imported an additional
inelegant appearance to his uncouth person; and his limp,
badly-starched shirt-collar almost obscured his eyes. We shall never be
able to claim any credit as a physiognomist again, for, after a careful
scrutiny of this gentleman’s countenance, we had come to the conclusion
that it bespoke nothing but conceit and silliness, when our friend with
the silver staff whispered in our ear that he was no other than a
doctor of civil law, and heaven knows what besides. So of course we
were mistaken, and he must be a very talented man. He conceals it so
well though—perhaps with the merciful view of not astonishing ordinary
people too much—that you would suppose him to be one of the stupidest
dogs alive.
The gentleman in the spectacles having concluded his judgment, and a
few minutes having been allowed to elapse, to afford time for the buzz
of the Court to subside, the registrar called on the next cause, which
was ‘the office of the Judge promoted by Bumple against Sludberry.’ A
general movement was visible in the Court, at this announcement, and
the obliging functionary with silver staff whispered us that ‘there
would be some fun now, for this was a brawling case.’
We were not rendered much the wiser by this piece of information, till
we found by the opening speech of the counsel for the promoter, that,
under a half-obsolete statute of one of the Edwards, the court was
empowered to visit with the penalty of excommunication, any person who
should be proved guilty of the crime of ‘brawling,’ or ‘smiting,’ in
any church, or vestry adjoining thereto; and it appeared, by some
eight-and-twenty affidavits, which were duly referred to, that on a
certain night, at a certain vestry-meeting, in a certain parish
particularly set forth, Thomas Sludberry, the party appeared against in
that suit, had made use of, and applied to Michael Bumple, the
promoter, the words ‘You be blowed;’ and that, on the said Michael
Bumple and others remonstrating with the said Thomas Sludberry, on the
impropriety of his conduct, the said Thomas Sludberry repeated the
aforesaid expression, ‘You be blowed;’ and furthermore desired and
requested to know, whether the said Michael Bumple ‘wanted anything for
himself;’ adding, ‘that if the said Michael Bumple did want anything
for himself, he, the said Thomas Sludberry, was the man to give it
him;’ at the same time making use of other heinous and sinful
expressions, all of which, Bumple submitted, came within the intent and
meaning of the Act; and therefore he, for the soul’s health and
chastening of Sludberry, prayed for sentence of excommunication against
him accordingly.
Upon these facts a long argument was entered into, on both sides, to
the great edification of a number of persons interested in the
parochial squabbles, who crowded the court; and when some very long and
grave speeches had been made _pro_ and _con_, the red-faced gentleman
in the tortoise-shell spectacles took a review of the case, which
occupied half an hour more, and then pronounced upon Sludberry the
awful sentence of excommunication for a fortnight, and payment of the
costs of the suit. Upon this, Sludberry, who was a little, red-faced,
sly-looking, ginger-beer seller, addressed the court, and said, if
they’d be good enough to take off the costs, and excommunicate him for
the term of his natural life instead, it would be much more convenient
to him, for he never went to church at all. To this appeal the
gentleman in the spectacles made no other reply than a look of virtuous
indignation; and Sludberry and his friends retired. As the man with the
silver staff informed us that the court was on the point of rising, we
retired too—pondering, as we walked away, upon the beautiful spirit of
these ancient ecclesiastical laws, the kind and neighbourly feelings
they are calculated to awaken, and the strong attachment to religious
institutions which they cannot fail to engender.
We were so lost in these meditations, that we had turned into the
street, and run up against a door-post, before we recollected where we
were walking. On looking upwards to see what house we had stumbled
upon, the words ‘Prerogative-Office,’ written in large characters, met
our eye; and as we were in a sight-seeing humour and the place was a
public one, we walked in.
The room into which we walked, was a long, busy-looking place,
partitioned off, on either side, into a variety of little boxes, in
which a few clerks were engaged in copying or examining deeds. Down the
centre of the room were several desks nearly breast high, at each of
which, three or four people were standing, poring over large volumes.
As we knew that they were searching for wills, they attracted our
attention at once.
It was curious to contrast the lazy indifference of the attorneys’
clerks who were making a search for some legal purpose, with the air of
earnestness and interest which distinguished the strangers to the
place, who were looking up the will of some deceased relative; the
former pausing every now and then with an impatient yawn, or raising
their heads to look at the people who passed up and down the room; the
latter stooping over the book, and running down column after column of
names in the deepest abstraction.
There was one little dirty-faced man in a blue apron, who after a whole
morning’s search, extending some fifty years back, had just found the
will to which he wished to refer, which one of the officials was
reading to him in a low hurried voice from a thick vellum book with
large clasps. It was perfectly evident that the more the clerk read,
the less the man with the blue apron understood about the matter. When
the volume was first brought down, he took off his hat, smoothed down
his hair, smiled with great self-satisfaction, and looked up in the
reader’s face with the air of a man who had made up his mind to
recollect every word he heard. The first two or three lines were
intelligible enough; but then the technicalities began, and the little
man began to look rather dubious. Then came a whole string of
complicated trusts, and he was regularly at sea. As the reader
proceeded, it was quite apparent that it was a hopeless case, and the
little man, with his mouth open and his eyes fixed upon his face,
looked on with an expression of bewilderment and perplexity
irresistibly ludicrous.
A little further on, a hard-featured old man with a deeply-wrinkled
face, was intently perusing a lengthy will with the aid of a pair of
horn spectacles: occasionally pausing from his task, and slily noting
down some brief memorandum of the bequests contained in it. Every
wrinkle about his toothless mouth, and sharp keen eyes, told of avarice
and cunning. His clothes were nearly threadbare, but it was easy to see
that he wore them from choice and not from necessity; all his looks and
gestures down to the very small pinches of snuff which he every now and
then took from a little tin canister, told of wealth, and penury, and
avarice.
As he leisurely closed the register, put up his spectacles, and folded
his scraps of paper in a large leathern pocket-book, we thought what a
nice hard bargain he was driving with some poverty-stricken legatee,
who, tired of waiting year after year, until some life-interest should
fall in, was selling his chance, just as it began to grow most
valuable, for a twelfth part of its worth. It was a good speculation—a
very safe one. The old man stowed his pocket-book carefully in the
breast of his great-coat, and hobbled away with a leer of triumph. That
will had made him ten years younger at the lowest computation.
Having commenced our observations, we should certainly have extended
them to another dozen of people at least, had not a sudden shutting up
and putting away of the worm-eaten old books, warned us that the time
for closing the office had arrived; and thus deprived us of a pleasure,
and spared our readers an infliction.
We naturally fell into a train of reflection as we walked homewards,
upon the curious old records of likings and dislikings; of jealousies
and revenges; of affection defying the power of death, and hatred
pursued beyond the grave, which these depositories contain; silent but
striking tokens, some of them, of excellence of heart, and nobleness of
soul; melancholy examples, others, of the worst passions of human
nature. How many men as they lay speechless and helpless on the bed of
death, would have given worlds but for the strength and power to blot
out the silent evidence of animosity and bitterness, which now stands
registered against them in Doctors’ Commons!