"A woman having settlement
Married a man with none,
The question was, he being dead,
If what she had was gone.
"Quoth Sir John Pratt, 'The settlement
Suspended did remain,
Living the husband; but him dead
It doth revive again.'
(_Chorus of Puisne Judges._)
"Living the husband; but him dead
It doth revive again."
Chief Justice Pratt's decision on this point having been reversed by his
successor, Chief Justice Ryder's judgment was thus reported:
"A woman having a settlement,
Married a man with none,
He flies and leaves her destitute;
What then is to be done?
"Quoth Ryder, the Chief Justice,
'In spite of Sir John Pratt,
You'll send her to the parish
In which she was a brat.
"'_Suspension of a settlement_
Is not to be maintained;
That which she had by birth subsists
Until another's gained.'
(_Chorus of Puisne Judges._)
"That which she had by birth subsists
Until another's gained."
In the early months of his married life, whilst playing the part of an
Oxford don, Lord Eldon was required to decide in an important action
brought by two undergraduates against the cook of University College.
The plaintiffs declared that the cook had "sent to their rooms an
apple-pie _that could not be eaten_." The defendant pleaded that he had
a remarkably fine fillet of veal in the kitchen. Having set aside this
plea on grounds obvious to the legal mind, and not otherwise then
manifest to unlearned laymen, Mr. John Scott ordered the apple-pie to be
brought in court; but the messenger, dispatched to do the judge's
bidding, returned with the astounding intelligence that during the
progress of the litigation a party of undergraduates had actually
devoured the pie--fruit and crust. Nothing but the pan was left.
Judgment: "The charge here is, that the cook has sent up an apple-pie
that cannot be eaten. Now that cannot be said to have been uneatable
which has been eaten; and as this apple-pie has been eaten, it was
eatable. Let the cook be absolved."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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