From the days of Wriothesley, who may be regarded as the most conspicuous and unquestionable instance of judicial incompetency in the annals of English lawyers, the multitudes have always delighted in stories that illustrate the ignorance and incapacity of men who are presumed to possess, by right of their office, an extraordinary share of knowledge and wisdom. What law-student does not rub his hands as he reads of Lord St. John's trouble during term whilst he held the seals, and of the impatience with which he looked forward to the long vacation, when he would not be required to look wise and speak authoritatively about matters concerning which he was totally ignorant. Delicious are the stories of Francis Bacon's clerical successor, who endeavored to get up a _quantum suff_. of Chancery law by falling on his knees and asking enlightenment of Heaven. Gloomily comical are the anecdotes of Chief Justice Fleming, whose most famous and disastrous blunder was his judgment in Bates's case. Great fun may be gathered from the tales that exemplify the ignorance of law which characterized the military, and also the non-military laymen, who helped to take care of the seals during the civil troubles of the seventeenth century. Capital is Roger North's picture of Bob Wright's ludicrous shiftlessness whenever the influence of his powerful relations brought the loquacious, handsome, plausible fellow a piece of business. "He was a comely fellow," says Roger North, speaking of the Chief Justice Wright's earlier days, "airy and flourishing both in his habits and way of living; and his relation Wren (being a powerful man in those parts) set him in credit with the country; but withal, he was so poor a lawyer that he used to bring such cases as came to him to his friend Mr. North, and he wrote the opinion on the paper, and the lawyer copied it, and signed under the case as if it had been his own. It ran so low with him that when Mr. North was at London he sent up his cases to him, and had opinions returned by the post; and, in the meantime he put off his clients on pretence of taking the matter into serious consideration." Perhaps some readers of this page can point to juniors of the present date whose professional incapacity closely resembles the incompetence of this gay young barrister of Charles II.'s time. Laughter again rises at the thought of Lord Chancellor Bathurst and the judicial perplexities and blunders which caused Sir Charles Williams to class him with those who "Were cursed and stigmatized by power, And rais'd to be expos'd."