numerous auditors, on his lamentable want of style, tact, and
gentlemanlike bearing. It is said that, like Coke and Holt under similar
circumstances, Sir William preferred the quietude of his chambers to the
society of an unruly wife, and that in the cellar of his Inn he sought
compensation for the indignities and sufferings which he endured at
home. Fifty years since the crusted port of the Middle Temple could
soothe the heart at night, without paining the head in the morning.
PART III.
MONEY.
CHAPTER XII.
FEES TO COUNSEL.
From time immemorial popular satire has been equally ready to fix the
shame of avarice upon Divinity Physic, and Law; and it cannot be denied
that in this matter the sarcasms of the multitude are often sustained by
the indisputable evidence of history. The greed of the clergy for tithes
and dues is not more widely proverbial than the doctor's thirst for
fees, or the advocate's readiness to support injustice for the sake of
gain. Of Guyllyam of Horseley, physician to Charles VI. of France,
Froissart says, "All his dayes he was one of the greatest nygardes that
ever was;" and the chronicler adds, "With this rodde lightly all
physicians are beaten." In his address to the sergeants who were called
soon after his elevation to the Marble Chair, the Lord Keeper Puckering,
directing attention to the grasping habits which too frequently
disgraced the leaders of the bar, observed: "I am to exhort you also not
to embrace multitude of causes, or to undertake more places of hearing
causes than you are well able to consider of or perform, lest thereby
you either disappoint your clients when their causes be heard, or come
unprovided, or depart when their causes be in hearing. For it is all
one not to come, as either to come unprovided, or depart before it be
ended." Notwithstanding Lingard's able defence of the Cardinal, scholars
are still generally of opinion that Beaufort--the Chancellor who lent
money on the king's crown, the bishop who sold the Pope's soldiers for a
thousand marks--is a notable instance of the union of legal covetousness
and ecclesiastical greed.
The many causes which affect the value of money in different ages create
infinite perplexity for the antiquarian who wishes to estimate the
prosperity of the bar in past times; but the few disjointed data, that
can be gathered from old records, create an impression that in the
fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the ordinary fees of
eminent counsel were by no means exorbitant, although fortunate
practitioners could make large incomes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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