[13] This libel action was based upon the posting by the defendant of two large boards (on his premises at the corner of Oxford Street and Holles Street) bearing respectively the words, “16 and 17, Holles Street, Lord Howard de Walden’s Monument of Iniquity,” and, “In the Holles Street Drama, the young Baron is discovered behind the curtain, pulling the wires for the imprisonment of his old tenant.” The defendant admitted that he had nothing against the plaintiff personally; he said that he wished to draw attention to his grievance against the managers of the Howard de Walden Estate. In the result, judgment was entered for the plaintiff. [14] Dr. W. Blake Odgers, K.C., is the author of the standard work on libel and slander. [15] An insult to counsel may be punished as a contempt. [16] See Appendix C. [17] It may be noted that five of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence were Middle Temple barristers: Thomas McKean, Edward Rutledge, Thomas Lynch, Thomas Heyward and Arthur Midleton. With the exception of the first-named, all of these gentlemen were Representatives of South Carolina. Thomas McKean, by the way, wrote the Constitution of Delaware in a night, while Edward Rutledge drafted the greater part of the Constitution of South Carolina. The latter was chairman of the Committee of Five who drafted the first Constitution of the United States. [18] “Edward Frederic Mylius is fortunate, living as he does in times when justice is tempered by extreme leniency. In former times the Kings of England had no lack of power in dealing with those who slandered Royalty. To cite only one instance, King Henry the First had been lampooned by a former friend, Luke de Barre, a troubadour knight. The unfortunate man was condemned to lose his eyes on the scaffold by the hands of the public executioner. “Many intercessions were made in his favour, but the King replied:--‘No, for this man, being a wit, a bard, and a minstrel forsooth, hath composed many ribald songs against me and sung them to raise the horse-laugh of mine enemies. Now it hath pleased God to deliver him into my hands, punished he shall be to deter others from the like petulance.’ It is not quite clear whether the sentence was carried out as arranged. Some chroniclers assert that De Barre’s eyes were in fact put out, and that he died of the torture, while others say that he cheated the executioner by dashing out his brains against the stone wall of his prison. In either case the incident shows that to libel Royalty in the twelfth century was a perilous venture.”