The High Court of Admiralty held its sittings at Doctors’ Commons, in both the Instance Court and the Prize Court, practically throughout the legal year, and so did the Ecclesiastical Courts. The Bankruptcy Court was in Basinghall Street; the Insolvent Debtors’ Court in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, with an entrance from Portugal Street. There were then no County Courts. The ancient Hundred and County Courts, with their primitive procedure, had long been disused. Certain ‘Courts of Conscience’ or ‘Courts of Request’ had, it is true, been established for particular localities at the express request of the inhabitants, and these were still being constituted in some of the large towns. Then in London there were local Courts with a peculiar jurisdiction, such as the City Courts, which would fill a chapter by themselves, and of which it is enough to name the Lord Mayor’s Court, the Sheriff’s Courts of Poultry Compter and Giltspur Street Compter, both afterwards merged into the City of London Court. In Great Scotland Yard there was the Palace Court, with the Knight Marshal for judge, which anciently had exclusive jurisdiction in matters connected with the Royal Household, but now was a minor court of record for actions for debt within Westminster and twelve miles round. The Court had its own prison in High Street, Southwark--the Marshalsea of ‘Little Dorrit,’ not the old historic Marshalsea, which was demolished at the beginning of the century--that stood farther north, occupying the site of No. 119 High Street--but a new Marshalsea, built in 1811 on the site of the old White Lyon, once a hostelry, but since the end of the sixteenth century itself a prison. The Palace Court came to a sudden end in 1849, owing to ‘Jacob Omnium’ being sued in it. Thackeray tells the story in ‘Jacob Homnium’s Hoss:’-- Pore Jacob went to Court, A Counsel for to fix. And choose a barrister out of the four, And an attorney of the six. And there he sor these men of lor, And watched them at their tricks. * * * * * O a weary day was that For Jacob to go through; The debt was two seventeen (Which he no mor owed than you), And then there was the plaintives costs, Eleven pound six and two. And then there was his own, Which the lawyers they did fix At the wery moderit figgar Of ten pound one and six. Now Evins bless the Pallis Court, And all its bold ver-dicks!