The judges in the Court of Husting were the Mayor and Sheriffs, the Recorder sitting as assessor for the examination of witnesses and for preliminary judgment. As the Court could not be held in the absence of the Mayor, and great inconvenience was sometimes so caused, an Act was passed in 1584 providing that, if the Lord Mayor was prevented from attending by sickness, any Alderman who had passed the Chair might act for him. But as early as the thirteenth century it had become a custom for any Aldermen to be present in the Husting and to act as Judges. It was the custom for the officer who summoned the Aldermen to the Court to show his respect for them and for the Court by riding a horse valued at a hundred shillings at least. The Town Clerk was Registrar. The Counsel employed in the Court were the four City pleaders; the attorneys were those of the Mayor’s clerk. The reader is referred to Dr. Sharpe’s pages for details of the Common Pleas and Writs used in this Court. Aliens could be admitted to the freedom of the City only by this Court. Disputes as to building were decided by this Court. It was even a place for public penance. Perjury was punished by imprisonment until the next Husting, when the offender was placed upon a high stool before all the people while his crime was read aloud. After this, he was set at liberty. In this Court deeds and wills were enrolled. In this Court land was conveyed by a method “described by Blackstone as a kind of real contract, whereby the bargainer for some pecuniary consideration bargains and sells, that is, contracts to convey the land to the bargainee, and becomes by such bargain a trustee for, or seised to the use of the bargainee, and then the Statute of Uses completes the purchase; in other words the bargain first vests the use, and then the statute vests the possession.” (_Calendar of Wills_, i. 23.) Probate of Will naturally belonged to the Court which enrolled Wills. The Court undertook the guardianship of orphans. The citizen of London had the right of devising part only of his property; a certain part of it going, with or without his wish, to his widow and children. This restriction was only removed by the 2nd Act of George the First. The widow, for instance, by the custom of the City, was entitled to one-third of his estate, the children to another third, the residue was at the free disposal of the testator and was known as the legatory or the dead man’s portion. Among the wills enrolled in the Court of Husting, Sharpe mentions the following:— “1. John de Kyrkeby, Bishop of Ely, who endowed his see with houses, vines, and gardens situate at Holborn, whose gift is remembered at the present day by the names of Ely Place, Vine Street, and Kirby Street, and whose gardens, part and parcel of the gift, call to mind the well-known lines put into the mouth of the Duke of Gloucester by Shakespeare (_Richard III._, Act iii. sc. 4):—