It has been humorously, though not quite accurately, observed that the Bar ‘went into mourning for Queen Anne, and has remained in mourning ever since.’ The sombre robes now worn by the English Bar may well be thought to symbolize the dignity of the law and the gravity of the profession, as the ‘spotless ermine’ typifies the integrity and independence of the Judges. But, as was the case with the hoods and gowns of other degrees in other Universities, or the black _felze_ of a gondola at Venice, brilliancy and splendour of colour was the original note, and dulness was the result of restriction. The robes which the Serjeants wore varied from time to time, and with different occasions. In the seventeenth century Dugdale observes that their robes still in some degree resembled ‘those of the Justices of either Bench, and were of murrey, black furred with white, and scarlet. But the robe which they usually wear at their Creation only is of murrey and mouse-colour,’ with a suitable hood and the coif. Arrangements were made about 1635 between the Judges and Serjeants, in accordance with which gowns of black cloth were to be worn for term-time; violet cloth for Court or holidays; scarlet in procession to St. Paul’s, or when dining in state at the Guildhall or attending the Sovereign’s presence at the House of Lords, and black silk for trials at _Nisi Prius_. But the fashions and colours were always changing. The violet gown, which superseded the mustard and murrey worn in Court during term-time, gave occasion for Jekyll’s witty rhyme, when a dull Serjeant was wearying the Court with a prosy argument: ‘The Serjeants are a grateful race; Their dress and language show it; Their purple robes from Tyre we trace; Their arguments go to it.’ It was the militant Chief Justice Willes who, ten years after the ’45, first endeavoured to secure the abolition of the exclusive right of the Serjeants to practise in the Court of Common Pleas. But their hour had not yet come. In 1834 a mandate was obtained from William IV. abolishing the privilege of the Serjeants, but this was set aside by the Privy Council as being defective in form. At length doom fell upon the old Order of the Coif, in the shape of an Act of Parliament, 1846, which threw open the Common Pleas to all counsel indiscriminately. The last Queen’s Serjeants to be appointed were Serjeants Byles, Channel, Shee, and Wrangham, in 1857. By the Judicature Act of 1873, which consolidated the three Courts of Law at Westminster (_See_ Chapter I.) into the High Court of Justice, the Judges were no longer required to receive the coif on their nomination to the bench. The knell of the Serjeants’ doom had now rung. Five years later their Inn in Chancery Lane and the Brotherhood were dissolved.