_L._ I know none but long custom, for I think it was never done. The highest ordinary court in England is the Court of Chancery, wherein the Lord Chancellor, or otherwise Keeper of the Great Seal, is the only judge. This court is very ancient, as appears by Sir Edward Coke, 4 _Inst._ p. 78, where he nameth the Chancellors of King Edgar, King Etheldred, King Edmund, and King Edward the Confessor. His office is given to him, without letters-patent, by the King’s delivery to him of the Great Seal of England; and whosoever hath the keeping of the Great Seal of England, hath the same, and the whole jurisdiction that the Lord Chancellor ever had by the statute of 5 _Eliz._ _c._ 18, wherein it is declared, that such is, and always has been the common-law. And Sir Edward Coke says, he has his name of Chancellor from the highest point of his jurisdiction, viz. a _cancellando_; that is, from cancelling the King’s letters-patent, by drawing strokes through it like a lattice. _P._ Very pretty. It is well enough known that _Cancellarius_ was a great officer under the Roman empire, whereof this island was once a member, and that the office came into this kingdom, either with, or in imitation of the Roman government. Also, it was long after the time of the twelve Cæsars, that this officer was created in the state of Rome. For till after Septimius Severus his time, the emperors did diligently enough take cognizance of all causes and complaints for judgments given in the Courts of the Prætors, which were in Rome the same that the judges of the common-law are here. But by the continual civil wars in after times for the choosing of Emperors, that diligence by little and little ceased. And afterwards, as I have read in a very good author of the Roman civil law, the number of complaints being much increased, and being more than the Emperor could dispatch, he appointed an officer as his clerk, to receive all such petitions; and that this clerk caused a partition to be made in a room convenient, in which partition-wall, at the heighth of a man’s reach, he placed at convenient distances certain bars; so that when a suitor came to deliver his petition to the clerk, who was sometimes absent, he had no more to do but to throw in his petition between those bars, which in Latin are called properly _cancelli_; not that any certain form of those bars, or any bars at all were necessary, for they might have been thrown over, though the whole space had been left open; but because they were _cancelli_, the clerk attendant, and keeping his office there, was called _Cancellarius_. And any court bar may properly enough be called _cancelli_, which does not signify a lattice; for that is but a mere conjecture grounded upon no history nor grammar, but taken up at first, as is likely, by some boy that could find no other word in the dictionary for a lattice, but _cancelli_. The office of this Chancellor was at first but to breviate