times, from
hencefort, there shall be but six common atturneys in the said county of
Norfolk, and six common atturneys in the said county of Suffolk, and two
common atturneys in the said city of Norwich, to be atturneys in the
Courts of Record."

FUSTIAN.--(11 Henry VII. c. 27.)

"Now so it is, that divers persons, by subtilty and undue sleights and
means, have deceivably imagined and contrived instruments of iron, with
the which irons, in the most highest and secret places of their houses,
they strike and draw the said irons over the said fustians unshorn; by
means whereof they pluck off both the nap and cotton of the same
fustians, and break commonly both the ground and threeds in sunder, and
after by crafty sleeking, they make the same fustians to appear to the
common people fine, whole, and sound: and also they raise up the cotton
of such fustians, and then take a light candle and set it in the fustian
burning, which sindgeth and burneth away the cotton of the same fustian
from the one end to the other down to the hard threeds, in stead of
shering, and after that put them in colour, and so subtilly dress them
that their false work cannot be espied without it be by workmen sherers
of such fustians, or by the wearers of the same, and so by such
subtilties, whereas fustians made in doublets or put to any other use,
were wont and might endure the space of two years and more, will not
endure now whole by the space of four months scarcely, to the great hurt
of the poor commons and serving men of this realm, to the great damage,
loss, and deceit of the King's true subjects, buyers and wearers of such
fustians," &c.

The history of statute-making is not absolutely divested of pleasantry.
The best tradition connected with it at present arising in the memory is
not to be brought to book, and must be given as a tradition of the time
when George III. was king. Its tenor is, that a bill which proposed, as
the punishment of an offence, to levy a certain pecuniary penalty, one
half thereof to go to his Majesty and the other half to the informer,
was altered in committee, in so far that, when it appeared in the form
of an act, _the punishment_ was changed to whipping and imprisonment,
_the destination_ being left unaltered.

It is wonderful that such mistakes are not of frequent occurrence when
one remembers the hot hasty work often done by committees, and the
complex entanglements of sentences on which they have to work.[48