isputable evidence of history. The greed of the clergy for tithes
and dues is not more widely proverbial than the doctor's thirst for
fees, or the advocate's readiness to support injustice for the sake of
gain. Of Guyllyam of Horseley, physician to Charles VI. of France,
Froissart says, "All his dayes he was one of the greatest nygardes that
ever was;" and the chronicler adds, "With this rodde lightly all
physicians are beaten." In his address to the sergeants who were called
soon after his elevation to the Marble Chair, the Lord Keeper Puckering,
directing attention to the grasping habits which too frequently
disgraced the leaders of the bar, observed: "I am to exhort you also not
to embrace multitude of causes, or to undertake more places of hearing
causes than you are well able to consider of or perform, lest thereby
you either disappoint your clients when their causes be heard, or come
unprovided, or depart when their causes be in hearing. For it is all
one not to come, as either to come unprovided, or depart before it be
ended." Notwithstanding Lingard's able defence of the Cardinal, scholars
are still generally of opinion that Beaufort--the Chancellor who lent
money on the king's crown, the bishop who sold the Pope's soldiers for a
thousand marks--is a notable instance of the union of legal covetousness
and ecclesiastical greed.

The many causes which affect the value of money in different ages create
infinite perplexity for the antiquarian who wishes to estimate the
prosperity of the bar in past times; but the few disjointed data, that
can be gathered from old records, create an impression that in the
fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the ordinary fees of
eminent counsel were by no means exorbitant, although fortunate
practitioners could make large incomes.

Dugdale's 'Baronage' describes with delightful quaintness William de
Beauchamp's interview with his lawyers when that noble (on the death of
John Hastings, Earl of Pembroke, _temp._ Richard II., without issue),
claimed the earl's estates under an entail, in opposition to Edward
Hastings, the earl's heir-male of the half-blood. "Beauchamp," says
Dugdale, "invited his learned counsel to his house in Paternoster Row,
in the City of London; amongst whom were Robert Charlton (then a judge),
William Pinchbek, William Branchesley, and John Catesby (all learned
lawyers); and after dinner, coming out of his chapel, in an angry mood,
threw to each of them