ave
L17,000 for the Chiefship of the Common Pleas. If judges needed gifts
before the days when vacant seats were put up to auction, of course they
stood all the more in need of them when they bought their promotions
with such large sums. It is not wonderful that the wearers of ermine
repaid themselves by venal practices. The sale of judicial offices was
naturally followed by the sale of judicial decisions. The judges having
submitted to the extortions of the king, the public had to endure the
extortions of the judges. Corruption on the bench produced corruption at
the bar. Counsel bought the attention and compliance of 'the court,' and
in some cases sold their influence with shameless rascality. They would
take fees to speak from one side in a cause and fees to be silent from
the other side--selling their own clients as coolly as judges sold the
suitors of their courts. Sympathizing with the public, and stung by
personal experience of legal dishonesty, the clergy sometimes denounced
from the pulpit the extortions of corrupt judges and unprincipled
barristers. The assize sermons of Charles I.'s reign were frequently
seasoned with such animadversions. At Thetford Assizes, March, 1630,
the Rev. Mr. Ramsay, in the assize-sermon, spoke indignantly of judges
who "favored causes," and of "counsellors who took fees to be silent."
In the summer of 1631, at the Bury Assizes, "one Mr. Scott made a sore
sermon in discovery of corruption in judges and others." At Norwich, the
same authority, viz., 'Sir John Rous's Diary,' informs us--"Mr. Greene
was more plaine, insomuch that Judge Harvey, in his charge, broke out
thus: 'It seems by the sermon that we are corrupt, but we know that we
can use conscience in our places as well as the best clergieman of
all.'"

In his 'Life and Death of Sir Matthew Hale,' Bishop Burnet tells a good
story of the Chief's conduct with regard to a customary gift. "It is
also a custom," says the biographer, "for the Marshall of the King's
Bench to present the judges of that court with a piece of plate for a
New Year's Gift, that for the Chief Justice being larger than the rest.
This he intended to have refused, but the other judges told him it
belonged to his office, and the refusing it would be a prejudice to his
successors; so he was persuaded to take it, but he sent word to the
marshall, that instead of plate he should bring him the value of it in
money, and when he received it, he immediately sent it to