y, 1352, unless I am
mistaken in supposing the latter to have been the same person."

CHAPTER XV.

GIFTS AND SALES.

By degrees the public ceased to make presents to the principal judges of
the kingdom; but long after the Chancellor and the three Chiefs had
taken the last offerings of general society, they continued to receive
yearly presents from the subordinate judges, placemen, and barristers
of their respective courts. Lord Cowper deserves honor for being the
holder of the seals who, by refusing to pocket these customary
donations, put an end to a very objectionable system, so far as the
Court of Chancery was concerned.

On being made Lord Keeper, he resolved to depart from the custom of his
predecessors for many generations, who on the first day of each new year
had invariably entertained at breakfast the persons from whom tribute
was looked for. Very droll were these receptions in the old time. The
repast at an end, the guests forthwith disburdened themselves of their
gold--the payers approaching the holder of the seals in order of rank,
and laying on his table purses of money, which the noble payee accepted
with his own hands. Sometimes his lordship was embarrassed by a ceremony
that required him to pick gold from the fingers of men, several of whom
he knew to be in indigent circumstances. In Charles II.'s time it was
observed that the silver-tongued Lord Nottingham on such occasions
always endeavored to hide his confusion under a succession of nervous
smiles and exclamations--"Oh, Tyrant Cuthtom!--Oh, Tyrant Cuthtom!"

It is noteworthy that in relinquishing the benefit of these exactions,
the Lord Keeper feared unfriendly criticism much more than he
anticipated public commendation. In his diary, under date December 30,
Cowper wrote:--"I acquainted my Lord Treasurer with my design to refuse
New Year's Gifts, if he had no objection against it, as spoiling, in
some measure, a place of which he had the conferring. He answered it was
not expected of me, but that I might do as my predecessors had done; but
if I refused, he thought nobody could blame me for it." Anxious about
the consequences of his innovation, the new Lord Keeper gave notice that
on January 1, 1705-6, he would receive no gifts; but notwithstanding
this proclamation, several officers of Chancery and counsellors came to
his house with tribute, and were refused admittance. "New Year's Gifts
turned back," he wrote in his diary at the close of