mind the
public that he acted under parliamentary sanction. Whatever the wearer's
object, England was satisfied that he had a notable purpose, and
persisted in regarding the act as significant of cowardice or of
insolence, of anxiety to keep within the lines of parliamentary
privilege or of readiness to set all law at defiance. At the time and
long after Bradshaw's death, that hat caused an abundance of discussion;
it was a problem which men tried in vain to solve, an enigma that
puzzled clever heads, a riddle that was interpreted as an insult, a
caution, a protest, a menace, a doubt. Oxford honored it with a Latin
inscription, and a place amongst the curiosities of the university, and
its memory is preserved to Englishmen of the present day in the familiar
lines--

"Where England's monarch once uncovered sat,
And Bradshaw bullied in a broad-brimmed hat."

Judges were by no means unanimous with regard to the adoption of wigs,
some of them obstinately refusing to disfigure themselves with false
tresses, and others displaying a foppish delight in the new decoration.
Sir Matthew Hale, who died in 1676, to the last steadily refused to
decorate himself with artificial locks. The likeness of the Chief
Justice that forms the frontispiece to Burnet's memoir of the lawyer,
represents him in his judicial robes, wearing his SS collar, and having
on his head a cap--not the coif-cap, but one of the close-fitting
skull-caps worn by judges in the seventeenth century. Such skull-caps,
it has been observed in a prior page of this work, were worn by
barristers under their wigs, and country gentlemen at home, during the
last century. Into such caps readers have seen Sir Francis North put his
fees. The portrait of Sir Cresswell Levinz (who returned to the bar on
dismissal from the bench in 1686) shows that he wore a full-bottomed wig
whilst he was a judge; whereas Sir Thomas Street, who remained a judge
till the close of James II.'s reign, wore his own hair and a coif-cap.

When Shaftesbury sat in court as Lord High Chancellor of England he wore
a hat, which Roger North is charitable enough to think might have been a
black hat. "His lordship," says the 'Examen,' "regarded censure so
little, that he did not concern himself to use a decent habit as became
a judge of his station; for he sat upon the bench in an ash-colored gown
silver-laced, and full-ribboned pantaloons displayed, without any black
at all in his garb, unless it were