ttendants'
swords and flourished it over his head, turning his face towards Martin,
and then turning away down the water steps of the Temple, threw himself
into a boat. For this outrageous act he was immediately disbarred and
expelled the house, and deprived for ever of all authority to speak or
consult in law. After nearly four years' retirement he petitioned the
benchers for his restoration, which they accorded on October 30, 1601,
upon his making a public submission in the hall, and asking pardon of
Mr. Martin, who at once generously forgave him." Both the principals in
this scandalous outbreak and subsequent reconciliation became honorably
known in their profession--Martin rising to be a Recorder of London and
a member of parliament; and Davies acting as Attorney General of Ireland
and Speaker of the Irish parliament, and achieving such a status in
politics and law that he was appointed to the Chief Justiceship of
England, an office, however, which sudden death prevented him from
filling.

Nor must it be imagined that gay manners and lax morals were less
general amongst the veterans than amongst the youngsters of the bar.
Judges and sergeants were quite as prone to levity and godless riot as
students about to be called; and such was the freedom permitted by
professional decorum that leading advocates habitually met their clients
in taverns, and having talked themselves dry at the bars of Westminster
Hall, drank themselves speechless at the bars of Strand taverns--ere
they reeled again into their chambers. The same habits of uproarious
self-indulgence were in vogue with the benchers of the inns, and the
Doctors of Doctors' Commons. Hale's austerity was the exceptional
demeanor of a pious man protesting against the wickedness of an impious
age. Had it not been for the shortness of time that had elapsed since
Algernon Sidney's trial and sentence, John Evelyn would have seen no
reason for censuring the loud hilarity and drunkenness of Jeffreys and
Withings at Mrs. Castle's wedding.

In some respects, however, the social atmosphere of the inns was far
more wholesome in the days of Elizabeth, and for the hundred years
following her reign, than it is at present. Sprung in most cases from
legal families, the students who were educated to be working members of
the bar lived much more under the observation of their older relations,
and in closer intercourse with their mothers and sisters than they do at
present. Now-a-days