iar story of his fatal attack of cold is altogether true one
cannot well believe, for it seems highly improbable that the Lord
Keeper, in his seventieth year, would have sat down to be shaved near an
open window in the month of February. But though the anecdote may not be
historically exact, it may be accepted as a faithful portraiture of his
more stately and severely courteous humor. "Why did you suffer me to
sleep thus exposed?" asked the Lord Keeper, waking in a fit of shivering
from slumber into which his servant had allowed him to drop, as he sat
to be shaved in a place where there was a sharp current of air. "Sir, I
durst not disturb you," answered the punctilious valet, with a lowly
obeisance. Having eyed him for a few seconds, Sir Nicholas rose and
said, "By your civility I lose my life." Whereupon the Lord Keeper
retired to the bed from which he never rose.

Amongst Elizabethan Judges who aimed at sprightliness on the Bench,
Hatton merits a place; but there is reason to think that the idlers, who
crowded his court to admire the foppishness of his judicial costume, did
not get one really good _mot_ from his lips to every ten bright sayings
that came from the clever barristers practising before him. One of the
best things attributed to him is a pun. In a case concerning the limits
of certain land, the counsel on one side having remarked with
explanatory emphasis, "We lie on this side, my Lord;" and the counsel on
the other side having interposed with equal vehemence, "We lie on this
side, my Lord,"--the Lord Chancellor leaned backwards, and dryly
observed, "If you lie on both sides, whom am I to believe?" In
Elizabethan England the pun was as great a power in the jocularity of
the law-courts as it is at present; the few surviving witticisms that
are supposed to exemplify Egerton's lighter mood on the bench, being for
the most part feeble attempts at punning. For instance, when he was
asked, during his tenure of the Mastership of the Rolls, to _commit_ a
cause, _i.e._, to refer it to a Master in Chancery, he used to answer,
"What has the cause done that it should be committed?" It is also
recorded of him that, when he was asked for his signature to a petition
of which he disapproved, he would tear it in pieces with both hands,
saying, "You want my hand to this? You shall have it; aye, and both my
hands, too."

Of Egerton's student days a story is extant, which has merits,
independent of its truth or want of truth