in his jocular
retorts. A circuit story is told of him in which a convicted felon named
Hog appealed for remission of his sentence on the ground that he was
related to his lordship. "Nay, my friend," replied the judge, "you and I
cannot be kindred except you be hanged, for hog is not bacon until it be
well hung." This retort was not quite so coarse as that attributed to
the Scottish judge, Lord Kames, two centuries later, who on sentencing
to death a man with whom he had often played chess and very frequently
been beaten, added after the solemn words of doom, "And noo, Matthew,
ye'll admit that's checkmate for you."

To Lord Chancellor Hatton, also an Elizabethan judge who aimed at
sprightliness on the Bench, a clever _mot_ is attributed. The case
before him was one concerning the limits of certain land. The counsel
having remarked with emphasis, 'We lie on this side, my lord,' and the
opposing counsel with equal vehemence having interposed, 'And we lie on
this side, my lord'--the Lord Chancellor dryly observed, "If you lie on
both sides, whom am I to believe?" It would seem that punning was as
great a power in the Law Courts of that time as it is at the present
day. When Egerton as Master of the Rolls was asked to commit a
cause--refer it to a Master in Chancery--he would reply, "What has the
cause done that it should be committed?"

Many witticisms of Westminster Hall, attributed to barristers of the
Georgian and Victorian periods, are traceable to a much earlier date.
There is the story of Serjeant Wilkins, whose excuse for drinking a pot
of stout at mid-day was, that he wanted to fuddle his brain down to the
intellectual standard of a British jury. Two hundred and fifty years
earlier, Sir John Millicent, a Cambridgeshire judge, on being asked how
he got on with his brother judges replied, "Why, i' faithe, I have no
way but to drink myself down to the capacity of the Bench." And this
merry thought has also been attributed to one eminent barrister who
became Lord Chancellor, and to more than one Scottish advocate who
ultimately attained to a seat on the Bench.

And to various celebrities of the later Georgian period has been
attributed Lord Shaftesbury's reply to Charles II. When the king
exclaimed, "Shaftesbury, you are the most profligate man in my
dominions," the Chancellor answered somewhat recklessly, "Of a subject,
sir, I believe I am."

Bullying witnesses is an old practice of the Bar, but for instances of