even to tell us what he must have seen or heard. As it is, we are left to the statutes of the Inn, where, in sententious terms, the students' offences are recited and penalties enaoted. In Pagitt's first year it becomes necessary to provide "that no gentleman shall come into the hall or place of public prayer with hats, cloaks, boots, spurs, swords or daggers, or shall wear long hair." A catalogue is made of those "chief stirrers of mutiny" who had resolved to continue these practices; but, as you may guess, Justinian's name is not to be looked for there. The following year it is decreed that no dicing shall be used in time of divine service; that no one shall presume to take violently from the steward, butler, cook, or any other servant, any wine, tobacco, or provisions, or to hinder and interrupt the service of the house. Moreover, the gate in Essex Court leading towards the tavern shall be barred up till further order. Of individual misdemeanours there is no end. It is recorded, to the prejudice of one Richard Devey, that a young woman came to his door and delivered a bastard child, whereupon Richard ran away, and was not heard of again, and the aged Masters, to save the reputation of the Inn, were left to suckle the child. Not long after this, Pagitt's neighbour Freeman was expelled "for calling one Wm. Peele, a student of brushes [presumably an artist], into his chambers, forcing him on pain of instant death to utter pro fane speeches and execrations against his will and conscience," and threatening, when it was over, "that he should be pumped and out in pieces if he dared to complain." "un These disorders, or sufferable enormities" as they were termed, came to a head about Christmastide in Pagitt's fourth year, and led to the following manifesto from the Bench: "Whereas the licentious expensiveness of some gentlemen excells all reasonable limits and begets clamour against the Society, and other disorders and abuses in later years have more and more crept in and have grown to such a height that the misgovernment of these times is become a public scandal whereof the judges and State take notice and press hard for reformation. Now the Masters of the Bench for vindicating the ancient honour of the Society and for removing reproach from their government have ordered that no Christmas shall be held this year within the House but that the company shall dissolve. Meanwhile every gentleman may dispose of himself at his own discretion and liberty." A vain display of authority as the sequel shows: "For notwithstanding the order aforesaid, divers gentlemen with their swords drawn in a contemptuous and riotous manner assembled in St. Thomas' Eve, broke open by violence the doors of the hall, butlery and kitchen," and proceeded to revel and drink, and dice. An officer of the bench who came in with a seasonable Antonius, 'If Antonius have desire for peace and goodwill a desier to loose his life he may among men was carried out finde many other meanes beside and placed in the common this,' and another answer I stocks. Where do you think could make were this, 'I will was Pagitt on that night of not venture an old angell to nights? Mending his hose a crackt groath.' With this perhaps, or cogitating upon resolution in his heart and with contingent remainders, or more cotton-wool stuffed in his ears, likely wondering what he should this seventeenth-century pacifist do if the rioters came his way. continues his studies, and offers He writes down here in the when the uproar has subsided, book his resolve if he be to serve on the standing comchallenged to a duel, "I will mittee appointed by the Bench reply in the words which a ne quid respublica societatis wise man used to the braggart detrimenti caperet." VII. This is the place perhaps to review Pagitt's correspondence or such of it as figures in his book. As one might expect, the letters are most elaborate affairs, composed with infinite pains from two-and-twenty "rules of the epistolary art," with preliminary drafts and corrections without end. But for all that they contain much interesting matter. The first is written to his cousin, James Harrington, on January 28, 1633, when he was attached to the Middle Temple but not in residence as yet. After conveying his warmest affection to "Mrs Anne,' regulator of his cousin's household, who had a pleasant custom of keeping him in pastries and plum-cake, he adds: “Mr Prynne of Lincoln Inne hathe lately sett forth a booke intitled Histrio-Mastrix, or the 1 Prynne boasts in his preface that he has cited no less than 55 Synods and Councils, 70 Fathers and Christian writers before 1200, 150 foreign and domestic, Protestant and Popish authors since, and 40 Heathen Philosophers. strengthen his case-at least in so far as his charges of prodigality and waste were concerned; for they determined to make such a masque as had never been seen before and of which the like would never be seen again. They succeeded. They pleased the King. They made the Puritans rage. They staggered posterity. And this in the four hours of one night at a trifling cost of twentyone thousand pounds. Those who take pleasure in pageants of this kind should turn to the Memorials of Bulstrode Whitelocke of the Middle Temple, who served with Edward Hyde, later Lord Chancellor of England, Mr Attorney Noy, and the learned John Selden on the Committee of Management. In his pages, decked out with a sumptuous array of courtly words and gilded phrase, there is a noble account "of this the most glorious and splendid shew that ever was held in England." He tells of the wonderful company of luteplayers, and performers on bagpipes and horns that he collected, and of the incidental music written by Lawes and the Queen's musicians from France. He describes the procession of proper and beautiful young gentlemen, of whom some walked and some rode, "borrowing the King's best horses and richest saddles," from Chancery Lane to the palace of Whitehall. Nor does he hide the inevitable jealousies of the Inns of Court, which drove them at last to throw dice for precedence, and to frame the seats of the GrandMasquers in the form of an oval, so that none might seem to be preferred. As one might imagine, the masque "gave great contentment, especially to those of the younger sort and of the female sex"; the queen and her ladies were enthralled. They danced with the masquers till the dawn, praised their fine dresses, and made the king order the same revels for the following night. "And so," says Whitelooke, with something like a sigh, "so are the earthly pomp and glory, if not vanity, soon past and over as if it had never been." Unfortunately Pagitt negleots to inform us as to the part he took in the show. His appropriate place was certainly in the "Anti-Masque of Birds, wherein was represented a solemn Owl sitting in an ivy bush." But his pen is taken up with grumbling at his share of the expense, and debating anxiously the question of clothes, how and at what cost to strike the balance between magnificence and meanness. After some inquiry, he draws up 8 statement of "What others have in hand to weare," and decides that, while the black satin favoured by Gray's Inn is rather heavy, the cloth-of-gold dubblet devised by Mr Trevor with scarlet breeches breeches and cloak is beyond all the bounds of modesty. "In buying things against ye maske," he adds, "I was taxed for inconstancy and unsettledness in my resolu tion what to buy. I bespoake roses and garters laced with gold and silver lace and after wards had no use for them." In a letter to another cousin, Tremyll, we find some details of the show itself. "I send you," he says, "a booke of our masque [Shirley's 'Triumph of Peace'] which was presented on Monday last with much applause and commendation from ye King and Queene and all spectators. We all kist ye Queene's hand and then were conducted by my Lord Chamberlain and other Lords to a rich banquet whereto ye King and Queene came and tooke a taste and then graciously smiling upon us left us to the sole enjoying of that well furnished table. Being much taken with ye masque the King sent invitation to us to ride againe on Tuesday next to the Merchant Taylor's Hall, in ye same manner as we rode to Whitehall, to meet his Majesty to supper. Sir Harry Vane1 and other great Travellers say they never 88W such a sight in any part of the world." VIII. The other letters deal chiefly with cases in the courts, but are so full of scandal, and so free from legal phrasing, that a layman may enjoy them. I find from the records of the Inn that Pagitt was called to the degree of the Utter Bar in 1635, and was attached later to the northern circuit. Writing from the sessions at Harrogate to his unole, Sir Thomas Twysden, Doctor of Laws and Chancellor of Lichfield, he says: "I heard likewise one yt went by the name of Dr Bright indicted and convicted for being married to three wives at one time. He had his clergy and was burnt in the hand. There was another convict for a conspiracy who went to one Mr Tine a merchant at the Exchange and 2 threatened to sue him in the spirituall court for having carnel knowledge of a wench whom he had instructed beforehand. Mr Tine having a handsome wife and being unwilling any such thinge should come to her eares, to avoyd jealousy gave him money to be ridd of him, but he came twice afterward for more money. Then Mr Tine being better advised indictes this fellow and he was fined £100, bound to his good behaviour, pillory and and imprisonment during ye King's pleasure. Mr Recorder sayd this was now a common trick and that Mr Hooker who writt the Ecclesiasticall Polity was served in the same way." Another letter (December 1633) refers to the case of Lord Dominic Sarsfield, Justice of 1 He was at that time Comptroller of the King's Household. 2 This is rather a late example of the benefit of clergy, though the privilege was not, in fact, abolished till the year 1827. the Common Pleas of Ireland, who was tried in the Star Chamber and censured, fined, and removed for his misdemeanours to juries, witnesses, and prisoners in open court. Pagitt deolares that "On one occasion when two of the Petit jury would not agree the judge sent an officer in to them to say that at another place in his circuit when one of the jury would not agree the rest pulled him by the nose and pinched him till he gave in." The last case noted by Pagitt is one of lèse majesté brought in the King's Bench against a certain Chrogoggen, of whom "it was testified by sundry gentlemen of quality in Drury Lane in London he bitt his thumb saying, 'I care not this much for your King.' And evidence was admitted to show that the prisoner was a man of Spain, in which country the biting of one's thumb is a toaken of scorn in the highest degree, and will bear an action of Disgrace, just as spitting in one's face will in England. He was afterward hanged drawn and quartered for his heinous offence." Of Pagitt's own career as a barrister it is difficult to write with confidence at this far stretch of time. He was, as we have seen, a man of infinite pains and not likely to overlook the smallest detail in any case. But we may doubt whether apart from the family -many briefs came to his hand. IX. He would seem to have felt unsuited for pleading in open court, and to have transferred himself in consequence to the Chancery side. In the seclusion of his own chambers, no doubt, he drafted feoffments without end. There is an elaborate opinion in the manuscript touching the disputed title of his father's lands, and some notes of proceedings taken out by him against his stepmother in the administration of his father's estate. But family briefs and family benefactions are frail things to depend on for a living, as every barrister knows; and besides, "in those orazie and tickle times," to borrow the language of his Inn, no man might carve out the fashion of his life. It was something to find security, let alone success. So the careful Justinian took heed in time and set himself to find a place. He tabulates in his book a dozen "meanes to procure an office and how to be presently placed in one," and makes 8 list of those gentlemen in the Middle Temple whose influence may be useful-to wit, Selden, Spelman, Harrington, Ireton, and Whitelocke, some of the best men of that day. His importunities were rewarded at last with the post of Custos Brevium and Recorder of the King's Bench. He becomes suddenly an important person. He is beset with a swarm of |