Process of Taking the Coif. poor wife. For a long time Madame Desrües remained in the conciergerie, — in a wretched condition, for she had not a sou to pay for nourishment, and no one took the slightest interest in the unfortunate woman.
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Finally she was transferred to La Salpetriere, where she languished and died. The children, thus deprived of both father and mother, were sent to an asylum for foundlings.
PROCESS OF TAKING THE COIF. From "Bench and Bar," by Mr. Serjeant Robinson. HAVING given a detailed account of the genesis of a barrister,1 it may not be out of place to describe the process of his conversion into a Serjeant-at-law, and the status he thus occupies in the profession. It will not be long before there will exist no living representative of the race. If any one of the few that remain of us succeeds in get ting into the next century, he will deserve great credit for perseverance and tenacity. The position of serjeant-at-law is undoubt edly the oldest, and was until comparatively recent times the very highest, dignity a bar rister could achieve below that of a judge. It dates from about the middle of the thir teenth century. Until the year 1875 the judges were invariably selected from that rank; and so strictly was the rule adhered to that even a Queen's Counsel, who had spent half his life under that title, was obliged, on his appointment as judge, to become a serjeant, perhaps the day before he was sworn in as a member of the bench. The little round black patch on the top of the wig distinguishes a serjeant from the other members of the bar, and the origin of the mark is said to be this. By the Canon Law, the clergy were for bidden to resort to any secular vocation, and therefore in strictness they could not act as advocates in a court of justice; but it was a very profitable business, and they did it, in spite of ecclesiastical rule, at a time when discipline was somewhat lax. But a more 1 See the " Green Hag " for October, 1889.
rigid observance was at length insisted upon, and, not liking to give up the emoluments they had been in the habit of enjoying, they continued to do clandestinely what they could not do openly. So, to conceal the tonsure, which would at once have shown them to be priests, they covered the tops of their heads with a small coif or cap, — origi nally white, but it afterwards became black, — and went on pursuing their worldly avo cations as merrily as ever. I presume it was very wicked, but it was very remunerative; and that was a consideration which the clergy of those times thought was a cover ing for many transgressions. The coif thus became the outward symbol of the degree of a serjeant, and was worn by them, as may be seen in old portraits, up to the time of the general introduction of wigs among the aris tocracy and the upper middle classes. This necessitated a change in the mode of desig nating the rank, and a black silk patch on the top of the new head-dress was resorted to as a substitute for the coif, while it still retains the name. All the learning and intelligence of the kingdom was in early times monopolized by the clergy, and it is not therefore surprising that they should have succeeded in obtaining the highest rank that could be conferred on successful advocacy. The position of Queen's Counsel is of com paratively modern date. The first who bore the title was Lord Bacon, but his position had nothing to do with the rank as it at
