Bench and Bar in the Middle Ages. be taken off his dead body as would make a sword-belt. William le Vavasour, a justice itinerant in 1304, served the king in his ex pedition into Gascony and in his wars in Scotland. William de Vesey, while filling the office of chief justice in Ireland, was charged by John FitzThomas with confeder ating against the king, and challenged his accuser to meet him in mortal combat; so that Lord Norbury might have quoted a precedent, if he wanted one, when he told a barrister who affronted him on the bench that he was ready to fight a duel with him when he had thrown off his gown. De Vesey came ready armed into the field, but FitzThomas showed the white feather and kept away. John de Delves, before he was made a judge in the common pleas in 1364, fought at the battle of Poictiers as squire to Lord Audley. Geoffrey le Scrope, who was chief justice of the king's bench in the reign of Edward III, accompanied the king in the invasion of Scotland, and displayed his banner and pennon at the affair of Stannow Park. He also served at the siege of Tournay in 1340.
Richard le Scrope, who was chancellor in the reign of Richard II, had been a distin guished soldier, and fought at the battles of Crecy and Nevil's Cross in the same year, 1346. So bravely did he bear himself against the Scotch, that he was made a knight-ban neret in the field. After he had been de prived of the great seal, he resumed the profession of arms, and accompanied King Richard on an expedition against Scotland in 1385. As might be expected, there are very few personal anecdotes to be gleaned from the lives of the judges for the first three or four hundred years after the conquest, except in the case of such men as Becket and William of Wykeham. The judges in those days occasionally swore when on the bench, at least, so we may conjecture from the lan guage used by John de Mowbray in 44 Edw. Ill, as reported in the year-book, who
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called out to the Bishop of Chester, a de fendant in an action tried before him, " Allez au grand diable!" John de Cavendish, who was one of the judges in the latter part of the reign of Edward III seems to have had a spice of dry humor in him. A case occurred before him in which a question arose as to a lady's age, and her counsel urged the court to call her before them and decide for themselves whether she was within age or not. But women are the same at all times, and the judge showed that he knew them when he observed : "Je n'ad nul home en Engleterre que puy adjudge a droit deins age ou deplein age; car ascun femes que sont de age XXX, ans voilent apperer d'age de XVIII ans." It was by no means uncommon for judges when they were removed from the bench to resume their practice at the bar, and in some cases they seem to have acted as advocates, even while they held the office of judge. Thus William Inge, in the reign of Edward II, appears as an advocate in the year-book when he was a justice of assize, and he was regularly summoned among the judges to Parliament. He was afterwards elevated to the chief justiceship of the king's bench. But perhaps in acting as justice of assize he was only in the same position as queen's counsel at the present day, whose names are put in the commission, and who occasion ally assist the judges by trying causes and prisoners in the civil and criminal courts. When Pemberton, a judge in the reign of Charles II, was dismissed from the bench, he returned to his practice at the bar. He was afterward made chief justice, first of the king's bench and then of the common pleas, and, being again dismissed, he a second time returned to the bar, and was one of the lead ing counsel in the defense of the seven bishops in 1688. We pride ourselves, and justly, on the purity of our judges, and perhaps no body of men, whose corporate existence extends over eight centuries, would, upon the whole,
