CHAPTER XI.

DOCTOR'S COMMONS.

ONE of the queerest old rookeries in London is the little old edifice in Great Knight-Rider street, just back of St. Paul's Churchyard, with its nest of courts and its ancient quadrangle, where people go to get licenses to marry--or to have divorces granted them, or to examine or prove wills--or perhaps to have a suite entered for salvage or flotsam, or jetsam,--where David Copperfield paid a thousand pounds to receive his matriculation as a proctor. This curious old relic of Roman Catholic England, where the wills of the British nation are preserved, is known as Doctors' Commons.

It is a college of civil, canon, and maritime law, and here all cases that belong to these three divisions of English law, as also divorce suits, are entered, argued, and decided.

The lawyers who practice here are all well to do, snug, aristocratic old fellows, and enjoy good living and nothing to do as no other disciples of the legal profession can.

It is called Doctor's Commons because the doctors or students at law used to eat in common, or dine together in a hall in the old days when the Archbishop of Canterbury acknowledged the supremacy of the See of St. Peter.

In the Doctors' Commons are--the Court of Arches, named from having been formerly kept in Bow Church, Cheapside, originally built upon arches, and the Supreme Ecclesiastical Court of the Province of Canterbury--the other English Ecclesiastical Province being that of York; the Prerogative Court, where all contentions arising out of testamentary causes, are tried; the Consistory Court of the Bishop of London; and the High Court of Admiralty; all these courts hold their sittings in the college hall, the walls of which are covered with the richly-emblazoned coats of arms of all the doctors who have practiced here for two hundred years past.

The Court of Arches has a jurisdiction over thirteen parishes, or "peculiars," which form a "Deanery," exempt from the authority of the Bishop of London, and attached to the Province of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is Primate of England. This court decides, as in the days of Wolsey, in all cases of usury, simony, heresy, sacrilege, blasphemy, apostacy from Christianity, adultery, fornication, bastardy, partial and entire divorce, and many exploded offenses, which in the Nineteenth century become farcical when tried in an ecclesiastical court. Fighting or brawling in church or vestry are also offenses under the jurisdiction of this absurd old court, but they are seldom or ever brought up in these days, as the newspapers are sure to seize upon such trials as subjects for derision and satire. Still the statutes are in existence and will probably never be repealed until the Established Church of England is abolished.

There are several Registries in Doctors' Commons, under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the bishops. Some of the very old documents connected with them are deposited for security in St. Paul's Cathedral and Lambeth Palace. At the Bishop of London's Registry, and the Registry for the Commission of Surrey, wills are proved for the respective dioceses, and marriage licences are granted. At the Vicar-General's Office and the Faculty Office, marriage licences are granted for any part of England. The Faculty Office also grants Faculties to notaries public, and dispensations to the clergy; and formerly granted privilege to eat flesh on prohibited days. At the Vicar-General's Office, records are kept of the confirmation and consecration of bishops.

[Sidenote: MARRIAGE LICENSES.]

Marriage licences, when required by persons who profess the faith of the Established Church of England, are always procured in Doctors' Commons upon personal application to one of these old fogy Proctors, whom I saw running around the quaint quadrangle, like a hen on a hot griddle, with a roll of papers in his fleshy, fat hands. A residence of fifteen days is necessary to either bride or bridegroom, in the parish in which the marriage is to be solemnized, or not much longer than it takes a repeater to become a useful if not a legal voter in New York City. This little antique court of Doctors' Commons is in fine one of the pious swindles that the English people delight in perpetuating and groaning under, while the sinecurists make pots of money, and laugh and grow fat on the pious plunder. There are all kinds of little dodges in Doctors Commons, so that when a suitor enters here it is like a dip into chancery litigation; the victim being plucked before he leaves. Even to get married is very expensive in Doctors' Commons. The expense of an ordinary license is £2 12s. 6d.; but if either party is a minor, there is 10s. 6d. further charge; and if the party appearing swears that he has obtained the consent of the proper person having authority in law to give it, there is no necessity for either parents or minor to attend. A special license for marriage is issued after a fiat or consent has been obtained from the Archbishop, and is granted only to persons of rank, judges, and members of parliament, the Archbishop having a right to exercise his own discretion.

The expense of a Special License is usually twenty-eight guineas. This gives privilege to marry at any time or place, in private residence, or at any church or chapel situate in England; but the ceremony must be performed by a priest in holy orders, and of the Established Church. With the marriages of Dissenters, including Roman Catholics, Jews, and Quakers, the Commons has nothing to do, their licenses being obtainable of the Superintendent-Registrar. A Divorce when sought is carried through one of the courts in this profession (according to the diocese), and is conducted by a proctor; the evidence of witnesses is taken privately before an examiner of the court, and neither the husband, wife, nor any of the witnesses, need appear personally in court. A suit is seldom conducted at an expense less than £200.

Then there is the High Court of Admiralty, a "precious old swindle," as a seafaring man told me it had proved to him. He was a seaman before the mast, and to get a sum of eight pounds six and four-pence, he was compelled to pay eleven pounds of costs and fees. It comprises the "Instance Court," and the "Prize Court," where the famous Lord Stowell, in one year, adjudicated upon 2,206 cases connected with the high seas.

The Instance Court has a criminal and civil jurisdiction; to the former belong piracy and other indictable offences on the high seas, which are now tried at the Old Bailey; to the latter, suits arising from ships running foul of each other, disputes about seamen's wages, bottomry, and salvage. The Prize Court applies to naval captures in war, proceeds of captured slave-vessels, &c. A silver oar is carried before the Judge as an emblem of his office. The business is very onerous, as in embargoes and the provisional detention of vessels, when incautious decision might involve the country in war; the right of search is another weighty question.

[Sidenote: PAYING THE PIPER.]

The practitioners in this court are advocates (D.D.C.L.) or counsel, and proctors or solicitors. The judge and advocates wear in court, if of Oxford, scarlet robes and hoods lined with taffety; and if of Cambridge, white minever and round black velvet caps. The proctors wear black robes and hoods lined with fur.

The College has a good library in civil law and history, bequeathed by an ancestor of Sir John Gibson, judge of the Prerogative Court; and every bishop at his consecration makes a present of books.

After a case has been worked slowly through one of these ecclesiastical courts, it is then transferred to another, and after bowling the cause about for years it is just possible that it will be lost for the suitor. Suits are brought in Doctors' Commons for the most ridiculous and trivial causes, and once a man gets into the Commons, he is made to pay the piper while the sleek, fat proctors, dance right merrily to the music paid for by their unhappy victims. A case in point I will mention. The cause had just been tried in the Archdeacon's Court, at Totness, and from thence an appeal had been sought in the Court at Exeter, thence it went to the Court of Arches, and from there to the Court of Delegates, and after all this fuss and expense, the question in discussion was to know which of two persons had the legal right to hang a hat on a certain peg! This is sober truth, and no exaggeration.

But the great perfection of legal scoundrelism was, in a case where a man, named Russell, whose wife's character had been impugned by a person named Bentham, at Yarmouth, was tried. This gentleman could find no remedy in Common Law for the defamation, so he must needs go to Doctors' Commons and the Ecclesiastical Courts. The Proctor's bill amounted to £700 after the case had gone through several courts, and finally each party had to pay his own costs after the case had been continued six or seven years; the special beauty of Ecclesiastical Courts being, that once a victim brings a suit, he is never allowed to withdraw it until it has gone the rounds of every court, thus giving fees to a score of persons, one-half of whom never hear of the case until they make up their minds to send in a bill for money. Finally, after seven years of this pious warfare, Mr. Russell, being a poor man, was ruined, and his wife's character was not half as good as when he began the suit.

The Prerogative Will Office is, however, the busiest and most interesting place in Doctor's Commons. Wills are always to be found here at half an hour's notice, and generally in a few minutes. They are kept in a fire-proof, strong room. The original wills begin with the year 1483, and the copies date from 1383. The latter are on parchment, strongly bound, with brass clasps. Here I saw the will of Shakespeare, on three folios of paper, each with his signature, and with the inter-lineation in his own handwriting: "I give unto my wife my brown, best bed, with the furniture." There is kept, also, the will of Milton, which was written when the poet was blind, and set aside by a decree of Sir Leoline Jenkins. And I saw alongside of Milton's will, the last testament of the soldier of democracy, Napoleon Bonaparte, made at St. Helena, April, 1821.

In one year 40,000 searches were made here for wills, and 7,000 extracts were made from testaments. There were, also, 5,000 commissions issued for the country. Some of the entries of wills made by the early Monks are beautiful specimens of illumination, the colors remaining fresh to this day.

Let us take a look into the Will Office, and give a glance to one of the most interesting phases of the drama of human life.

[Sidenote: THE FORGOTTEN SAILOR.]

People are passing rapidly in and out of the narrow court, their bustle alone disturbing the marked quiet of the neighborhood. At the end of the court, we ascend a few steps and open a door, when the scene exhibited in the sketch is before us. All seems hurry and confusion, the solicitors turning over the leaves of bulky volumes and folios at the desks, long practice having taught them to discover at a glance the object of their search; rapidly to and fro move those who are bringing the tomes and taking them back to the shelves where they belong, and as rapidly glide the pens of the numerous copyists who are transcribing or making extracts from wills, in all their little boxes, along both sides of the room.

But as we begin to look a little more closely into the densely packed occupants' faces, we see persons who are certainly not solicitors' clerks, nor officials of Doctor's Commons, but parties whose interests in a worldly point of view may be materially benefited or damaged by the investigations they are ordering to be made.

Even the weather-beaten sailor, whose rugged face one would take to be proof against any fortune, betrays a good deal of sensibility. He has just returned probably from some long voyage, and one can fancy him to have come to Doctor's Commons to see whether the relative, whom the newspapers have informed him is dead, has left him, as he expected, the means to settle down quietly in a little box at Deptford, Greenwich, or Camberwell, or some other sailor's paradise.

He steps up to the box on the right hand as directed, pays his shilling, and gets a ticket, with a direction to the calendar, in which he is to search for the name of his deceased relative. He must surely be spelling every name in that page he has turned over--ah, there it is at last; and now he hurries off, as directed to, with the calendar, to the person pointed out to him as the Clerk of Searches. A volume from one of the shelves is laid before him, the place is found, and there lies the object of his hopes and fears--the great hopeful or threatening will. Line by line his face begins to grow darker--a ghastly grin at last appears--he has not been forgotten--there is a ring perhaps, or five pounds to buy one, or some such trifle; he closes the book with a bang and a curse, and the sailor hurries back to his ship and to storm and danger on the deep, deprived of all the contentment that had so long made him satisfied with his hard lot.

But here is another picture. A lady dressed in a style of the most gorgeous splendor, whose business is of a more important kind than a mere search--she is probably an executrix of a will--and is just leaving the office, when she meets at the door another lady, to whom she makes a low courtesy, with an expression of decided malice on her showy countenance. The successful legatee can be seen in her face, while blank and startled disappointment appears in the other woman's features.

Such is Doctors' Commons--and Such is Life.