2. 8. 102 your bond Of Sixe; and Statute of eight hundred! I. e., of six, and eight hundred pounds. ‘Statutes merchant, statutes staple, and recognizances in the nature of a statute staple were acknowledgements of debt made in writing before officers appointed for that purpose, and enrolled of record. They bound the lands of the debtor; and execution was awarded upon them upon default in payment without the ordinary process of an action. These securities were originally introduced for the encouragement of trade, by providing a sure and speedy remedy for the recovery of debts between merchants, and afterwards became common assurances, but have now become obsolete.’—S. M. Leake, Law of Contracts, p. 95.
Two of Pecunia’s attendants in The Staple of News are Statute and Band (i. e. Bond, see U. 34). The two words are often mentioned together. In Dekker’s Bankrouts Banquet (Non-dram. Wks. 3. 371) statutes are served up to the bankrupts.
Trains is evidently trying to impress Fitzdottrel with the importance of Merecraft’s transactions.
ACT III.
3. 1. 8 Innes of Court. ‘The four Inns of Court, Gray’s Inn, Lincoln’s Inn, the Inner, and the Middle Temple, have alone the right of admitting persons to practise as barristers, and that rank can only be attained by keeping the requisite number of terms as a student at one of those Inns.’—Wh-C.
Jonson dedicates Every Man out of his Humor ‘To the Noblest Nurseries of Humanity and Liberty in the Kingdom, the Inns of Court.’
3. 1. 10 a good man. Gifford quotes Merch. of Ven. 1. 3. 15: ‘My meaning in saying he is a good man, is, to have you understand me, that he is sufficient.’ Marston, Dutch Courtesan, Wks. 2. 57. uses the word in the same sense.
3. 1. 20 our two Pounds, the Compters. The London Compters or Counters were two sheriff’s prisons for debtors, etc., mentioned as early as the 15th century. In Jonson’s day they were the Poultry Counter and the Wood Street Counter. They were long a standing joke with the dramatists, who seem to speak from a personal acquaintance with them. Dekker (Roaring Girle, Wks. 3. 189) speaks of ‘Wood Street College,’ and Middleton (Phoenix, Wks. 1. 192) calls them ‘two most famous universities’ and in another place ‘the two city hazards, Poultry and Wood Street.’ Jonson in Every Man in (Wks. 1. 42) speaks of them again as ‘your city pounds, the counters’, and in Every man out refers to the ‘Master’s side’ (Wks. 2. 181) and the ‘two-penny ward,’ the designations for the cheaper quarters of the prison.
3. 1. 35 out of rerum natura. In rerum natura is a phrase used by Lucretius 1. 25. It means, according to the Stanford Dictionary, ‘in the nature of things, in the physical universe.’ In some cases it is practically equivalent to ‘in existence.’ Cf. Sil. Wom., Wks. 3. 382: ‘Is the bull, bear, and horse, in rerum natura still?’
3. 2. 12 a long vacation. The long vacation in the Inns of Court, which Jonson had in mind, lasts from Aug. 13 to Oct. 23. In Staple of News, Wks. 5. 170, he makes a similar thrust at the shop-keepers: