No State trial has been held in Westminster Hall since Lord Melville was acquitted there in 1806, and on the only recent occasion on which a member of the House of Lords was tried by his peers, on July 18, 1901, the Royal Gallery of the Lords was fitted up as a court.
For centuries the coronation feasts, which were held in Westminster Hall, provided the public with a stately and imposing spectacle. Not the least interesting part of the ceremony consisted in the entrance of the King's Champion, clad in armour and mounted upon a fiery charger, who flung down his gauntlet and challenged to mortal combat all who dared to question the monarch's right to the throne. The feat required some personal courage, as well as the possession of a docile steed, for if it were not accomplished successfully the effect might well be ludicrous. Before the coronation of George III., Horace Walpole relates, Lord Talbot had spent much care in training his charger to walk backwards, so that it might make a graceful exit from the Hall without ever exposing its tail to the royal gaze. Unfortunately, the lesson had been too well learnt, and the horse insisted upon entering the Hall backwards, much to the amusement of the spectators.
Sovereigns are no longer crowned in Westminster Hall, but in the Abbey close by, and no coronation feast has been held there since the accession of George IV., when the guests repaid their sovereign's hospitality by carrying away most of his spoons as souvenirs of the event. The Hall has, however, been the scene of other less-important banquets, as, for instance, in 1905, when the officers of the visiting French fleet were entertained there as the guests of the British nation.
To Westminster Hall, Henry II. summoned his Barons in Council, and in the reign of Henry III. parliaments were often held there. Gradually, however, the building became devoted exclusively to the judicial side of the king's Great Council, and, when Edward I. occupied the throne of England, the Courts of King's Bench and Chancery held their meetings regularly at the south end of the Hall. Peter the Great, during a brief stay in England, paid a visit to Westminster Hall, and was much struck by the presence of a number of busy people in long black gowns and bobtailed wigs. On being informed that these were lawyers, "I have but two in my dominions," he observed thoughtfully, "and I believe I shall hang one of those directly I get home!"
New buildings were erected in 1738, on the west side of the Hall, to accommodate the judges, and when, about a hundred and fifty years later, the Palace of Justice was built in the Strand, the representatives of the law emigrated thither in a body.
The general public for a long time shared with the lawyers the privilege of trading within the precincts of Westminster Hall. In Edward III.'s reign merchants' stalls abounded there, being temporarily boarded over on the occasion of State pageants, and, at a much later date, Laud tells us in his diary, a conflagration in one of these shops threatened to destroy the entire building.
During the seventeenth century, book-sellers, law-stationers, and other tradesmen still plied their callings in the Hall, undisturbed by the pleadings of their legal rivals.[98] On the one side, as we read in a contemporary chronicle, were to be seen "Men with Baubles and Toys, and on the other taken up with the Fear of Judgment, on which depends their inevitable Destiny. On your Left Hand you hear a nimble Tongu'd Sempstress, with her Charming Treble, Invite you to buy some of her Knick-Knacks: And on your Right, a Deep-mouth'd Cryar commanding Impossibilities, viz. Silence to be kept among Women and Lawyers."[99] In the days of Pepys, the Great Hall had become a regular meeting-place for the public, and was still the most popular market for the sale of books.[100]
Trade has long been banished from the portals of Westminster Hall, its stately precincts are now desecrated by no foot less worthy than that of the Member of Parliament or the Saturday sight-seer. In other respects the Hall remains unchanged. Save for the retimbering of the roof in 1820 with oak taken from old men-of-war, it stands to-day much as it has stood for centuries. Structural alterations have occasionally been suggested, but without effect. One projected by Lord Grenville, necessitating the removal and raising of the entire roof, evoked many indignant protests.[101]
In New Palace Yard, opposite the entrance of Westminster Hall, a huge clock-tower once stood. It had been erected in the reign of Edward I., the cost being defrayed by a fine levied on Sir Ralph de Hengham, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, as a penalty for altering a judicial record in favour of a pauper litigant. In this tower hung a bell, known as "Great Tom of Westminster," whose voice on a clear day could be beard as far away as Windsor.[102] In 1707 both tower and bell were pulled down, the latter being recast and presented to St Paul's Cathedral where it still hangs.
Near the tower was a fountain from which on great occasions wine was made to flow for the delectation of the populace, while close by stood the pillory in which Titus Oates, John Williams, the publisher of John Wilkes's North Briton, and many other offenders against parliamentary privilege, suffered the penalty of their crimes.