Tenderness of heart was even less notable in Kenyon than in Murray; but Lord Mansfield's successor was at least on one occasion stirred by apathetic consequence of the bloody law against persons found guilty of trivial theft. On the Home Circuit, having passed sentence of death on a poor woman who had stolen property to the value of forty shillings in a dwelling-house, Lord Kenyon saw the prisoner drop lifeless in the dock, just as he ceased to speak. Instantly the Chief Justice sprang to his feet, and screamed in a shrill tone, "I don't mean to hang you—do you hear!—don't you hear?—Good——will nobody tell her that I don't mean to hang her?"
One of the humorous aspects of a repulsive subject is seen in the curiosity and fastidiousness of prisoners on trial for capital offences with regard to the professional status of the judges who try them. A sheep-stealer of the old bloody days liked that sentence should be passed upon him by a Chief Justice; and in our own time murderers awaiting execution, sometimes grumble at the unfairness of their trials, because they have been tried by judges of inferior degree. Lord Campbell mentions the case of a sergeant, who, whilst acting as Chief Justice Abbott's deputy, on the Oxford circuit, was reminded that he was 'merely a temporary' by the prisoner in the dock. Being asked in the usual way if he had aught to say why sentence of death should not be passed upon him, the prisoner answered—"Yes; I have been tried before a journeyman judge."
CHAPTER XL.
HUMOROUS STORIES.
Alike commendable for its subtlety and inoffensive humor was the pleasantry with which young Philip Yorke (afterwards Lord Hardwicke), answered Sir Lyttleton Powys's banter on the Western Circuit. An amiable and upright, but far from brilliant judge, Sir Lyttleton had a few pet phrases—-amongst them, "I humbly conceive," and "Look, do you see"—which he sprinkled over his judgments and colloquial talk with ridiculous profuseness. Surprised at Yorke's sudden rise into lucrative practice, this most gentlemanlike worthy was pleased to account for the unusual success by maintaining that young Mr. Yorke must have written a law-book, which had brought him early into favor with the inferior branch of the profession. "Mr. Yorke," said the venerable justice, whilst the barristers were sitting over their wine at a 'judges' dinner,' "I cannot well account for your having so much business, considering how short a time you have been at the bar: I humbly conceive you must have published something; for look you, do you see, there is scarcely a cause in court but you are employed in it on one side or the other. I should therefore be glad to know, Mr. Yorke, do you see, whether this be the case." Playfully denying that he possessed any celebrity as a writer on legal matters, Yorke, with an assumption of candor, admitted that he had some thoughts of lightening the labors of law-students by turning Coke upon Littleton into verse. Indeed, he confessed that he had already begun the work of versification. Not seeing the nature of the reply, Sir Lyttleton Powys treated the droll fancy as a serious project, and insisted that the author should give a specimen of the style of his contemplated work. Whereupon the young barrister—not pausing to remind a company of lawyers of the words of the original. "Tenant in fee simple is he which hath lands or tenements to hold to him and his heirs for ever"—recited the lines—
"He that holdeth his lands in fee
Need neither to quake nor quiver,
I humbly conceive: for look, do you see
They are his and his heirs' forever."
The mimicry of voice being not less perfect than the verbal imitation, Yorke's hearers were convulsed with laughter, but so unconscious was Sir Lyttleton of the ridicule which he had incurred, that on subsequently encountering Yorke in London, he asked how "that translation of Coke upon Littleton was getting on." Sir Lyttleton died in 1732, and exactly ten years afterwards appeared the first edition of 'The Reports of Sir Edward Coke, Knt., in Verse'—a work which its author may have been inspired to undertake by Philip Yorke's proposal to versify 'Coke on Littleton.'
Had Yorke's project been carried out, lawyers would have a large supply of that comic but sound literature of which Sir James Burrow's Reports contain a specimen in the following poetical version of Chief Justice Pratt's memorable decision with regard to a woman of English birth, who was the widow of a foreigner:
"A woman having settlement
Married a man with none,
The question was, he being dead,
If what she had was gone.
"Quoth Sir John Pratt, 'The settlement
Suspended did remain,
Living the husband; but him dead
It doth revive again.'
(Chorus of Puisne Judges.)
"Living the husband; but him dead
It doth revive again."