“‘Sir Francis Flatterer, of Fowls-hurt.
“‘Sir Randall Rackabite, of Rascal-hall, in the county of Rake-hell.
“‘Sir Morgan Mumchance, of Much Monkery, in the county of Mad Mopery.
“‘Sir Bartholomew Bald-breech, of Buttock-bury, in the county of Break-neck.’
“They had also their mock arraignments. The king’s-serjeant, after dinner or supper, ‘oratour-like,’ complained that the constable-marshal had suffered great disorders to prevail; the complaint was answered by the common-serjeant, who was to show his talent at defending the cause. The king’s-serjeant replies; they rejoin, &c.: till one at length is committed to the Tower, for being found most deficient. If any offender contrived to escape from the lieutenant of the Tower into the buttery, and brought into the hall a manchet (or small loaf) upon the point of a knife, he was pardoned; for the buttery in this jovial season was considered as a sanctuary. Then began the revels. Blount derives this term from the French reveiller, to awake from sleep. These were sports of dancing, masking comedies, &c. (for some were called solemn revels), used in great houses, and were so denominated because they were performed by night; and these various pastimes were regulated by a master of the revels.
“Amidst ‘the grand Christmass’ a personage of no small importance was ‘the Lord of Misrule.’ His lordship was abroad early in the morning, and if he lacked any of his officers, he entered their chambers to drag forth the loiterers; but after breakfast his lordship’s power ended, and it was in suspense till night, when his personal presence was paramount, or, as Dugdale expresses it, ‘and then his power is most potent.’
“Such were then the pastimes of the whole learned bench; and when once it happened that the under-barristers did not dance on Candlemas Day, according to the ancient order of the society, when the judges were present, the whole bar was offended, and at Lincoln’s Inn were by decimation put out of commons, for example-sake; and should the same omission be repeated, they were to be fined or disbarred; for these dancings were thought necessary, ‘as much conducing to the making of gentlemen more fit for their books at other times.’”
The details of the alliteration with which Sir Francis Flatterer and others are called into court have always interested me deeply, as on the Northern Circuit, when the crier at Grand Court calls in the absent ones, he has to do it in curious and measured phrases of alliterative abuse. When Fitzjames Stephen was made crier on account of his stentorian voice, his delicate mind revolted against the coarseness of his duties, and he sought to have the Circuit Court and its ancient, outspoken manners abolished, but fortunately he did not succeed.
For though some of this ancientry is better honoured in the breach than the observance, yet even the buffoonery, as Stephen called it, of Grand Court has its value as a link with the past.
It is an excellent thing for the profession that in the same way as the lessons of advocacy in the past were learned by the young students from their elders, who sat at meat with them and shared their lives in intimate and homely fashion, so to-day we enter a common Inn, dine at a common table, join a common mess upon circuit, all of which is evidence of the continuance of that right spirit of fellowship which, to my mind, is an essential of advocacy.