Fletcher and I accepted the offer: we did punctually and zealously attend these numerous trials, and were most liberally feed; but most unsuccessful in our efforts; for we never were able to gain a single cause, verdict, or motion, for our client.
The principle of strict justice certainly was with his Lordship; but certain formalities of the law were decidedly against him: he had, in fact, adopted an obsolete mode of proceeding as a short cut: thus, perceiving himself likely to be foiled, he determined to take another course, quite out of our line, and a course whereby no suit is decided in modern days—namely fight it out, “muzzle to muzzle,” with the attorney and all the counsel on the other side.
The first procedure on this determination was a direct challenge from his Lordship to the attorney, Mr. Ball: it was accepted, and a duel immediately followed, in which his Lordship got the worst of it. He was wounded by the attorney at each shot, the first taking place in his Lordship’s right arm, which probably saved the solicitor, as his Lordship was a most accurate marksman. The noble challenger received the second bullet in his side, but the wound was not dangerous. The attorney’s skin remained quite whole.
My Lord and the attorney having been thus disposed of for the time being, the Honourable Somerset Butler (his Lordship’s son) now took the field, and proceeded, according to due form, by a challenge to Mr. Peter Burrowes, &c., the senior of the adversaries’ counsel (now judge commissioner of insolvents). The invitation not being refused, the combat took place, one chilly morning, near Kilkenny. Somerset knew his business well; but Peter had had no practice whatever in that line of litigation—being good tempered and peaceable.
Few persons feel too warm on such occasions, of a cold morning, and Peter formed no exception to the general rule. An old woman who sold spiced gingerbread nuts in the street they passed through accosted the party, extolling her nuts to the very skies, as being well spiced, and fit to expel the wind, and to warm any gentleman’s stomach and bowels as well as a dram. Peter bought a pennyworth on the advice of his second, Dick Waddy, an eminent attorney, and duly receiving the change of a sixpenny-piece, marched off to the scene of action munging his gingerbread.
Preliminaries being soon arranged—the pistols given—ten steps measured—the flints hammered—and the feather-springs set—Somerset, a fine dashing young fellow, full of spirit, activity, and animation, after making a few graceful attitudes, and slapping his arms together as hackney-coachmen do in frosty weather, to make their fingers supple—gave elderly Peter (who was no posture-master) but little time to take his fighting position:—in fact, he had scarcely raised his pistol to a wabbling level, before Somerset’s ball came crack-dash against Peter’s body! The halfpence rattled in his pocket: Peter dropped; Somerset fled; Dick Waddy roared “murder,” and called out to Surgeon Pack. Peter’s clothes were ripped up; and Pack, secundum artem, examined the wound:—something like a black hole designated the spot where the lead had penetrated the abdomen. The doctor shook his head, and pronounced but one short word—“mortal!”—it was, however, more expressive than a long speech. Peter groaned; his friend Waddy began to think about the coroner; his brother barristers sighed heavily, and Peter was supposed to be departing this world (but, as they all endeavoured to persuade him, for a better);—when Surgeon Pack, after another fatal, taking leave of Peter, and leaning his hand on the grass to assist him in rising, felt something hard, took it up, and looked at it curiously: the spectators closed in the circle, to see Peter die; the patient turned his expiring eyes toward Surgeon Pack, as much as to say—“Good bye to you all, lads!”—when lo! the doctor held up to the astonished assembly the identical bullet, which, having rattled among the heads and harps, and gingerbread nuts, in Peter’s waistcoat-pocket, had flattened its own body on the surface of a copper, and left His Majesty’s bust distinctly imprinted and accurately designated, in black and blue shading, on his subject’s carcase! Peter’s heart beat high; and finding that his Gracious Sovereign, and the gingerbread, had saved his life, lost as little time as possible in rising from the sod: a bandage was applied round his body, and in a short time he was able (though of course he had no reason to be over-willing) to begin another combat.[[9]]
His Lordship having now, on his part, recovered from the attorney’s wounds, considered it high time to recommence hostilities according to his original plan of the campaign; and the engagement immediately succeeding was between him and the late Counsellor John Byrne, king’s counsel, and next in rotation of his learned adversaries.
His Lordship was much pleased with the spot upon which his son had chosen to hit Counsellor Peter, and resolved to select the same for a hit on Counsellor John. The decision appeared to be judicious; and, as if the pistol itself could not be ignorant of its destination, and had been gratified at its own previous accuracy and success, (for it was the same,) it sent a bullet in the identical level, and Counsellor Byrne’s carcase received a precisely similar compliment with Counsellor Burrowes’s:—with this difference; that as the former had no gingerbread nuts, the matter appeared more serious. I asked him during his illness how he felt when he received the crack? he answered, just as if he had been punched by the mainmast of a man of war!—certainly a grand simile; but how far my friend Byrne was enabled to form the comparison he never divulged to me.
[9]. Mr. Peter Burrowes, K. C., was my old friend and schoolfellow. He was one of those persons whom every body likes:—there never was a better hearted man! We were at Temple together.