(Vol. vii., p. 557.)
Additional evidence of the fact that lawyers used to carry green bags towards the end of the
seventeenth century, is to be found in the Plain Dealer, a comedy by Wycherley.
One of the principal characters in the play is the Widow Blackacre, a petulant, litigious woman, always in law, and mother of Jerry Blackacre, "a true raw squire under age and his mother's government, bred to the law."
In Act I. Sc. 1., I find the following stage directions:
"Enter Widow Blackacre with a mantle and a green bag, and several papers in the other hand. Jerry Blackacre, her son, in a gown, laden with green bags, following her."
In Act III. Sc. 1. the widow is called impertinent and ignorant by a lawyer of whom she demands back her fee, on his returning her brief and declining to plead for her. This draws from her the following reply:
"Impertinent again and ignorant to me! Gadsbodikins, you puny upstart in the law to use me so, you green bag carrier, you murderer of unfortunate causes," &c.
Farther on, in the same scene, Freeman, a gentleman well educated, but of a broken fortune, a complier with the age, thus admonishes Jerry:
"Come, Squire, let your mother and your trees fall as she pleases, rather than wear this gown and carry green bags all thy life, and be pointed at for a tony. But you shall be able to deal with her yet the common way. Thou shalt make false love to some lawyer's daughter, whose father, upon the hopes of thy marrying her, shall lend thee money and law to preserve thy estate and trees."