It has enabled the humblest wife to obtain a "protection order" for her property against an unprincipled husband.
It has afforded persons wanting to establish legitimacy, the validity of marriages, and the right to be deemed natural born subjects, the means of so doing.
Amongst its minor benefits it has enabled persons needing copies of wills which have been proved since January, 1858, in any part of the country, to obtain them from the principal registry of the Court of Probate in Doctors' Commons.
Sir Cresswell Cresswell was appointed Judge of the Probate Court at its commencement. He was likewise the first Judge of the Divorce Court.
The College property—the freehold portion, subject to a yearly rent-charge of £105, and to an annual payment of 5s. 4d., both payable to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's—was put up for sale by auction, in one lot, on November 28, 1862. The place has now been demolished, and the materials have been sold, the site being required in forming the new thoroughfare from Earl Street, Blackfriars, to the Mansion House; the roadway passes directly through the College garden.
Chaucer, in his "Canterbury Tales," gives an unfavourable picture of the old sompnour (or apparitor to the Ecclesiastical Court):—
"A sompnour was ther with us in that place,
Thad hadde a fire-red cherubimes face;
For sausefleme he was, with eyen narwe.
As hote he was, and likerous as a sparwe,
With scalled browes blake, and pilled berd;
Of his visage children were sore aferd.
Ther n'as quiksilver, litarge, ne brimston,
Boras, ceruse, ne oile of Tartre non,
Ne oinement that wolde clense or bite,
That him might helpen of his whelkes white,
Ne of the nobbes sitting on his chekes.
Wel loved he garlike, onions, and lekes,
And for to drinke strong win as rede as blood.
Than wold he speke, and crie as he were wood.
And when that he wel dronken had the win,
Than wold he speken no word but Latin.
A fewe termes coude he, two or three,
That he had lerned out of some decree;
No wonder is, he herd it all the day.
And eke ye knowen wel, how that a jay
Can clepen watte, as well as can the pope.
But who so wolde in other thing him grope,
Than hadde he spent all his philosophie,
Ay, Questio quid juris wold he crie."
In 1585 there were but sixteen or seventeen doctors; in 1694 that swarm had increased to forty-four. In 1595 there were but five proctors; in 1694 there were forty-three. Yet even in Henry VIII.'s time the proctors were complained of, for being so numerous and clamorous that neither judges nor advocates could be heard. Cranmer, to remedy this evil, attempted to gradually reduce the number to ten, which was petitioned against as insufficient and tending to "delays and prolix suits."
"Doctors' Commons," says Defoe, "was a name very well known in Holland, Denmark, and Sweden, because all ships that were taken during the last wars, belonging to those nations, on suspicion of trading with France, were brought to trial here; which occasioned that sarcastic saying abroad that we have often heard in conversation, that England was a fine country, but a man called Doctors' Commons was a devil, for there was no getting out of his clutches, let one's cause be never so good, without paying a great deal of money."
A writer in Knight's "London" (1843) gives a pleasant sketch of the Court of Arches in that year. The Common Hall, where the Court of Arches, the Prerogative Court, the Consistory Court, and the Admiralty Court all held their sittings, was a comfortable place, with dark polished wainscoting reaching high up the walls, while above hung the richly emblazoned arms of learned doctors dead and gone; the fire burned cheerily in the central stove. The dresses of the unengaged advocates in scarlet and ermine, and of the proctors in ermine and black, were picturesque. The opposing advocates sat in high galleries, and the absence of prisoner's dock and jury-box—nay, even of a public—impressed the stranger with a sense of agreeable novelty.