Note 34 — Chapter XLIII

With regard to the customary gifts of white gloves Mr. Foss says:—"Gloves were presented to the judges on some occasions: viz., when a man, convicted for murder, or manslaughter, came and pleaded the king's pardon; and, till the Act of 4 & 5 William and Mary c. 18, which rendered personal appearance unnecessary, an outlawry could not be reversed, unless the defendant came into court, and with a present of gloves to the judges implored their favor to reverse it. The custom of giving the judge a pair of white gloves upon a maiden assize has continued till the present time." An interesting chapter might be written on the ancient ceremonies and usages obsolete and extant, of our courts of law. Here are a few of the practices which such a chapter would properly notice:—The custom, still maintained, which forbids the Lord Chancellor to utter any word or make any sign, when on Lord Mayor's Day the Lord Mayor of London enters the Court of Chancery, and by the mouth of the Recorder prays his lordship to honor the Guildhall banquet with his presence; the custom—extant so late as Lord Brougham's Chancellorship—which required the Holder of the Seals, at the installation of a new Master of Chancery, to install the new master by placing a cap or hat on his head; the custom which in Charles II.'s time, on motion days at the Chancellor's, compelled all barristers making motions to contribute to his lordship's 'Poor's Box'—barristers within the bar paying two shillings, and outer barristers one shilling—the contents of which box were periodically given to magistrates, for distribution amongst the deserving poor of London; the custom which required a newly-created judge to present his colleagues with biscuits and wine; the barbarous custom which compelled prisoners to plead their defence, standing in fetters, a custom enforced by Chief Justice Pratt at the trial of the Jacobite against Christopher Layer, although at the of trial of Cranburne for complicity in the 'Assassination Plot,' Holt had enunciated the merciful maxim, "When the prisoners are tried they should stand at ease;" the custom which—in days when forty persons died of gaol fever caught at the memorable Black Sessions (May, 1759) at the Old Bailey, when Captain Clark was tried for killing Captain Innes in a duel—strewed rue, fennel, and other herbs on the ledge of the dock, in the faith that the odor of the herbage would act as a barrier to the poisonous exhalations from prisoners sick of gaol distemper, and would protect the assembly in the body of the court from the contagion of the disease.