Note 571 — Chapter XXXIII · LEGAL.

We not only note, in this quotation, that the lawyers carried green bags, but we find, in contemporary literature, frequent allusion to these bags, which certainly had been of the same colour ever since Charles the Second's time, and so continued until the reign of George III. Bands were worn, but they were not the little things they are now, and there was no distinctive wig—nay, some men were bold enough to wear their own hair. Lady Sarah Cowper has left a memorandum[571] respecting her father, Lord Cowper, which throws light on this subject: 'The Queen after this was persuaded to trust a Whigg ministry; and in the year 1705, Ocbr. she made my father Ld Keeper of the Great Seal in the 41st year of his age—'tis said the youngest Lord Keeper that had ever been. He looked very young, and wearing his own hair made him appear yet more so; which the Queen observing, obliged him to cut it off, telling him the world would say she had given the Seals to a Boy.' But it is said that when he appeared at court in his wig, the Queen had to look at him more than once before she recognised him.