I'll have an action of battery against him, if there be any law in Illyria: though I struck him first, yet it's no matter for that. - Twelfth Night, Act iv. sc. I. If, at the trial of a case, a question of law arises, the course is for the judge to decide it. But it may happen that one of the parties is dissatisfied with the decision, and may wish to have it revised by a court of superior jurisdiction. For this purpose, it becomes necessary to put the question of law on record. for the information of that court. The party excepting to the opinion of the judge tenders him a bill of exceptions; that is, a statement in writing of the objection made by the party to his decision; to which statement, if truly made, the judge is bound to set his seal, in confirmation of its accuracy. In "Twelfth Night" Maria says to Sir Toby: By my troth, Sir Toby, you must come in earlier o' nights your cousin, my lady, takes great exceptions to your ill hours. SIR TOBY. Why, let her except before excepted. Act i. sc. 3. Generes v. Campbell, 11 Wallace, 193 Bill of Excep tions. "This is a whimsical use of a law-phrase," says Mr. Grant White, "which is one of the numberless evidences of Shakespeare's familiarity with the forms of that profession." The picture in "Coriolanus" which Shakespeare drew of the two tribunes, Sicinius and Brutus, is not without application to certain judges of the present day. Menenius thus reproaches the tribunes: You wear out a good wholesome forenoon in hearing a cause between an orange-wife and a fosset-seller; and then rejourn the controversy of three-pence to a second day of audience. When you are hearing a matter between party and party, if you chance to be pinched with the colic, you make faces like mummers; set up the bloody flag against all patience; and, in roaring for a chamberpot, dismiss the controversy bleeding, the more entangled by your hearing: all the peace you make in their cause is, calling both the parties knaves. Act ii. sc. I. Justices of the peace. Shakespeare says that justices of the peace attested the most absurd stories with their signatures. Thus, in "The Winter's Tale," Act iv. sc. 3: AUT. Here's another ballad, Of a fish, that appeared upon the coast on Wednesday the fourscore of April, forty thousand fathom above water, and sung this ballad against the hard hearts of maids: it was thought that she was a woman, and was turned into a cold fish for she would not exchange flesh with one that loved her: the ballad is very pitiful, and as true. DOR. Is it true too, think you? AUT. Five justices' hands at it; and witnesses more than my pack will hold. Lord Coke, in the "Fourth Institute," commenting on the jurisdiction and power of justices of the peace, says: "It is such a form of subordinate government for the tranquillity and quiet of the realm, as no part of the Christian world hath the like, if the same be duly executed." Shakespeare's picture of a justice of the peace, in the opening scene of "The Merry Wives of Windsor," certainly differs from the office so unduly commended, in language so extravagantly flattering, by 4 Inst. 170. the Lord Chief Justice. It has been well said that Shakespeare's picture "is so truthful as to be hardly exaggerated or caricatured. The original of that picture is confined to no age." In the reign of Elizabeth, actions for slanderous words were of frequent occurrence; and many refined distinctions were resorted to by the judges. To call a man a cuckold was not an ecclesiastical slander: but wittol was; for it imports his knowledge of and consent to his wife's adultery. Shakespeare noticed this distinction. In "The Merry Wives of Windsor," Act ii. sc. 2, Ford exclaims, Terms! names! Amaimon sounds well; Lucifer, well; Barbason, well; yet they are devils' additions, the names of fiends: but cuckold! wittolcuckold! the devil himself hath not such a name. "A cuckold," says Lenton, "is a harmelesse horned creature; but they [his horns] hang not in his eies, as your wittals doe." Formerly, when sentence of death was pronounced, the criminal was said to be attainted, attinctus, stained, or blackened. "This is after judgment; for there is great difference," says Blackstone," between a man convicted and attainted, though they are frequently through inaccuracy confounded together." The consequences of attainder were forfeiture and corruption of blood. In "The First Part of King Henry VI.," Act ii. sc. 4, Richard Plantagenet is asked, Was not thy father, Richard Earl of Cambridge, PLAN. My father was attached, not attainted; Attainder, forfeiture, and corruption of blood Attainder. 4 Bl. Comm. 381 In "The Winter's Tale," Act i. sc. 2, there is an allusion to that abuse in English law |