Old and New London / Volume I by Walter Thornbury

Author:Walter Thornbury [Thornbury, Walter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-02-26T05:00:00+00:00

ST. PAUL'S AND NEIGHBOURHOOD. (From Aggas' Plan, 1563.)

On the south side is the entry to the Prerogative Court, and at No. 10 the Faculty Office. They have no marriage licences at the Faculty Office of an earlier date than October, 1632, and up to 1695 they are only imperfectly preserved. There is a MS. index to the licences prior to 1695, for which the charge for a search is 4s. 6d. Since 1695 the licences have been regularly kept, and the fee for searching is a shilling.

The great Admiralty judge of the early part of this century was Dr. Johnson's friend, Lord Stowell, the brother of Lord Eldon.

According to Sir Herbert Jenner Fust, Lord Stowell's decisions during the war have since formed a code of international law, almost universally recognised. In one year alone (1806) he pronounced 2,206 decrees. Lord Stowell (then Dr. Scott) was made Advocate-General in Doctors' Commons in 1788, and Vicar-General or official principal for the Archbishop of Canterbury. Soon after he became Master of the Faculties, and in 1798 was nominated Judge of the High Court of Admiralty, the highest dignity of the Doctors' Commons Courts. During the great French war, it is said Dr. Scott sometimes received as much as £1,000 a case for fees and perquisites in a prize cause. He left at his death personal property exceeding £200,000. He used to say that he admired above all other investments "the sweet simplicity of the Three per Cents.," and when purchasing estate after estate, observed "he liked plenty of elbow-room."

"It was," says Warton, "by visiting Sir Robert Chambers, when a fellow of University, that Johnson became acquainted with Lord Stowell; and when Chambers went to India, Lord Stowell, as he expressed it to me, seemed to succeed to his place in Johnson's friendship."

"Sir William Scott (Lord Stowell)," says Boswell, "told me that when he complained of a headache in the post-chaise, as they were travelling together to Scotland, Johnson treated him in a rough manner—'At your age, sir, I had no headache.'

"Mr. Scott's amiable manners and attachment to our Socrates," says Boswell in Edinburgh, "at once united me to him. He told me that before I came in the doctor had unluckily had a bad specimen of Scottish cleanliness. He then drank no fermented liquor. He asked to have his lemonade made sweeter; upon which the waiter, with his greasy fingers, lifted a lump of sugar and put it into it. The doctor, in indignation, threw it out. Scott said he was afraid he would have knocked the waiter down."

Again Boswell says:—"We dined together with Mr. Scott, now Sir William Scott, his Majesty's Advocate-General, at his chambers in the Temple—nobody else there. The company being so small, Johnson was not in such high spirits as he had been the preceding day, and for a considerable time little was said. At last he burst forth—'Subordination is sadly broken down in this age. No man, now, has the same authority which his father had—except a gaoler. No master has it over his servants; it is diminished in our colleges; nay, in our grammar schools.

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