ORIGIN OF THE COVENTRY ACT,

THE famous Coventry Act against cutting and maiming had its origin in the following piece of barbarous revenge: Sir John Coventry was on his way to his own house, in Suffolk Street, in the Haymarket, from the Cock Tavern, in Bow Street, where he had supped, when his nose was cut to the bone at the corner of the street "for reflecting on the King." It It appears that a motion had recently been made in the House of Commons to lay a tax on playhouses. The Court opposed the motion. The players, it was said (by Sir John Birkenhead), were the King's servants, and a part of his pleasure. Coventry asked, "Whether did the King's pleasure lie among the men or the women that acted?"—perhaps recollecting more particularly the King's visit to Moll Davis, in Suffolk Street, where Charles had furnished a house most richly for her, provided her with "a mighty pretty fine coach," and given her a ring of 7007., " which," says the page, "is a most infinite shame." The King determined to leave a mark upon Sir John Coventry for his freedom of remark, and he was watched on his way home. "He stood up to the wall," says Burnet, "and snatched the flambeau out of the servant's hands; and with that in one hand, and the sword in the other, he defended himself so well, that he got more credit by it than by all the actions of his life. He wounded some of them, but was soon disarmed, and they cut his nose to the bone, to teach him to remember what respect he owed to the King." Burnet adds, that his nose was so well sewed up, that the scar was scarce to be discerned.

"In the age of Charles, the ancient high and chival

rous sense of honour was esteemed Quixotic, and the Civil War had left traces of ferocity in the manners and sentiments of the people. Encounters, where the assailants took all advantages of number and weapons, were as frequent, and held as honourable, as regular duels. Some of these approached closely to assassination ; as in the above case which occasioned the Coventry Act, an Act highly necessary, for so far did our ancestors' ideas of manly forbearance differ from ours, that Killigrew introduces the hero of one of his comedies, a cavalier, and the fine gentleman of the piece, lying in wait for and slashing the face of a poor courtezan, who had cheated him."*

RISE OF JUDGE JEFFREYS.

TOWARDS the middle of the seventeenth century, there was a rough country-boy, a pupil of St. Paul's School, who stood watching a procession of the Judges on their way to dine with my Lord Mayor. The father of the boy wished to bind him apprentice to a mercer; but the aspiring lad, as he looked on the train of Judges, registered a vow that he too would one day ride through the City, the guest of the Mayor, and die a Lord Chancellor. His sire pronounced him mad, and resigned himself to the idea that his obstinate son would one day die with his shoes on.

The boy's views, however, were completely realized, and the father's prophecy was also in part fulfilled. The connection of the notorious Jeffreys with the City was, from an early period, a very close one. He

* Leigh Hunt's Town.

drank hard with, and worked hard for, the City authorities, and was as well known in the taverns of Aldermanbury as Shaftesbury was in the same district, when he was inspired by the transitory ambition of himself becoming Vice-king in the City. From the time that Jeffreys became Common Serjeant-but more especially from the period he became Recorderhe kinged it over the Vice-king. He was Lord Mayor, Common Council, Court of Aldermen and supreme Judge, all in one; and the first-named officer had really a melancholy time of it during the period Jeffreys had sway in the City. At the feasts he was a tippling, truculent fellow,-brow-beating the men, and staring the most dauntless of the women out of countenance. In the latter pastime he was well matched, perhaps excelled, by his learned brother, Trevor; and my Lord Mayor Bludworth had good reason to remember both of them. The Mayor had a fair daughter, the young and wild widow of a Welsh squire, and one who made City entertainments brilliant by her presence, and hilarious by her conduct and her tongue. There was a wonderful amount of homage rendered to this Helen, to whom it mattered little in what form or speech the homage was rendered. The rudest could not bring a blush upon her cheek; her ear was never turned away from any suitor of the hour, and every lover was received with a laugh and a welcome by this most buxom of Lord Mayors' daughters.

When she finally accepted the hand of Jeffreys, her own was in the hand of Trevor; and no City match was ever so productive of a peculiar sort of satirical ballad as this one, which united the said Mayor's

rather too notorious daughter with the not yet too infamous Sir George. Poets and poetasters pelted him with anonymous epigrams; aldermen drank queer healths to him in their cups; and lively tongued women, in his own court, when he was too hard upon them, would thrust at him an allusion to his lady from Guildhall, which would put him into a fume of impotent indignation.

There is not one man in a thousand, probably, who is aware that the blood of Jeffreys and the Mayor of London's daughter afterwards flowed in noble veins. They had an only son,-a dissolute, drunken fellow, with whom even aldermen were too nice to have a carouse, and whose appearance at a feast scared Mayors who could take their claret liberally. This likely youth, whose intoxication broke down the solemnity of Dryden's funeral, married, in spite of his vices, a daughter and sole heiress of the House of Pembroke. The only child of this marriage was Henrietta, who married the Earl of Pomfret, and enabled Queen Caroline to have a grand-daughter of the infamous Judge for her Lady of the Bedchamber. One of Lady Pomfret's many children, Charlotte Finch, was well known to many of our sires. She was governess to George the Third's children, whom she often accompanied to the City to witness the annual show; the great-great-grand-daughter of Judge Jeffreys and the Guildhall light-o'-love thus having the superintendence of the conduct and morals of the young Princes and Princesses. From the Athenæum, No. 1723.

STORIES OF THE STAR-CHAMBER.

THIS odious Court, named from the ceiling of the chamber being anciently ornamented with gilded stars, is not mentioned as a Court of Justice earlier than the reign of Henry VII., about which time the old titles of "the Lords sitting in the Star-Chamber," and "the Council in the Star-Chamber," seem to have been merged into the one distinguishing appellation of " the Star Chamber." The Judges, before and subsequent to this alteration, were "the Lords of the Council," as they are still termed in the Litany of the Church service. The modes of proceeding before the council were by the mouth, or by bill and answer. After the sittings, the Lords dined in the inner Star-Chamber, at the public expense. In political cases, "soden reporte," as it was called, is thought to have meant private and secret information given to the council. The person accused, or suspected, was immediately apprehended and privately examined. If he confessed any offence, or if the cunning examiner drew from him, or he let fall, any expressions which suited their purpose, he was at once brought to the bar, his confession or examination was read, he was convicted out of his own mouth, and judgment was immediately pronounced against him. Upon admissions of immaterial circumstances thus aggravated, and distorted into confessions of guilt, the Earl of Northumberland was prosecuted by word of mouth, in the Star-Chamber, for being privy to the Gunpowder Plot, and was sentenced to pay a fine of 30,000l., and be imprisoned for life.

The Star-Chamber held its sittings, from the end of