442
NOTES AND QUERIES.
[9 th S. II. Due. 3, '98.
The rapid increase of trade and manufactures
at this epoch appears to have kept the
lawyers particularly busy, so that complaint
was made of their great increase in num-
ber :
"A Statute of Parliament passed in 1455 lamented the good old days when Norfolk and Norwich used to employ only six or eight attorneys at the King's Court, ' in which time great tranquillity reigned in the said city and counties.' This ' tranquillity ' was broken by the manufacturing and export trade, for now a body of eighty or more lawyers busily fre- quented every fair and market and assembly, moving and inciting people to lawsuits, and while having nothing to live on but their attorneyships yet prospered so well that a wise legislature had to order that Norfolk should henceforth, as of old, have only six attorneys and Norwich two."*
It was not only the trading community who were the supporters of the legal frater- nity, as the following statement proves :
"In 1463 James, Lord of Berkeley, made an agreement with the Countess of Shrewsbury that they would have no more battles at law ; for he was then sixty-nine and she fifty-two, and neither of them since their age of discretion had ' enjoyed any three months of freedom from lawsuits.' "f
It was not merely in conducting lawsuits that an accomplished lawyer found occupa- tion. In the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- turies the townsmen frequently found it necessary, in support of their claims, to make use of the contents of their muniment chests, and this led to the necessity of having them rewritten and translated from the Norman-French or Latin in which they had been originally composed :
"An able lawyer in those days could command the market, as we see by the story of Thomas Caxton (probably a brother of William Caxton the printer), who spent a busy professional career of forty years going from town to town, wherever he could best sell his services. "
The only direct reference to the occupants of Furnival's Inn at this epoch with which I have met occurs in a statement in Stow's 'Annals,' to the effect that, a tumult occur- ring in Fleet Street between the gentlemen of the Inns of Court and Chancery and some citizens of London in 32 Henry VI., in which some mischief was done, the principals of Clifford's Inn, Furnival's Inn, and Barnard's Inn were sent prisoners to Hartford Castle.
In the reign of Richard II. the Inn passed into the possession of Thomas Nevil, younger brother of Ralph, Earl of Westmoreland, by his marriage with Joan Furnivall, daughter
- 'Town Life in the Fifteenth Century,' by Mrs.
J. R. Green, vol. i. p. 58.
t Ibid., vol. i. p. 266.
J Ibid., vol. ii. p. 261, where further information concerning Caxton and other common or town clerks is given.
and heiress of William, Lord Furnivall ; and
at the commencement of the fifteenth cen-
- ury, probably about 1404, by the marriage
of Maud Nevil, his mother's stepdaughter, and daughter and heiress of the above Thomas and Joan Nevil, with John Talbot, the sixth baron, the Inn became his property as part of his wife's dowry. This baron is 'the great Alcides of the field" of Shake- speare.* He was summoned to Parliament 1409 to 1421 as Lord Furnivall or as Lord Talbot of Hallamshire, the fee of which he held in right of his wife. The peerages state that he was summoned in 1409 as " Johannis Talbot de Furnyvall." He was Lieutenant of Ireland in 1414, and was appointed to that government for the third time on 12 March, 1445. He was taken prisoner at Patay in 1429, and remained in captivity until 1433. He accompanied Henry V. in his French wars, and is said to have been with that monarch when he died at Vincennes, 31 August, 1422. On 20 May, 1442, he was created Earl of Salop ; the title was taken from the county and not from the town, although he and his successors called themselves Earls of Shrews- bury ('D.N.B.'); and on 17 July, 1446, he received the title of Earl of Waterford. He was ambassador to France in 1443, and Lieutenant of the Duchy of Aquitaine in 1453. On 17 July in that year, at the siege of Castillon, Chastillon, or Chatillon, as it is variously written,
"Shrewsbury, already wounded in the face, was struck in the leg by a shot from a culverin and dis- mounted. His men began to fly, and the French descending on the little group around him, one of them thrust a sword through his body, without recognizing his victim. His sou Lisle, whom he had vainly entreated to save himself, fell by his side." ' D.N.B.'
This son Lisle was the young John Talbot of Shakespeare. He was the earl's eldest son by his second marriage with Margaret, daughter and coheiress of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. He was created Lord Lisle of Kingston Lisle in Berkshire in 1444, and raised to the dignity of a viscount in 1451. On the death of the earl Gascony and Guy- enne were finally lost to the English.
Of the condition of Holborn as a thorough- fare in the fifteenth century we obtain a glimpse from the circumstance that its deep and miry condition having caused some injury to royal and other conveyances that passed that way, the king, Henry V., caused it to be paved at his expense in 1417. t Its con- dition was no worse than that of other London
- < 1 Henry VI.,' Act IV. sc. vii.
t Bymer, ' Fredera.'
