From time immemorial popular satire has been equally ready to fix the shame of avarice upon Divinity Physic, and Law; and it cannot be denied that in this matter the sarcasms of the multitude are often sustained by the indisputable evidence of history. The greed of the clergy for tithes and dues is not more widely proverbial than the doctor's thirst for fees, or the advocate's readiness to support injustice for the sake of gain. Of Guyllyam of Horseley, physician to Charles VI. of France, Froissart says, "All his dayes he was one of the greatest nygardes that ever was;" and the chronicler adds, "With this rodde lightly all physicians are beaten." In his address to the sergeants who were called soon after his elevation to the Marble Chair, the Lord Keeper Puckering, directing attention to the grasping habits which too frequently disgraced the leaders of the bar, observed: "I am to exhort you also not to embrace multitude of causes, or to undertake more places of hearing causes than you are well able to consider of or perform, lest thereby you either disappoint your clients when their causes be heard, or come unprovided, or depart when their causes be in hearing. For it is all one not to come, as either to come unprovided, or depart before it be ended." Notwithstanding Lingard's able defence of the Cardinal, scholars are still generally of opinion that Beaufort--the Chancellor who lent money on the king's crown, the bishop who sold the Pope's soldiers for a thousand marks--is a notable instance of the union of legal covetousness and ecclesiastical greed.
The many causes which affect the value of money in different ages create infinite perplexity for the antiquarian who wishes to estimate the prosperity of the bar in past times; but the few disjointed data, that can be gathered from old records, create an impression that in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the ordinary fees of eminent counsel were by no means exorbitant, although fortunate practitioners could make large incomes.
Dugdale's 'Baronage' describes with delightful quaintness William de Beauchamp's interview with his lawyers when that noble (on the death of John Hastings, Earl of Pembroke, _temp._ Richard II., without issue), claimed the earl's estates under an entail, in opposition to Edward Hastings, the earl's heir-male of the half-blood. "Beauchamp," says Dugdale, "invited his learned counsel to his house in Paternoster Row, in the City of London; amongst whom were Robert Charlton (then a judge), William Pinchbek, William Branchesley, and John Catesby (all learned lawyers); and after dinner, coming out of his chapel, in an angry mood, threw to each of them a piece of gold, and said, 'Sirs, I desire you forthwith to tell me whether I have any right or title to Hastings' lordship and lands.' Whereupon Pinchbek stood up (the rest being silent, fearing that he suspected them), and said, 'No man here nor in England dare say that you have any right in them, except Hastings do quit his claim therein; and should he do it, being now under age, it would be of no validitie.'" Had Charlton, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, taken gold for his opinion on a case put before him in his judicial character, he would have violated his judicial oath. But in the earl's house in Paternoster Row he was merely a counsellor learned in the law, not a judge. Manifest perils attend a system which permits a judge in his private character to give legal opinions concerning causes on which he may be required to give judgment from the bench; but notwithstanding those perils, there is no reason for thinking that Charlton on this occasion either broke law or etiquette. The fair inference from the matter is, that in the closing years of the fourteenth century judges were permitted to give opinions for money to their private clients, although they were forbidden to take gold or silver from any person having "plea or process hanging before them."