Had Yorke's project been carried out, lawyers would have a large supply of that comic but sound literature of which Sir James Burrow's Reports contain a specimen in the following poetical version of Chief Justice Pratt's memorable decision with regard to a woman of English birth, who was the widow of a foreigner:
"A woman having settlement Married a man with none, The question was, he being dead, If what she had was gone.
"Quoth Sir John Pratt, 'The settlement Suspended did remain, Living the husband; but him dead It doth revive again.'
"Living the husband; but him dead It doth revive again."
Chief Justice Pratt's decision on this point having been reversed by his successor, Chief Justice Ryder's judgment was thus reported:
"A woman having a settlement, Married a man with none, He flies and leaves her destitute; What then is to be done?
"Quoth Ryder, the Chief Justice, 'In spite of Sir John Pratt, You'll send her to the parish In which she was a brat.
"'_Suspension of a settlement_ Is not to be maintained; That which she had by birth subsists Until another's gained.'
"That which she had by birth subsists Until another's gained."
In the early months of his married life, whilst playing the part of an Oxford don, Lord Eldon was required to decide in an important action brought by two undergraduates against the cook of University College. The plaintiffs declared that the cook had "sent to their rooms an apple-pie _that could not be eaten_." The defendant pleaded that he had a remarkably fine fillet of veal in the kitchen. Having set aside this plea on grounds obvious to the legal mind, and not otherwise then manifest to unlearned laymen, Mr. John Scott ordered the apple-pie to be brought in court; but the messenger, dispatched to do the judge's bidding, returned with the astounding intelligence that during the progress of the litigation a party of undergraduates had actually devoured the pie--fruit and crust. Nothing but the pan was left. Judgment: "The charge here is, that the cook has sent up an apple-pie that cannot be eaten. Now that cannot be said to have been uneatable which has been eaten; and as this apple-pie has been eaten, it was eatable. Let the cook be absolved."