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Lecture
IV.

Westmin

ster Hall:

and asso

ciations.

LECTURE IV.

WESTMINSTER HALL: ITS HISTORY AND THE CHARACTERIS-
TICS OF THE SYSTEM OF LAW DEVELOPED AND PERFECTED
THEREIN; AND HEREIN OF JUDICIAL TENURE AND COM-
PENSATION, TRIAL BY JURY, AND JUDICIAL PRECEDENT.

WEST

ESTMINSTER HALL (that is, the original building) had been built by William Rufus. A. D. 1087–1100) more than a century before the its history clause in Magna Charta, heretofore considered, required the Court of Common Pleas to be held "in some certain place." It was originally built as an annex to the King's palace of Westminster, and its earlier uses, as I shall presently show, were for royal ceremonies and festivities. After Magna Charta (and probably in consequence of it) it is certain that Westminster Hall became the seat of the great judicial courts, including, for a long period and until our own day, the Court of Chancery, after its establishment as a distinct jurisdiction. It has never ceased to be used as the place where the ceremonials of the coronation of the English monarchs are solemnized with the accustomed splendor, and as the place for the trial of peers and of official personages charged with great crimes and misdemeanors. But

1 See ante Lecture II.

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IV.

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its most distinctive character has been acquired by Lecture reason of its having been for centuries the seat of the great courts of justice of the realm. Hawthorne, Hawvisiting England in 1855, thus records in his "Eng- impres lish Note-Books" his impressions of it. "We entered "Westminster Hall. . . . After the elaborate orna"ment of the rooms we had just been viewing, this "venerable hall looks extremely simple and bare. ". . . But it is a noble space, and all without the support of a single pillar. . I love it for its "simplicity and antique nakedness, and deem it worthy to have been the haunt and home of History through the six centuries since it was "built. . . . The whole world cannot show another "hall such as this, so tapestried with recollections "of whatever is most striking in human annals."

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Among the most finished pieces of word-painting in the language is Macaulay's well-known reference to the main hall as the place for the trial of the impeachment of Warren Hastings. You recall his words: "The place," he says, "was worthy of such a Macau"trial. It was the great hall of William Rufus; the scription. "hall which had resounded with acclamations at the "inauguration of thirty kings; the hall which had "witnessed the just sentence of Bacon and the just "absolution of Somers; the hall where the eloquence "of Strafford had for a moment awed and melted a "victorious party inflamed with just resentment; the "hall where Charles had confronted the high court "of justice with the placid courage which has half "redeemed his fame." The great essayist by his love for dramatic effect and by his immediate subject, - - which was the trial of the extraordinary man

IV.

The chief glory of

the place.

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Lecture to whose valor and genius Britain's monarch owes to-day her title of " Empress of India" and her rule over the 240,000,000 of her Indian subjects,1 looked the less striking but after all the chief glory of the place as the external or visible source whence English justice for more than six centuries has gone forth in its silent but exhaustless flow to the "business and bosoms" of men throughout the entire realm, and whose principles are the rich inheritance of all English-speaking people in every part of the globe. When Westminster Hall is mentioned, the world thinks of it, and above all the lawyer thinks of it, as the seat of the judicial courts and the fountainhead of English justice. Its permanent glory is derived, not from coronation ceremonies or the imposing spectacle of an occasional state trial, but from its being immemorially associated with the history and development of the English law, with the renown of great judges, with the fame of learned lawyers and eloquent advocates. The history and associations of a building so illustrious, one which has given its name to the distinctive system of law which for ages has been administered in it, may fitly occupy a few moments of the time of those who are engaged in studying that system, since this will serve as an introduction to a view of the nature and characteristics of the system itself.

The Hall

Macaulay's statement that Westminster Hall, of William where Hastings was tried, "was the great hall of

Rufus.

William Rufus," if taken literally, is incorrect. Lord Campbell fell into the same mistake when he said that "William Rufus built the magnificent 1 Ante Lecture I., p. 26.

IV.

"hall which is looked upon with such veneration by Lecture "English lawyers, and which is the scene of so many "venerable events in English history. This being "completed at Whitsuntide, 1099, the Chief-Justiciar, "Flambard, sat here in the following Trinity Term ; "and the Superior Courts of Justice have been held "in it for seven hundred and fifty years."" The precise facts are these: The first great hall was indeed built by William Rufus, and was completed in 1099, when that monarch held therein his court- probably the Curia Regis -for the first time; so that it is now nearly eight centuries since "that sacred spot [not the existing building] was first applied "to legal uses.” 2

The original hall of William Rufus had to be renovated, if not rebuilt, within a hundred years. As a result of floods, fire, and time, it was necessary again to renovate or rebuild the hall in the Rebuildtime of Edward III.; another fire intervened in ing. 1386 in the time of Richard II.; and in the work of restoration the edifice was altered, enlarged, strengthened, and beautified. In this re-edification and improvement it is considered not improbable that there was brought into requisition the taste if not the active superintendence of William of Wykeham, of William of Wykeham, the Magnificent; for such may justly be called the accom- The exist plished minister and Chancellor of Edward III. and its and Richard II. The hall as it now exists, "in its "perpendicular Gothic style, its stately roofs, its

8

1 Campbell, “Lives of the Chief-Justices," vol. i., chap. i.
2 Foss, "Judges of England,” vol. i., William Rufus.

8 Foss, iv., p. 20.

ing hall

uses.

Lecture "hammer-headed beams and angels' heads," was finished under Richard II. in 1399.1

IV.

Devoted mainly to legal uses since 1399.

uses.

From that date it was devoted mainly to legal It is reasonably clear that it has been thus used from the time of Henry III., when the Curia Regis, more than six hundred years ago, came to an end, and its powers were distributed into the several benches of Westminster Hall. And it is probable that it was thus used from a period soon after Magna Charta. The spot, therefore, has been consecrated to judicial uses for nearly eight centuries, and the present building was continuously the seat of the great courts of justice for nearly five hundred until their recent removal to the new years, Law Courts Building, known as the Royal Courts of Justice.2

1 "To the ill-fated Richard II.," says Jesse (reprinted in "Memories of Westminster Hall," vol. i., chap. ii.), "we are indebted for the magnificent old hall as it now stands. Under his auspices, it was greatly strengthened and beautified, the present matchless roof having been added, and the exterior coated with thick walls of stone. At its completion, in 1398 [1399], it must have presented nearly the same appearance which it wears at the present day. As an apartment, it is said to be the largest in Europe, and its massive timber roof is perhaps the finest specimen of similar scientific construction in the world." "The actual history of Westminster Hall," says Serjeant Pulling, who has made a careful study of it, "shows it to have been originally designed not for a hall of justice, but for a banqueting hall; that it was so used for ages after it was first erected in the time of William Rufus; that Rufus's building was destroyed and an entirely new hall built before the Courts of Law were fixed there, and that the existing Westminster Hall dates back, not to the days of William Rufus, but to Richard II." Pulling, "The Order of the Coif," London, 1884, p. 79.

2 The erection of the new building and the removal thither of the great courts of the kingdom is so notable an event in the judicial history of England that I have subjoined an account of the erection and character of the building, and of the ceremonies attending its inauguration, in a note (A) at the end of this lecture.

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