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By Francis Watt

He rood but hoomly in a medle coote,

Gird with a seynt of silk, with barres smale ;

Of his array telle I no lenger tale.”

How lifelike that touch of the fussy man, who “ seemede besier
than he was ! ” But each line might serve as text for a long dis-
sertation ! The old court hours were early : the judges sat from
eight till eleven, when your busy serjeant would, after bolting his
dinner, hie him to his pillar where he would hear his client’s
story, “and take notes thereof upon his knee.” The parvys or
pervyse of Paul’s—properly, only the church door—had come to
mean the nave of the cathedral, called also “ Paul’s Walk,” or
“Duke Humphrey’s Walk,” from the supposed tomb of Duke
Humphrey that stood there. In Tudor times it was the great
lounge and common newsroom of London. Here the needy ad-
venturer “ dined with Duke Humphrey,” as the quaint euphemism
ran ; here spies garnered in the popular opinion for the authorities.
It was the very place for the lawyer to meet his client, yet had he
other resorts: the round of the Temple Church and Westminster
are noted as in use for consultations.

Chaucer’s serjeant “ rood but hoomly ” because he was travel-
ling ; in court he had a long priest-like robe, with a furred cape
about his shoulders and a scarlet hood. The gowns were various,
and sometimes parti-coloured. Thus in 1555 we find each new
serjeant possessed of one robe of scarlet, one of violet, one of
brown and blue, one of mustard and murrey, with tabards (short
sleeveless coats) of cloths of the same colours. The cape was
edged, first with lambskin, afterwards with more precious stuff.
In Langland’s Vision of Piers Plowman (1362) there is mention
of this dress of the serjeants, they are jibed at for their love of
fees and so forth, after a fashion that is not yet extinct ! But
the distinctive feature in the dress was the coif, a close-fitting head

covering