PRIVY SEAL 



4S30 



PROBATE 



sons, such as retired ambassadors, judges and 

 distinguished scholars, selected from all parts 

 of Great Britain and its dependencies. For 

 many of them it is simply a title of great 

 honor, for a privy councilor, as such, receives 

 no salary; it is only when called to a place in 

 the Cabinet that he becomes a salaried official. 

 Members of the Council are appointed for the 

 life of the sovereign who names them, and for 

 six months after the ruler's death, unless for 

 some cause stricken from the roll. The full 

 Council seldom meets except at the beginning 

 of a new reign or when the reigning sovereign 

 announces his or her marriage. 



A member of the Privy Council prefixes the 

 title Right Honorable to his name and follows 

 the name with the suffix P. C. (Privy Coun- 

 cillor) ; this hitter title precedes any other with 

 which the member may have been honored. 



The Cabinet of the Dominion of Canada is 

 called His Majesty's Privy Council for Canada, 

 but only such of its members as have been so 

 appointed belong to the Privy Council of the 

 Empire. 



Consult Wheeler's Privy Council Law; Bald- 

 win's Acts of the Privy Council (New Series). 



PRIVY SEAL, one of the official seals used 

 on public documents in Great Britain. It is 

 intermediate in character between the signet 

 seal, that is, the seal used as the signature of 

 the sovereign, and the Great Seal, or the seal 

 used on all public acts of state which concern 

 the United Kingdom. The privy seal was used 

 to authorize the issue of money from the ex- 

 chequer, to authenticate documents to the 

 Keeper of the Great Seal, thus authorizing him 

 to affix the latter, and it served to authenticate 

 documents of minor importance. Since 1884 

 its use has been discontinued, but the office of 

 Keeper of the Privy Seal still exists. He is 

 the fifth officer of state, and is usually a tem- 

 poral lord and a member of the Cabinet. 



PRIZE FIGHTING means fighting with fists, 

 either bare or with gloves, for a prize or re- 

 ward. In modern times it is peculiarly an An- 

 glo-Saxon sport, but ages ago it was practiced 

 by other nations, especially the Greeks and Ro- 

 mans. After the fall of Rome, however, boxing 

 seems to have died out except in England, 

 where professional fighters were known through- 

 out the Middle Ages. Modern prize fighting 

 begins with James Figg, a fighter who defeated 

 all comers in England from 1719 to 1730. One 

 of his successors was Jack Broughton, who 

 made boxing a national sport. He first used 

 gloves, but only in practice. All prize fights 



were fought with bare knuckles until more than 

 a century later. The last great prize fight of 

 this old style was fought between Tom Sayers, 

 the English champion, and J. C. Heenan, the 

 American champion, in 1860. These fights were 

 so brutal that public opinion finally called a 

 halt. 



Prize fights to-day are conducted under the 

 regular rules for boxing (which see). They 

 lack the brutality and the trickery and cheating 

 which characterized the bare-fist fights of an 

 earlier day, but the majority of people regard 

 them as degrading exhibitions. Some states 

 forbid prize fights, or public boxing exhibitions 

 of any kind; some allow "sparring matches," 

 but not for prize money; in a few states only 

 are there no restrictions. 



World's Championships. The first recog- 

 nized world's champion was Tom Sayers, an 

 Englishman, who left the field open on his re- 

 tirement in 1860. Ten years later another 

 Englishman, Jem Mace, defeated J. Allen, an 

 American. The world's championship fell to 

 Jake Kilrain of Boston in 1887. The cham- 

 pions since Kilrain's day, with the dates of 

 their supremacy, follow: John L. Sullivan, an 

 American, 1889-1892; James J. Corbett, an 

 American, 1892-1897; Robert Fitzsimmons, an 

 Australian, 1897-1900; James J. Jeffries, an 

 American, 1900-1910; Jack Johnson, an Ameri- 

 can negro, 1910-1915. Johnson's personal char- 

 acter, unlike that of most of his predecessors, 

 was not of a kind to win admiration, and the 

 lovers of the sport generally rejoiced at his 

 defeat on April 5, 1915, by Jess Willard, an 

 American. 



PROBATE, pro' bay t, the proof before a 

 proper court that an instrument offered to be 

 proved or registered is the last will and testa- 

 ment of a deceased person. It is the duty of 

 the person or persons named as executors to 

 offer the will for probate, and the instrument 

 should be presented as soon as possible after 

 the death of the testator (the person leaving 

 the will). Separate courts are maintained for 

 this purpose in most states and provinces, and 

 are known as surrogate's, or probate, courts. 

 A citation, or notice, is issued, when the will 

 is offered for probate, to all the heirs who 

 would have taken the property if no will had 

 been made. On the return of the citation, or 

 the day mentioned, the parties cited may ap- 

 pear and object to the probate of the will on 

 various grounds. A date for hearing is then 

 fixed by the probate judge, and the examina- 

 tion of witnesses proceeds as in any civil action. 



