NOTE D D D. 



itterly to delay at length ; for the manner of it is to take the tale out of the 

 counsellor at the bar his mouth, and to give a cursory order, nothing tending or 

 &amp;gt;nducing to the end of the business. It makes me remember what I heard 

 &amp;gt;ne say of a jud^e that sat in Chancery ; that he would make forty orders in a 



rning out of the way, and it was out of the way indeed ; for it was nothing to 



end of the business : and this is that which makes sixty, eighty, an hundred 

 Jers in a cause, to and fro, begetting one another ; and like Penelope s web, 

 doing and undoing. But I mean not to purchase the praise of expeditive in 

 that kind ; but as one that have a feeling of my duty, and of the case of others. 

 My endeavour shall be to hear patiently, and to cast my order into such a 

 mould as may soonest bring the subject to the end of his journey. 



To the same effect he says, in his essay &quot; Of Delays,&quot; &quot; The ripeness or 

 unripeness of the occasion (as we said) must ever be well weighed ; and gone- 

 rally it is good to commit the beginnings of all great actions to Argos with his 

 hundred eyes, and the ends to Briareus with his hundred hands ; first to watch, 

 and then to speed ; for the helmet of Pluto, which maketh the politic man go 

 invisible, is secrecy in the council, and celerity in the execution ; for when 

 things are once come to the execution, there is no secrecy comparable to celerity ; 

 like the motion of a bullet in the air, which flieth so swift as it outruns the eye.&quot; 



It is evident Lord Bacon thought the number of the judges ought to be 

 increased. Although in the infancy of the science of equity its administration 

 ought perhaps to be entrusted to one master mind, yet, when the science 

 advances, it swells beyond the power of any individual. Hence Lord Bacon, 

 . in the thirty-eighth aphorism of his &quot; Justitia Universalis,&quot; says, &quot;At curiae 

 illao uni viro ne committantur sed ex pluribus conslent.&quot; And he says to the 

 same effect in his tract on the perfection of the Church : &quot; But there be two 

 circumstances in the administration of bishops, wherein, I confess, I could 

 never be satisfied ; the one, the sole exercise of their authority ; the other, the 

 deputation of their authority. 



&quot; For the first, the bishop giveth orders alone, excommunicateth alone, 

 judgeth alone. This seemeth to be a thing almost without example in good 

 government, and therefore not unlikely to have crept in in the degenerate and 

 corrupt times. We see the greatest kings and monarchs have their councils. 

 There is no temporal court in England of the higher sort where the authority 

 doth rest in one person. The king s bench, common pleas, and the exchequer, 

 are benches of a certain number of judges. The chancellor of England hath 

 an assistance of twelve masters of the chancery. The master of the wards hath 

 a council of the court : so hath the chancellor of the duchy. In the exchequer 

 chamber, the lord treasurer is joined with the chancellor and the barons. The 

 masters of the requests are ever more than one. The justices of assize are two. 

 The lord presidents in the North and in Wales have councils of divers. The 

 star-chamber is an assembly of the king s privy council, aspersed with the lords 

 spiritual and temporal : so as in courts the principal person hath ever either 

 colleagues or assessors. 



&quot; The like is to be found in other well governed commonwealths abroad, 

 where the jurisdiction is yet more dispersed : as in the court of parliament of 

 France, and in other places. No man will deny but the acts that pass the 

 bishop s jurisdiction are of as great importance as those that pass the civil 

 courts : for men s souls are more precious than their bodies or goods, and so are 

 their good names. Bishops have their infirmities, and have no exception from 

 that general malediction which is pronounced against all men living, &quot; Van 

 soli, nam si occideret, &c,&quot; Nay, we see that the first warrant in spiritual 

 causes is directed to a number, Die Ecclesia? ; which is not so in temporal 

 matters : and we see that in general causes of church government there are as 

 well assemblies of all the clergy in councils as of all the states in parliament. 

 Whence should this sole exercise of jurisdiction come? Surely I do suppose, 

 and I think upon good ground, that ab initio non fuit ita ; and that the deans 

 and chapters were councils about the sees and chairs of bishops at the first, and 

 were unto them a presbytery or consistory ; and intermeddled not only in the 

 disposing of their revenues and endowments, but much more in jurisdiction 



