^be Stuart period 



CHAPTER XXX. 



THE BUSIXESS OP THE COURT BAROX. 



When as a guest one wanders from room to room in some old 

 country house built in Gotliic or Tudor days, one may wish to 

 discover the particular apartment in which the seignorial court 

 once held its sittings. There is an old south country manor 

 in which the choice lies between several oak-wainscoted rooms 

 on the ground floor, until in the wall of one there is discovered 

 a secret staircase, ascending which the searcher finds himself 

 in a tiny oak-panelled apartment. Crouched in what recalls 

 to mind the smallest box of some minute provincial theatre, 

 he is in a position to gaze down on the apartment below, and 

 in fancy picture the scene of a mediaeval Estate Court. The 

 ghosts of long dead steward and suitors arise before his eyes ; 

 he sees the anxious faces of copyholders, and hears their 

 plaints. He clothes the actors on this old-world stage in their 

 picturesque Elizabethan garb, and listens to the quaint English 

 of the speakers. He grows confused over tenancies in dower 

 and fee, at will and for years, in curtesie and frank marriage, 

 and hopelessly mixes up formedon, wardship and livery of 

 seisin with half-a-dozen other incidents of feudal tenure. He 

 wonders at the stiff formalities of a bygone chivalry, and wel- 

 comes as modern and natural, the half-stifled yawn of the 

 lord's bailiff as he wearies over the long morning's sitting. 

 The oaken surroundings were not so black and polished then 

 as they are this year of Grace 1891, but that official-looking 

 chair there, in which the steward is just stretching himself, is 

 in other respects the same as it is now, and the long oak table 



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