112 
LIFE OF DEAN BUCKLAND . 
[CH. IV. 
Oxford, and were very awe-inspiring, solemn events. The 
week began with an assize sermon at St. Mary’s, which the 
Judge attended in state. Dr. Buckland used to take his 
children to see the stately procession of the Judge, and 
other dignitaries of the law, as it traversed the whole 
length of Oxford from the Judge’s house in St. Giles’ to 
the Town Hall in St. Aldates’. The Judge, attired in wig 
and robes and seated in his ponderous coach, was driven 
by a fat coachman, whose mighty weight seemed to have 
caused a depression on the box-seat, covered with hammer 
cloth fringed round with gorgeous coloured tassels ; two 
or three footmen stood behind the coach, long wands in 
hand. At the entrance to the Town Hall, the beadles 
were collected to keep order, for there were of course at 
that time no policemen. These pompous individuals wore 
a quaint dress and cocked hats, long frock-coats lined with 
red with brass buttons, and carried in their hands stout 
wands of office. 
The prisoners were brought from the old castle to the 
Town Hall to stand their trial. The new gaol with its 
adjacent judgment hall or law court was not then built. 
The Rev. Gilbert Heathcote, Sub-Warden of Winchester, 
tells a curious tale which shows the inconvenience arising 
from the want of space in the Town Hall buildings. 
When he was an undergraduate, he attended Dr. Kidd’s 
lectures. The Regius Professor of Medicine had a male 
and female skeleton suspended from the ceiling, on either 
side his lecture table, which he could pull up and down 
as required. The male skeleton was of almost gigantic 
stature, and was that of a man who was tried for murder 
