Queen's Bench, Court of The ... is only accessible in Term time, and during the sittings after Term.
The Court of Queen's Bench is the supreme court of Common Law, to determine pleas between the Crown and the subject, and the rights of property; it also corrects the errors of the Judges and Justices of England in their judgment and proceedings, not only in pleas of the Crown, but in all pleas, real, personal and mixed, save only pleas in the Exchequer. This court holds its sittings for the trial of causes out of term, occasionally in Guildhall Yard.
Mogg's New Picture of London and Visitor's Guide to it Sights, 1844
As we enter Palace Yard, a few of the white wigged gownsmen are straggling
into the huge hall, followed here and there by an inky satellite or an anxious
client; others, bag-laden and busy, are coming forth and driving hastily off to
town. We find Westminster Hall quiet, and comparatively deserted, save by a
band of policemen drawn up in a double rank. The House of Commons is prorogued,
and the customary crowd of constituents and expectants has disappeared. Almost
every person who comes in, disappears also at one of the doors on the right. We
follow the general example, and mounting a few steps, and pushing open a couple
of doors, one within the other, and which are made to move noiselessly on their
hinges, find ourselves in the presence of an old woman sitting at an
apple-stall, supplemented with a collection of stale gingerbread and
sweet-stuff, and close by the side of a roaring fire large enough to roast it
baron of beef. This is the lobby of the Queen's Bench Court, and the huge fire,
it is plain, is for the purpose of warming the court itself, which, by a proper
disposition of the doors and drapery, can be made to receive as much of the heat
as is desirable. The apple and bun-stall, which is probably welcome enough to
the exhausted litigants and listeners, is at the present day all that is left of
the famous array of shops which at a former period formed one of the chef
attractions of Westminster Hall, and made it a fashionable promenade.
Passing through the ventilating lobby, which is just now at a temperature of
about eighty degrees, and feeling our way through the screening drapery, we are
in the Court of Queen's Bench, so called from the ancient custom of holding
courts before the monarch in person. The court is a single chamber, some forty
feet square, and about as many in height. On this gloomy wintry day, it appears
but dimly lighted from a domed circular lantern in the roof. It is crowded with
people to an inconvenient extent, and it is no easy matter to obtain even a
glimpse ; but, after a little waiting, a sudden vacancy elevates us to a high
seat in the rear, which is the best point of view. Notwithstanding the crowd,
the nearest possible approach to silence prevails; and if at any time there be
heard a hum of voices or a shuffling of feet, it is quelled in a moment by an
admonitory " hush --sh--sh," which, :passing rapidly round, subsides into
stillness. It would seem that when annoyances of this hind do occur, they
originate much more frequently among the professionals in wigs and gowns than
among the spectators.
Under a carved canopy, and in front of the royal arms, raised upon, a kind
of dais, sit four judges. Their costume differs materially from that of the
legal brotherhood already described ; and though a foreigner might fairly
stigmatie it as barbarous, it is yet imposing, striking, and . in a degree dignified. It consists of the white wig aforementioned, but considerably amplified
by two side appendages that rest upon the shoulders—and of a scarlet gown most
redundant in material, and disposed in ample folds, the whole being bounteously
broidered with ermine. The judge who speaks most frequently, and with a
deliberate kind of hesitation which seems about to falter, but never does, is
Lord Campbell; the one at his right is Chief Justice Coleridge, and the two at
his left are Chief Justices Wightman and Erie. Each of the judges has a small
separate writing-desk before him. Below them are seated a number of
professionals, in official costume, taking notes at a long table. Again below
them, in a kind of pit, are a rank of non-professionals on a bench, whom we take
to be clients, witnesses, or persons interested in the causes expected to come
on. In front of these is another long table, well supplied with writing
materials, over which a round number of large white heads are stooping and
peering on the documents which grow into existence beneath their fingers. In
front of them, and facing the judges, are several consecutive rows of seats
filled with the lawyers, advocates, barristers, and so on, who are concerned, or
supposed to be concerned, in the several questions which have to be adjudicated.
Behind these, in rows rising one above another, are the seats allotted to the
public ; and these, as well as those set apart for the legal gentlemen, are all
crammed to overflowing.
The spectators manifest, by the attention they bestow, the interest they
really take in the case which is going forward. It is a libel case, and the
counsel for the plaintiff, who interlards every period with "mylud," and "
yerludship," is zealously endeavouring to impress the bench with a sense of the
profound injury his client has received at the hands, or rather the lips, of the
libeller. But his lordship is not very penetrable to the counsel's arguments. He
interrupts him in the middle of a rather windy piece of rhetoric, and questions
him as to certain admissions which the plaintiff had made to a witness who is
present on his own side. These cannot be denied, and they constitute, in his
lordship's opinion, a justification of the terms complained of as libellous; and
in two or three words, which we fail to catch, the case is dismissed; the
counsel bags his papers and vanishes, while the next case is called on.
Whatever takes place, there is not the slightest demonstration on the part
of the spectators. Their singular gravity strikes us, and we cannot help
speculating on the somewhat peculiar expression which characterises the majority
of the faces present. Were we disposed to theorise on the matter, we should set
down the greater part of the audience as old litigants, who in days past had won
or lost some cause whose decision has determined the course of their destiny,
and who, from having at a former period lived so long in an atmosphere of
excitement, cannot now live without it. How else is the fact explainable that
there are men, in no way interested in the causes tried, whose punctuality in
attendance exceeds that of the judge himself, and who are never known to be
absent during a single day or a single hour while the court is open?
It is not difficult to discriminate those persons interested in the question
at issue from these old stagers. The latter form a class who, for the most part,
have never in their lives before been in a court of justice at all. They cannot
settle down comfortably in a seat ; or, if they do so for a moment, they are up
and off at a tangent, as some sudden thought strikes them, either to cool their
fever with a bout at the apple-stall, or to write a note at one of the desks in
the rear, of which there is always one or more available, and thus to inform
their counsel as to some vital point forgotten till that very moment, or perhaps
then for the first time imagined. Then they are seen tiptoeing out under some
sudden and secret impetus, and bustling in again in a breathless state ; and not
unfrequently will they be found pale, exhausted, and resigned as martyrs in some
retired corner, ready to accept either fate - to rejoice in success, or to
submit to defeat, so that they be only released from the pangs of suspense.
The Leisure Hour, 1858