date

31 May 1805 Evidence Note
31 May 1805

Evidence

Note

Ch. False Ends. Judge

' 6. Interest. connection

To take as the time of Henry the 6 th, one way of making business was this. To ground[?] the process of outlawry against a defendant it was necessary in those days that the plaintiff should appear in person before the court. [If in those days, having a quarrel with a man, you wished to convert him into an Outlaw the mode was plain and easy[?] On the King's Bench and in the Co /Court of Westminster Hall there were then/ as there are now under the Judges officers called Filazers and Eviginters[?]. To one of these officers /To an office of one of these descriptions/ you paid a visit, and settled with him about terms. It was then his business to contrive that there should be a suit commenced in your name, against the adversary: and that the adversary should hear nothing about the matter. An entry was thus made.]

When a man was converted into an Outlaw, the consequence was that instead of going to his creditors, his property, being forfeited went invariably to the King; in effect amongst a set of pleasures[?] of different descriptions, a list of whom, in numbers difficult to reckon up, may be seen, in a modern book of practice + /as it stands on the footing of existing establishments,/ When a man was fixed upon as wroth tearing to pieces by these vultures, the way was to enter his name upon the list of defendants, at the suit of a sham /nominal/ /fictitious/ plaintiff; it then fell to the lot of a Filazer or Exiginter (names still existing upon the judicial official list), to enter upon the Record, the personal appearance of this man of straw. The process of Outlawry thereupon opened, and the first notice that the Outlaw had of his being sued was when the executing officer broke into his house, and saved his property. This was a practice, regular practice, both in the Common Pleas, and the King's Bench. The Judges, to whom these subordinate officers were subject must have been accomplices in this fraud, or there could not have been any need to apply to Parliament for a remedy; Parliament interposed, and to do what? To declare, and that only for a time, that such practice should not go on in future.

+ Field
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