, and an allowance for stationery. Under the last
mentioned monarch, however, the stipend and allowance were both
withdrawn; and at present the status of a Q.C. is purely an affair of
professional precedence, to which no fixed emolument is attached.

But a list of the fees, paid from the royal purse to each judge or crown
lawyer under James I., would afford no indication as to the incomes
enjoyed by the leading members of the bench and bar at that period. The
salaries paid to those officers were merely retaining fees, and their
chief remuneration consisted of a large number of smaller fees. Like the
judges of prior reigns, King James's judges were forbidden to accept
_presents_ from actual suitors; but no suitor could obtain a hearing
from any one of them, until he had paid into court certain fees, of
which the fattest was a sum of money for the judge's personal use. At
one time many persons labored under an erroneous impression, that as
judges were forbidden to accept presents from actual suitors, the honest
judge of past times had no revenue besides his specified salary and
allowance. Like the king's judges, the king's counsellors frequently
made great incomes by fees, though their nominal salaries were
invariably insignificant. At a time when Francis Bacon was James's
Attorney General, and received no more than L81 6_s._ 8_d._ for his
yearly salary, he made L6000 per annum in his profession; and of that
income--a royal income in those days--the greater portion consisted of
fees paid to him for attending to the king's business. "I shall now,"
Bacon wrote to the king, "again make oblation to your Majesty,--first of
my heart, then of my service; thirdly, of my place of Attorney, which I
think is honestly worth L6000 per annum; and fourthly, of my place in
the Star Chamber, which is worth L1600 per annum, and with the favor and
countenance of a Chancellor, much more." Coke had made a still larger
income during his tenure of the Attorney's place, the fees from his
private official practice amounting to no loss a sum than seven
thousand pounds in a single year.

At later periods of the seventeenth century barristers made large
incomes, but the fees seem to have been by no means exorbitant. Junior
barristers received very modest payments, and it would appear that
juniors received fees from eminent counsel for opinions and other
professional services. Whilst he acted as treasurer of the Middle
Temple, at an early period of