his career, Whitelock received a fee from
Attorney General Noy. "Upon my carrying the bill," writes Whitelock, "to
Mr. Attorney General Noy for his signature, with that of the other
benchers, he was pleased to advise with me about a patent the king had
commanded him to draw, upon which he gave me a fee for it out of his
little purse, saying, 'Here, take those single pence,' which amounted to
eleven groats, 'and I give you more than an attorney's fee, because you
will be a better man than the Attorney General. This you will find to be
true.' After much other drollery, wherein he delighted and excelled, we
parted, abundance of company attending to speak to him all this time."
Of course the payment itself was no part of the drollery to which
Whitelock alludes, for as a gentleman he could not have taken money
proffered to him in jest, unless etiquette encouraged him to look for
it, and allowed him to accept it. The incident justifies the inference
that the services of junior counsel to senior barristers--services at
the present time termed 'devilling'--were formerly remunerated with cash
payments.

Toward the close of Charles I.'s reign--at a time when political
distractions were injuriously affecting the legal profession, especially
the staunch royalists of the long robe--Maynard, the Parliamentary
lawyer, received on one round of the Western Circuit, L700, "which,"
observes Whitelock, to whom Maynard communicated the fact, "I believe
was more than any one of our profession got before."

Concerning the incomes made by eminent counsel in Charles II.'s time,
many _data_ are preserved in diaries and memoirs. That a thousand a year
was looked upon as a good income for a flourishing practitioner of the
'merry monarch's' Chancery bar, may be gathered from a passage in
'Pepys's Diary,' where the writer records the compliments paid to him
regarding his courageous and eloquent defence of the Admiralty, before
the House of Commons, in March, 1668. Under the influence of half-a-pint
of mulled sack and a dram of brandy, the Admiralty clerk made such a
spirited and successful speech in behalf of his department, that he was
thought to have effectually silenced all grumblers against the
management of his Majesty's navy. Compliments flowed in upon the orator
from all directions. Sir William Coventry pledged his judgment that the
fame of the oration would last for ever in the Commons; silver-tongued
Sir Heneage Finch, in the blandest tone