ctiers I was a student of law under
Brocadium Juris, there was at Semerve one Peter Dandin, a very honest man,
careful labourer of the ground, fine singer in a church-desk, of good
repute and credit, and older than the most aged of all your worships; who
was wont to say that he had seen the great and goodly good man, the Council
of Lateran, with his wide and broad-brimmed red hat. As also, that he had
beheld and looked upon the fair and beautiful Pragmatical Sanction his
wife, with her huge rosary or patenotrian chaplet of jet-beads hanging at a
large sky-coloured ribbon. This honest man compounded, atoned, and agreed
more differences, controversies, and variances at law than had been
determined, voided, and finished during his time in the whole palace of
Poictiers, in the auditory of Montmorillon, and in the town-house of the
old Partenay. This amicable disposition of his rendered him venerable and
of great estimation, sway, power, and authority throughout all the
neighbouring places of Chauvigny, Nouaille, Leguge, Vivonne, Mezeaux,
Estables, and other bordering and circumjacent towns, villages, and
hamlets. All their debates were pacified by him; he put an end to their
brabbling suits at law and wrangling differences. By his advice and
counsels were accords and reconcilements no less firmly made than if the
verdict of a sovereign judge had been interposed therein, although, in very
deed, he was no judge at all, but a right honest man, as you may well
conceive,--arg. in l. sed si unius. ff. de jure-jur. et de verbis
obligatoriis l.continuus. There was not a hog killed within three parishes
of him whereof he had not some part of the haslet and puddings. He was
almost every day invited either to a marriage banquet, christening feast,
an uprising or women-churching treatment, a birthday's anniversary
solemnity, a merry frolic gossiping, or otherwise to some delicious
entertainment in a tavern, to make some accord and agreement between
persons at odds and in debate with one another. Remark what I say; for he
never yet settled and compounded a difference betwixt any two at variance,
but he straight made the parties agreed and pacified to drink together as a
sure and infallible token and symbol of a perfect and completely
well-cemented reconciliation, sign of a sound and sincere amity and proper
mark of a new joy and gladness to follow thereupon,--Ut not. per (Doct.) ff.
de peric. et com. rei vend. l. 1. He had a son,