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"If any ever did try this old saynge, that a kinge's worde was more than another man's othe, I most humbly beseche your majesty to verefie it in me, and to remember your last promis and my last demande, that I be not condemned without answer and due profe: wiche it semes that now I am, for that without cause provid I am by your counsel frome you commanded to go unto the Tower; a place more wonted for a false traitor, than a tru subject.

'Tush! saith he, 'it is but an ideot knave, and such an one as lacketh his right wittes. But when this foolish prophet had so escaped the daunger of the Kinge's displeasure, and that he made no more of it, he gate him abroad, and prated thereof at large, as he was a very idle vagabond, and used to trattle and talke more than ynough, so that they which loved the King caused him anon after to be apprehended as a malefactor, and to be throwen in prison, the King not yet knowing thereof.

Speaking of the sergeants, Fortescue, in his 'De Laudibus, says "Wherefore to this state and degree hath no man beene hitherto admitted, except he hath first continued by the space of sixteene years in the said generall studio of the law, and in token or signe, that all justices are thus graduat, every one of them alwaies, while he sitteth in the Kinge's Courts, weareth a white quoyfe of silke; which is the principal and chiefe insignment of habite, wherewith serjeants-at-lawe in their creation are decked.

And neither the justice, nor yet the serjeaunt, shall ever put off the quoyfe, no not in the kinge's presence, though he bee in talke with his majestie's highnesse." At times it was no easy matter to take the coif from the head; for the white drapery was fixed to its place with strings, which in the case of one notorious rascal were not untied without difficulty.