"When I sent you the lord keeper's order of the 18th of June 1684
requireing your appeareing peromptorily the first day of Michaelmas Tearme
then next, and pleading to yssue ... you may remember I sent with it such
drafts of lettres of attorney, to pass vnder your comon seale as were
essentially necessary to empower and justify such appearance, and pleading
for you here, which you could not imagine but that you must haue had due
time to returne them in, noe law compelling impossibilities.
"When the first day of that Michaelmas Tearme came, and your lettres of
attorney neither were, nor indeed could be return'd ... I applyd by
councill to the Court of Chancery to enlarge that time urgeing the
impossibility of hauing a returne from you in the time allotted.... But it
is true my lord keeper cutt the ground from under us which wee stood upon,
by telling us the order of the 18th of June was a surprize upon his
lordship and that he ought not to haue granted it, for that every
corporacon ought to haue an attorney in every court to appeare to his
majesties suite, and that London had such.... However certainely you ought
when my lettres were come to you, nunc pro tune, to haue past the lettres
of attorney I sent you under your comon seale and sent them me, and not to
haue stopt them upon any private surmises from other hands then his you
had entrusted in that matter; and the rather for that the judgments of
law, espetially those taken by defaults for non appearances, are not like
the laws of the Medes and Persians irrevocable, but are often on just
grounds sett aside by the court here, and the defendants admitted to plead
as if noe such judgments had been entred vp, and the very order it selfe
of the 18th of June guies you a home instance of it.
Pages:
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405