One of Jekyll's happy sayings was spoken at Exeter, when he defended several needlemen who were charged with raising a riot for the purpose of forcing the master-tailors to give higher wages. Whilst Jekyll was examining a witness as to the number of tailors present at the alleged riot, Lord Eldon--then Chief Justice of the Common Pleas--reminded him that three persons can make that which the law regards as a riot; whereupon the witty advocate answered, "Yes, my lord, Hale and Hawkins lay down the law as your lordship states it, and I rely on their authority; for if there must be three men to make a riot, the rioters being _tailors_, there must be nine times three present, and unless the prosecutor make out that there were twenty-seven joining in this breach of the peace, my clients are entitled to an acquittal." On Lord Eldon enquiring whether he relied on common-law or statute-law, the counsel for the defence answered firmly, "My lord, I rely on a well-known maxim, as old as Magna Charta, _Nine Tailors make a Man_." Finding themselves unable to reward a lawyer for so excellent a jest with an adverse verdict, the jury acquitted the prisoners. Towards the close of his career Eldon made a still better jest than this of Jekyll's concerning tailors. In 1829, when Lyndhurst was occupying the woolsack for the first time, and Eldon was longing to recover the seals, the latter presented a petition from the Tailors' Company at Glasgow against Catholic Belief.
"What!" asked Lord Lyndhurst from the woolsack, in a low voice, "do the _tailors_ trouble themselves about such _measures_?" Whereto, with unaccustomed quickness, the old Tory of the Tories retorted, "No wonder; you can't suppose that _tailors_ like _turncoats_."
As specimens of a kind of pleasantry becoming more scarce every year, some of Sir George Rose's court witticisms are excellent. When Mr. Beams, the reporter, defended himself against the _friction_ of passing barristers by a wooden bar, the flimsiness of which was pointed out to Sir George (then Mr. Rose), the wit answered--
"Yes--the partition is certainly thin-- Yet thick enough, truly, the Beams within."
The same originator of happy sayings pointed to Eldon's characteristic weakness in the lines--