59 Langbein has effectively demonstrated that, at least before the latter part of the century, the appearance of counsel for the defense in criminal cases was much more the exception than the rule/^ Yet even on the criminal side, the pattern on assize may have been different from that at the Old Bailey. This is suggested by a letter fromMansfield toJustice Wilmot during the Lancaster assizes in the summer of 1758 in which Mansfield wrote: “The Crown side almost as good to the Bar as the other. I had an enormous Gaol &the cases such that I think I had not a single Tryal without council on both Sides”. On the civil side, there was occasionally a superfluity of counsel. According to the Morning Chronicle, August 1, 1777: “There were but seventeen [nisi prius\ causes in the list to be tried before the Earl of Mansfield this assizes, and there were yesterday nearly thirty Counsel in Court there! The gentlemen who live by their elocution are remarkably unsuccessful this summer ”. On occasion, as earlier noted, it was necessary to designate a Serjeant-at-law to go the circuit as an assize judge. At times this presented some difficulty. For example it was reported in the London Chronicle, March 28—30, 1765: “The civil causes are all put off this assizes at Lancaster, Serjeant Aspinal having an estate in that county, by which he is disqualified from trying, except on the Crown side”.^* Another difficulty arose when the Serjeant happened to have business pending on the circuit in question. This occurred with Lord Mansfield and Serjeant Kempe on the Home Circuit in August 1777. According to the Morning Chronicle, August 1, 1777: “As Mr. Sjt. Kempe had briefs in several of the nisi prius causes at Croydon, Lord Mansfield yesterday took those first in which the Serjeant was not employed, and after dinner there were no trials on the Crown-side of the Town-house, on account of theJudge of the morning being obliged to act as a Counsel in the other Court”. 4. The Old Bailey Lord Mansfield has not been associated with the Old Bailey by his biographers.^^ Like oil to water, the cerebral urbanity of Mansfield would not suggest a mix PRO/SP 36/f. 199 (May 14, 1743). Similarly, Baron Parker noted in his negative report on Daniel Cornish, convicted of horse theft, that he had been told by several gentlemen present at the trial that the prisoner was a notorious horse thief and that it would be useful to execute himout of the way. PRO/36 131/f.l77 (August 7, 1755). Langbein, “The Criminal Trial Before the Lawyers”, 45 Univ. of Chicago L. Rev. 263 (1978); see also the second article, ”Shaping the Eighteenth-Century Criminal Trial”, 50 Univ. of Chicago L. Rev. at 123—134. Add. MSS, 9828, f.35, August 14, 1758. The second judge for the Northern Circuit was Baron Adams, who was ill, and who was unable to set out for Lancaster until early April. The London Chronicle, April 2—4, 1765. Lord Mansfield has had surprisingly little biographical attention. The best work remains the 300-page treatment in Lord Campbell’s Lives of the ChiefJustices, 1849, vol. II, 307 ff.). The ear-
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