Page:The English Reports v1 1900.pdf/1145

tendered the payment thereof afterwards half yearly, but that the said respondent John Kipling had refused to receive the same.

And the appellant, by his bill, further stated, that the respondents William Luther Sewell and John Kipling had not only refused to take such compositions as aforesaid, but that they had claimed from the appellant divers fees as arising to them in those suits in which they and the appellant were severally concerned, and that they had commenced divers suits in the office of petty bag, in the said Court of Chancery, against Mr. Henry Barker and Mr. Richard Bristowe Burnell, two of the sworn clerks of the [556] said court, and against others of the said sworn clerks, and had threatened to commence like actions against the appellant and that they had likewise, in conjunction with the respondents Samuel Reynardson, Christian Zincke, and Walden Henry Hanmer, and with the said John Mitford, as administrator of his late uncle the said William Mitford, deceased, demanded the very same fees to be paid to them jointly, from the 6th day of November 1785, to the time of the death of the said William Mitford; and that all the respondents had demanded, by a notice in writing, to be paid all such fees as they pretended to have become due from the appellant since Mr. Mitford's death and after taking notice of the agreement of the 2d May 1785, and the order confirming the same, and also the printed notices, and all or most of the several matters before mentioned, the appellant, by his said bill, denied having received any due service of such notice; and he insisted that if such notice had been served, it would not have been sufficient notice to determine the compositions entered into by him; and that in fact it could be but a notice of an agreement entered into between themselves, and was in no ways binding on him; and he charged, that the said agreement was contrary to the established usage and repeated ordinances and orders of the said Court of Chancery; and that the said order confirming the same was obtained by surprize, and ex parte, and without any notice to him or any other of the sworn clerks, and was without their privity: and he also charged, that he had never received any legal notice to determine the compositions agreed upon between him and the said William Luther Sewell and John Kipling; and that therefore, as well as for the reasons aforesaid, the said agreement and order ought not either of them to be considered as binding upon him; and he also insisted, that the compositions aforesaid were still subsisting, or to that or the like effect.

And the appellant, after taking notice in like manner of the actions before mentioned to have been brought by the respondent William Luther Sewell, against the said Henry Barker, in order to recover several fees claimed to be due and payable to him as six clerk, from the said Henry Barker, for business done by him as one of the sworn clerks in the division of the said respondent, (which action the appellant, by his bill, charged was commenced pending a composition in lieu of all fees and profits, and without any previous demand of such fees, and without any previous charge or bill, or particulars delivered of such his demands, which the appellant submitted he ought to have done, according to the usage and practice invariably observed by and between the six clerks and the sworn clerks,) and of the respondent having (as the truth was) recovered a verdict in such action, and also of the respondent's having pretended that the appellant was, by reason of his being in the like situation with the said Mr. Barker, bound by the said verdict, he the appellant, by his bill, charged, that he was not bound by such verdict, inasmuch as he was not a party to the action; and he further also charged, that though the right to a ready money payment of four-pence per copy sheet for the [557] copies of all pleadings made by the said Henry Barker, as one of the sworn clerks in his division, was the question (and the only question) contended for on the part of the plaintiff in that action, yet the only evidence produced on the trial of such action, in support of such pretended right, was part of a copy only of part of a bill alleged to have been filed by Sir William Parkyns, Knt. on the 8th July 1698, then one of the six clerks of the said court, against Nathaniel Webb, then one of the sworn clerks in the division of the said Sir William Parkyns; and also a copy of a plea, answer, or demurrer, alledged to have been put in by the said Mr. Webb, to the said bill; which bill prayed payment of the fees thereby claimed to be due to him as six clerk, from the said Mr. Webb, for copies of pleadings made by the said Mr. Webb, for eighteen years before he had quitted his said office: and he further charged, that the said respondent William Luther Sewell, upon the said