"The more things change, the More they stay the same" ~ Friday Funny

Essex Quarterly Court Records

Just for fun, I found this little mention of Walter Roper in The American Genealogist, Volume 73, page 21 while I was researching a Surname Saturday post on the ROPER family.  It is a quote from a lawsuit found in the Ipswich Quarterly Court, March 1671  Tho. Wood v. Walter Roper from Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, Massachusetts, 9 vols. (Salem, Mass., 1911- 74) 4: 336:

"Answer of Walter Roper and Edward Chapman to the appeal: If the appellant had been as good a grammarian as his attorney would be thought to be a lawyer, he would have foreborn his simple cavil, etc.; that he was sued for transgressing a just and necessary order in cutting firewood contrary to law, "What Greater things moued you to Appealle...Though you Express not, wee may guess That either your Atturney wanted Imployment or had a mind to shew his great cunning in managing a bad cause."" 

                    

The name of this brief article in TAG is “PLUS ÇA CHANGE… (Or “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers”)"- a nod to Shakespeare’s Henry VI, written only eighty years before this case came to court.

ROPER Surname Saturday:
https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/08/surname-saturday-roper-of-hampton-new.html   

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Heather Wilkinson Rojo, ""The more things change, the More they stay the same" ~ Friday Funny", Nutfield Genealogy, posted July 11, 2014, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-more-things-change-more-they-stay.html: accessed [access date]).