Uncork this mind teaser

Can you hear the jingle bells on santa's sleigh? the Solicitors' Benevolent Association certainly can.

That is why John Griffin, a director of the association, has devised this festive treat for you.

Answer the questions in our quiz, sponsored by Wne Rack, and santa could be down your chimney with a prize

This is a chance for lawyers to demonstrate the depth of their legal knowledge and their talent for speedy research.

It is also a chance to win some Christmas cheer delivered to your door.

In a fit of generosity, the Editor, in conjunction with Wine Rack, is offering prizes to three winning competitors.

The winner will have the cheeriest of New Years with Wine Rack vouchers worth 100, while second and third-place competitors will be awarded 50 of vouchers each.

Please don't worry if you can't find answers to all 30 questions - it would be surprising if anyone could.

Just fill in as many answers as you can, and send in the entry together with a 5 donation to the Solicitors' Benevolent Association.

The solicitors' profession's own charity needs your money, and nobody will mind if your answers are hopeless.

So here are the questions.

The rules are at the end.

If you don't want to spoil your copy of The Gazette, a photocopy will do, as long as you fill in the answers and your personal details, and send it in with your cheque.

The judiciaryWhich Lord Chancellor of England:Died at Leicester, on his way from York to London to face trial for treason?

Was beheaded, had his head stuck on a pole on London Bridge and was (later) canonised by the Pope?

Was fined 40,000 and sent to the Tower for accepting bribes from litigants (and was famed for saying 'Guineas are handsomer')?

When sent a 20 bribe by the Mayor of Yarmouth, ordered that it be applied to the relief of poor persons in the Fleet prison?

Granted an injunction in favour of a company which was set aside on appeal on the grounds that he owned shares in that company?

The defendantEach of the following, two of them professional advocates, pleaded his own cause.

Please identify each defendant, the charge he faced and the year.

My Lord, if we have violated any law, it was not done intentionally; we have injured no man's reputation, character, person or property.

We were uniting together to preserve ourselves, our wives and children, from utter degradation and starvation.

We challenge any man, or number of men, to prove that we have acted, or intended to act, different from the above statement.

Gentlemen, don't ever think your own life or liberty is safe, that your own family is secure; don't ever think that any human being is safe when under evidence like this and in circumstances like these I, with some influence and some respect and some money, am brought here and placed in the shadow of the penitentiary.

Show me, in all their watching and spying, show me, with all the money they have spent, with all the efforts of the strong and powerful to get me - show me in all these long weary months where one honest man has raised his voice to testify against me.

Just one.

Just one.

And are you ready, gentlemen, in this day and generation, to take away the name and liberty of a human being upon the testimony of rogues, informers, crooks, vagabonds, immunity hunters and detectives? If so, I don't want to live; I don't want to live in a world where such men can cause the undoing of an American citizen.

I am here, therefore, to invite and submit cheerfully to the highest penalty that can be inflicted on me for what in law is a deliberate crime, and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen.

The only course open to you, the judge, is either to resign your post, and thus dissociate yourself from evil if you feel that this law you are called upon to administer is an evil and that in reality I am innocent, or to inflict on me the severest penalty.

I am a professional soldier.

My father was a distinguished administrator.

My grandfathers and their fathers were soldiers and sailors.

I have served in two world wars.

In this war I obtained a transfer from the staff to lead a squadron in the air.

I was shot down and became a prisoner.

Death would have been preferable.

Since then I have been vegetating without hope, except that of escape to help my country in a profession of a lifetime.

Promotion has passed me by.

My contemporaries have risen to high honours and rank.

You must know their names.

They have been in battles while I have remained a prisoner.

My proper place is in their ranks.

I am a Royal Air Force officer.

Do you not understand what this means? I am not a spy, nor a partisan, nor a saboteur.

My professional honour, as well as my pride, my ambition too if you like, has always forced me to return to the fight.

Your own forces contain men of similar spirit.

They would not have sat passively in captivity any more than I.

Surely, even you can understand that.

The convicted Guy Fawkes was executed on 31 January 1606.

But where was his place of execution and what was the method used?

How did convicted solicitor George Crossley distinguish himself in 1801?

Who escaped from Lincoln Prison on 3 February 1919?

Name the only English solicitor hanged for murder.

Where did he practise?

For what crime, committed on 27 February 1933, was Marinus van der Lubbe executed?

Which author, when released from Borstal training, was served with an expulsion order under Prevention of Violence (Temporary Provisions) Act 1939?

What happened to Peter Anthony Allen and Gwynne Owen Evans on 13 August 1964, and why was it special?

How many defendants were in the dock at the trial of the Kray twins in 1968?

Time served What events of legal significance lasted:From 11 April 1834 to 13 June 1837?

From 11 May 1871 to 28 February 1874?

From 16 January 1920 to5 December 1933?

From 2 October 1950 to 1 April 1989?

From 28 June 1994 to 13 December 1996?

From 24 January 2000 to 31 January 2000?

The literature Please identify the speaker and the work (and, where different, the author) in each of these quotations: Owe no man anything but love one another; for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.

The first thing to do - let's kill all the lawyers.

If the law supposes that, the law is a ass - a idiot.

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

The Law is the true embodiment Of everything that's excellent.

It has no kind of fault or flaw, And I, my Lords, embody the law.

You mentioned your name as if I should recognise it, but beyond the obvious fact that you are a bachelor, a solicitor, a freemason and an asthmatic, I know nothing whatsoever about you.

People must not do things for fun.

We are not here for fun.

There is no reference to fun in any Act of Parliament.

Tie-breaker: Complete this slogan:SOLICITORS THINK OF SBA AT CHRISTMAS BECAUSE:

Enter our quiz and win a little tipple for Christmas Day

Name: Address:

Postcode:DX: Telephone

Send to: Christmas Quiz, Solicitors Benevolent Association, 1 Jaggard Way,London, SW12 8SG.

DX: 41608 Balham.

Payment: Cheque for 5.00 payable to SBA

Closing date: 4 January 2001.Rules: The SBA Christmas Quiz is open to all adult readers of the Gazette who reside in England and Wales.

It is not open to staff or members of the Board of SBA, to the staff of the Gazette or to their respective spouses.

Submission of an entry is deemed to be acceptance of these rules.Entries must arrive no later than 4pm on 4 January 2001.

No competitor may submit more than one entry.

Prize-winners will be selected according to the number of correct answers given.

In the event of a tie, the winner will be decided by means of a tie-breaker slogan.

The decision of the author of the quiz shall be final and binding in respect of any matter pertaining to the quiz.

Prizes are not transferable and there is no cash alternative.

Answers to the quiz and details of the prize-winners will be published in the Gazette on 19 January 2001.

Prize-winners will be expected to provide reasonable assistance to SBA in respect of publicity