THE

JUDGES OF ENGLAND;

SKETCHES OF THEIR LITES,

AND

MISCELLANEOUS NOTICES

CONNECTED WITH

THE COUETS AT WESTMINSTER,

FROM THE CONQUEST TO THE PRESENT TIME.

BY EDWARD FOSS, F.S.A.

OF THE INNER TEMPLE.

vol. vni.

CONTAINING THE REIGNS OF

GEORGE I., GEORGE II., AND GEORGE III. 1714 — 1820.

LONDON :

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1864.

The riaht of translation it

LONDON

PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODB AND CO.

NEW-STBBET SQUAEB

CONTENTS

OP

THE EIGHTH VOLUME.

PAGE

George L, 1714—1727.

Survey of the Reign - 1 — 13 Biographical Notices - - - - . 14 — 76

George II., 1727—1760.

Survey of the Reign - 77 — 94

Biographical Notices - 95 — 197

George III., 1760—1820.

Survey of the Reign - 198 — 227

Biographical Notices • 228 — 420

Index, in which the names of the Judges are given - 421 — 423

THE

JUDGES OF ENGLAND.

GEORGE I.

Reigned 12 years, 10 months, and 10 days; from August 1, 1714, to June 11, 1727.

SURVEY OF THE REIGN.

One of the most important events connected with the law that distinguished the reign of George I., was the impeach- ment of Lord Chancellor Macclesfield and the reform which resulted from it. The principal offence with which the earl was charged was one which had been committed by his pre- decessors for many generations. The sale of the lucrative offices of the Court of Chancery was a subject of notoriety, and was considered as part of the legitimate profit of its heads, and had even been in some sort recognised in par- liament. Roger North (Life, 226) notices the objection which his brother Lord Guilford had to the practice in the reign of Charles II., and the reasons which induced him " to follow the steps of his predecessors."

The chiefs of the other courts also claimed and exercised the same privilege with regard to offices in their gift. For examples it is not necessary to go beyond the Revolution, as it is certain that the practice was not first introduced at that aera, but that the judges then appointed merely pursued a system long established. And, indeed, it cannot be a

VOL. VIII. B

2 SALE OF OFFICES. George I.

matter of much surprise, that when in the times of the first James and the first Charles (to go no higher) such large sums were exacted as the price of the highest judicial offices, the purchasers should consider that they were justified in reimbursing themselves by turning the offices that were within their own gift to similar account. Since the Revo- lution we have Luttrell's testimony that the practice prevailed, and that the price was well understood. He mentions that a philazer's place had "fallen" to Chief Justice Treby in 1695, and another in 1696, " worth 1000/. ; " and in the latter year he records the death of one of the six clerks, " which," he says " being in the disposal of Sir John Trevor, the Master of the Rolls, will be worth to him 5000 guineas." l

By the evidence produced on Lord Macclesfield's trial it appears that Lord Harcourt received 250/. for the appoint- ment of clerk of the custodies ; and that two of the masters in Chancery gave him, one 700/., and the other 800/., for their places ; and that from a third, Lord Cowper, although he had abolished the equally pernicious custom of New Year's gifts, received a similar sum.2 These three masters were the only surviving ones who could give direct evidence; and indirect evidence of the prices given by their prede- cessors was not allowed, though no denial of the previous long established practice was attempted. The office of master in Chancery was extremely profitable, not only from the fees to which the holder of it was entitled, but from the interest he made by the speculative use of the suitors' money placed under the orders of the Court in his hands ; the practice being for each master in turn to attend the Court, and to have the funds involved in the causes in dispute on the days of his attendance intrusted to his care. These

1 Luttrell, iii. 535, iv. 81, 159.

2 State Trials, xvi. 1140, 1151, 1152, 1154.

1714—1727. SALE OF OFFICES. 3

sums in the progress of time largely increased, so that each master became the banker of the Court to an immense amount, no less than 120,000/. being delivered up at the death of one of them to his successor. The profits of the place being therefore proportionably large, the price demanded for it was naturally enhanced, and there is proof that one retiring master would not accept less for it than 60007. besides the * present" of 1500 guineas which the purchaser had to offer to the chancellor for his admission ; and that when a master died Lord Chancellor Macclesfield received 5000 guineas for the new appointment. The inevitable consequence of this vicious system was that, as soon as the funds entrusted to the retiring or the deceased master were transferred into the new master's possession, the first thing he would do would be to reimburse himself out of them the sum he had paid or borrowed to pay for the place : so that had the suitors' money been all called in, the assets of many of the twelve masters would have been deficient at least in that amount.

It is probable that this arrangement, bad as it was, would never have been interrupted, and that these twelve bankers would still have retained the use of the funds had they all been prudent and honest. But one of them, partaking of the madness of the age, had suffered so largely in the South Sea scheme, that on the failure of his banker, who had been guilty of the same imprudence and to whom he had entrusted a large balance, he was obliged to abscond. Lord Maccles- field was charged not only with being cognisant of these practices and with endeavouring to patch up and conceal the deficiency of the absconding master, but also with extor- tionately increasing the price of the place, and appointing persons willing to pay the sum demanded, who were not sufficiently responsible.

Whether the latter charge was substantiated may be a

B 2

4 LORD CHANCELLORS. George I.

question, but be his condemnation just or not, the result was highly beneficial. The twelve masters were ordered to deposit all the funds and securities in their hands in the Bank of England ; those who were deficient were made to dispose of their private estates and effects ; the ultimate deficiency, amounting to more than 51,0007. was provided for by an additional stamp duty ; and by Statute 12 George I. c. 32, the suitors' cash being then and for ever after secured in the Bank, the whole accounts were placed under the direction of a new officer called the accountant-general, who was altogether interdicted from meddling with the money. This office has ever since been filled by one of the masters, who is reckoned as one of their number.

Lord Chancellors.

Simon, Lord Harcourt, continued to exercise the functions of Lord Chancellor till September 21, 1714, the day after King George's entry into London; when the Great Seal was taken away from him and delivered to

William, Lord Cowper, on the next day with the title of Lord Chancellor, which he had held for some time in the reign of Queen Anne. On his resignation three years and a half afterwards,

Sir Bobert Tracy, Just. C. P.,

Sir John Pratt, Just. K. B., and ' Sir James Montagu, B. E. were appointed lords com- missioners of the Great Seal on April 18, 1718. They held it for little more than three weeks, when

Thomas, Lord Parker, lord chief justice of the King's Bench, was made Lord Chancellor on May 12, 1718. He was created Earl of Macclesfield on November 5, 1721 ; and continued to hold his place till January 4, 1725 ; when he

1714—1727. CHANCERY. 5

resigned, and within three weeks was impeached for cor- ruption.

The Great Seal was on January 7, 1725, placed in com- mission, the commissioners being

Sib Joseph Jekyll, M.K.,

Sir Jeffrey Gilbert, B. E., and

Sir Kobebt Kaymond, Just. K. B. who held it for nearly five months, when

Peteb, Lobd King, chief justice of the Common Pleas, was appointed Lord Chancellor on June 1, 1725 ; and held that office during the remainder of the reign.

Mastees of the Rolls.

Sib John Tbevob, the master of the rolls in the reign of James II., and again in that of William III., and throughout Queen Anne's reign, was not removed by George I., under whom he filled the office for nearly three years. Soon after his death

Sib Joseph Jekyll was appointed, his patent being dated July 13, 1717, granting him the office for life. He was still in possession of it at the death of the king.

Mastebs in Chanceby.

Sir John Trevor, M. R. - - - - 1 to 3 Geo. I.

Thomas Gery - - - - - lto 6 —

William Rogers - - -.- - lto 8 —

John Hiccocks - - - - - lto 9 —

James Medlycott - - - - - lto 3 —

William Fellows - - - - - 1 to 10 —

JohnMellor lto 6 -

John Orlebar - - - - - lto 7 —

Fleetwood Dormer* - - - - lto 7 —

Samuel Browning - - - - lto 6 —

Robert Holford - - - - - 1 to 13 —

Henry Lovibond - - - - - ltol3 —

John Bennett* 3 to 13 —

6	king's bench.		George I.
Sir Joseph Jekyll, M.	R. -	.	3 to 13 Geo. I.
Richard Godfrey*	-	-	6 to 13 —
James Lightboun -	_	-	6 to 13 —
John Borrett*	-	-	6 to 11 —
Edward Conway*	_	-	7 to 13 —
Henry Edwards, A. G. from July 1726 -	-	7 to 13 —
William Kynaston*	_	-	8 to 13 —
Thomas Bennett*	. . -	-	9 to 13 —
Francis Elde	_ _ _	-	10 to 13 —
Mark Thurston -	-	-	11 to 13 —
Francis Cudworth Masham, A. G. from Dec.	1726	13 —
Samuel Burroughs	.	-	13 —
Robert Yard	-	-	13 —

Those marked* were found deficient. Dormer had ab- sconded and Borrett had died insolvent. They, together with Godfrey, Conway, and Kynaston, are mentioned in the Act 12 George I., c. 33, as, after all that could be produced from their estates and effects, still debtors for the suitors' money to the amount of 51,851Z. 19s. 11£<7., to be provided for by the additional stamp duty thereby imposed.

The office of accountant-general was first appointed by Stat. 12 Geo. I., c. 32, enacted in consequence of the ex- posures on the impeachment of Lord Chancellor Maccles- field.

Chief Justices of the King's Bench.

Sir Thomas Parker's patent as chief justice was renewed on the accession of George I. ; and he was created a baron on March 10, 1616, by the title of Lord Parker cf Macclesfield. On his being made lord chancellor he was succeeded by

Sir John Pratt, one of the justices of the same court, on May 15, 1718; on whose death, nearly six years after,

Sir Robert Raymond, another of the judges of that court, was appointed chief justice on March 2, 1725, and so continued till the end of the reign.

1714—1727.

Justices of the King's Bench.

I. 1714. Aug. Littleton Powys, 1 _ . ■

Robert Eyre, [the judges at Queen Thomas Powys, J Anne s death. Nov. 22. John Pratt, vice T. Powys. TV. 1718. May 15. John Fortescue Aland, vice J. Pratt. X. 1724. Feb. 1. Robert Raymond, vice R. Eyre.

XI. 1725. March 16. James Reynolds, vice R. Raymond. XIII. 1726. Nov. 3. Edmund Probyn, vice L. Powys.

The judges of the King's Bench at the end of the reign were

Sir Robert Raymond, chief justice,

Sir John Fortescue Aland, James Reynolds, Esq.,

Sir Edmund Probyn.

Chief Justices of the Common Pleas.

Thomas, Lord Trevor, the chief justice at the time of Queen Anne's death, remained so till nearly a month after King George arrived from Hanover, when on October 14, 1714, he was superseded.

Sir Peter King, recorder of London, was sworn chief justice on November 22, 1714. After presiding more than ten years, he was made lord chancellor, having been pre- viously created Lord King of Ockham ; and

Sir Robert Eyre, chief baron of the Exchequer, succeeded him as chief justice of this court on June 3, 1725.

Judges of the Common Pleas.

I. 1714. Aug. John Blencowe, -]

Robert Tracy, V were continued in office. Robert Dormer, J VII. 1722. June. Alexander Denton, vice J. Blencowe.

XIII. 1726. Oct. 16. Robert Price, vice R. Dormer. Nov. 4. Francis Page, vice R. Tracy.

The judges of this court at the end of the reign were Sir Robert Eyre, chief justice. Robert Price, Esq., Sir Francis Page,

Alexander Denton, Esq.

8 EXCHEQUER. George I.

Chief Baroas of the Exchequer.

At the accession of George I. the place of lord chief baron was vacant by the death of Sir Edward Ward, a fort- night before the queen's demise.

Sir Samuel Dodd was sworn chief baron on November 22, 1714, but only survived the appointment a few months, when

Sir Thomas Bury, one of the puisne barons, was raised to the presidency of the court on June 10, 1716. On his death he was succeeded by

Sir James Montagu, also one of the puisne barons, on May 4, 1722. He died when he had enjoyed the office little more than a year ; and in his place

Sir Robert Eyre, a judge of the King's Bench, was appointed on November 16, 1723 ; but being promoted in the next year to be chief justice of the Commpn Pleas,

Sir Jeffrey Gilbert, one of the barons of the court, was raised to its head on June 3, 1725. Fifteen months after he died, and

Sir Thomas Pengelly, the king's prime Serjeant, became the sixth chief baron in this short reign on October 16, 1726, and held the office at the end of it.

Barons of the Exchequer.

the barons at the king's accession.

I. 1714. Aug. Thomas Bury, \

Robert Price, John Smith, "William Banister, William Simpson, cursitor,, Nov. 22. James Montagu, vice W. Banister.

III. 1717. Jan. 24. John Fortescue Aland, vice T. Bury.

IV. 1718. May 15. Francis Page, vice J. F. Aland. VIII. 1722. May 24. Jeffrey Gilbert, vice J. Montagu.

XI. 1725. June 1. Bernard Hale, vice J. Gilbert.

XII. 1726. May. William Thomson, cursitor, vice W. Simpson.

714 — 1727.

CHANCERY — COMMON PLEAS.

XIII. 1726. Nov. 7. Lawrence Carter, vice R. Price.

John Comyns, vice F. Page. The four barons at the end of the reign were Sir Thomas Pengelly, chief baron, Sir Bernard Hale, Sir Lawrence Carter,

Sir John Comyns. The cursitor baron was Sir William Thomson.

Court op Chancery.

A.R.	A.D.	Lord Chancellors, &c.	Masters of the Rolls.
1	1714.	Aug.	Simon, Lord Harcourt	Sir John Trevor.
		Sept. 22	William, Lord Cowper	—
3	1717.	July 13	—	Sir Joseph Jekyll.
4	1718.	April 18	Sir Robert Tracy "} ^ o- t u T3 j.j. 1 Commis- Sir John Pratt > .
			Sir James Montagu J
		May 12	Thomas, Lord Parker	—
8	1721.	Nov. 5	cr. Earl of Macclesfield.
11	1725.	Jan. 7	Sir Joseph Jekyll "| „ Sir Jeffrey Gilbert I <^
			—
			Sir Robert Raymond J swners
		June 1	Peter, Lord King	—

Court of King's Bench.

A.R.	A.D.	Chief Justices.	Judges of the King's Bench.
,	1714. Aug.	Thomas Parker	Littleton Powys	Robert Evre	Thomas Powys.
	Nov. 22				John Pratt.
2	1716. Mar. 10	cr. Lord Parker
4	1718. May 12	made Lord Ch.	—	—
	15	John Pratt		—	J . Fortescue Aland.
10	1724. Feb. 1	—	—	Robert Raymond	_
11	1725. March 2	Robert Raymond		made Ch. K. B.	__
	16		—	James Reynolds
13	1726. Nov. 3	—	Edmund Probyn	~~	—

Court of Common Pleas.

A.R.	A.D.	Chief Justices.	Judges of the Common Pleas.
1 8 11 13	1714. Aug. Oct. 14 1722. June 1725. June 3 1796. Oct. 16 Nov. 4	Lord Trevor Peter King Robert Eyre	John Blencowe Alexander Denton	Robert Tracy Francis Page	Robert Dormer. Robert Price.

10

ATTORNEY-GENERAL S.

George I.

Court of Exchequer.

A.R.	A.D.	Chief Barons.	Barons of the Exchequer.
1	1714. Aug.		John Smith* Thomas Bury	Robert Price	William Banister.
	Nov. 22	Samuel Dodd	—		James Montagu.
2	1716. June 10	Thomas Bury	made B. E.
3	1717. Jan. 24		J. FortescueAland
4	1718. May 15		Francis Page
8	1722. May 4	James Montagu	—	—	Jeffrey Gilbert.
10	1723. Nov. 16	Robert Eyre Jeffrey Gilbert	__
11	1725. June 3	_		Bernard Hale.
13	1726. Oct. 16	Thomas Pengelly	—	—	_
	Nov. 7	—	John Comyns	Lawrence Carter	—
* John Smith continued nominally a baron here till June 1726, though chief baron of the
	Exchequer in Scotland.
The cursitor baron	s were William Simpson till May 23, 1726, and afterwards William Thomson.

The salaries of the judges were increased at the commence- ment of this reign from 1000Z. to 2000Z. for the three chiefs, and from 10007. to 1500Z. for all the others.1

To the profligate Duke of Wharton are attributed the following satirical lines, written while Lord Parker, after- wards Earl of Macclesfield, was lord chancellor, which profess to describe some of the peculiar characteristics of the judges : —

When Parker shall pronounce upright decrees,

And Hungerford refuse his double fees j

When Pratt with justice shall dispense the laws,

And King once partially decide a cause ;

When Tracy's generous soul shall swell with pride,

And Eyre his haughtiness shall lay aside ;

When good old Price shall trim and truckle under,

And Powys sum a cause without a blunder j

When Page an uncorrupted finger shews,

And Fortescue deserves another nose —

Then will I cease my Coelia to adore,

And think of love and politics no more.2

Attorney-Generals.

I. 1714. August. IV. 1718. March 18. VI. 1720. May 7.

X. 1724. Feb. 1.

Edward Northey.

Nicholas Lechmere.

Robert Raymond, made Just. K. B.

Philip Yorke.

Lord Raymond, 1319. 2 Wharton's Works (1740), ii. App.

1714—1727. serjeants. 11

Solicitor-Generals.

I. 1714. August. Robert Raymond.

Oct. 14. Nicholas Lechmere.

II. 1715. Dec. 6. John Fortescue Aland, made B. E.

in. 1717. Jan. 24. William Thomson.

IV. 1720. March 23. Philip Yorke, made attorney-general.

X. 1724. Feb. 1. Clement Wearg.

XII. 1726. April 23. Charles Talbot.

Serjeants-at-Law.

The added initial marks the inn of court to which they

belonged ; and these who became judges have a * prefixed.

I. 1714. *Peter King (I.) *James Montagu (L.) *Samuel Dodd (I.)

Motto, " Plus quam speravimus."

1715. *Francis Page (I.) William Brainthwaite (M.)

William Erie (M.) John Darnell (M.)

Henry Stevens (I.) John Benfield (I.)

John Cuthbert (M.) William Salkeld (M.)

William Brydges (M.) Edward Millar (L.)

Thomas Hanbury (M.) Nathaniel Mead (M.)

Edward Whitaker (M.) *James Reynolds (L.) Motto, u Omnia tuta vides." III. 1717. *John Fortescue Aland (I.)

VIII. 1722. *Jeffrey Gilbert (I.) *Alexander Denton (M.)

X. 1724. *Robert Raymond (G.) *Edmund Probyn (M.) Motto, " Salva Libertate potens."

*Lawrence Carter (L.) Richard Cummyns.

Thomas Morley. Williams Hawkins.

Fettiplace Nott. *William Chappie.

Joseph Girdler. James Sheppard.

John Baines. Giles Eyre.

John Raby. Matthew Skinner. XII. 1725. 'Bernard Hale.

King's Serjeants.

I. 1714 *Joseph Jekyll (M.) *Thomas Powys (L.)

1715. *Francis Page (I.) John Cheshire (I.)

V. 1719. "Thomas Pengelly (I.) X. 1724. *Lawrence Carter (L.)

12 Barnard's inn — Westminster hall. George It

King's Counsel.

No regular lists of the king's counsel occur in this reign ; but mention is made of Winnington Jeffreys and John Willes.

Sir John Cheshire who was made a Serjeant in 1706, and queen's serjeant in 1711, and in 1727 became the king's premier serjeant, has left a fee-book commencing in Michael- mas Term 1719 : by which it appears that for the next six years his fees amounted on an average to 324 1Z. per annum. He then, being sixty-three years old, reduced his practice and confined himself to the Court of Common Pleas, and during the next six years his fees averaged 1320/. a year.

The fees of the counsel's clerks form a great contrast with those that are now demanded, being only threepence on a fee of half a guinea, sixpence for a guinea, and one shilling for two guineas.1

Barnard's Inn. — A new lease of this inn for forty years at the rent of 61. 13s. 4d., was granted in 1723 by the dean and chapter of Lincoln to this society, who thereupon repaired their hall and rebuilt the bow window of it in what the books describe as " a fashionable manner." They contain also an order to deliver up a bond to Julius Lambert, a member, because he was a practiser in the spiritual court and not at common law.

Westminster Hall was still occupied by tradesmen and women. In the British Museum there is a petition from them, which appears to relate to the coronation of George I., praying that, as their shops are boarded up by the prepara- tions for the ceremony, the leads and outsides of the windows of the west side of the hall may be granted for their use and advantage. The frontispiece of a satirical poem called " Westminster Hall," from a drawing by Gravelot, represents 1 Notes and Queries, Second Series, vii. 493.

1714—1727. WESTMINSTER HALL. 13

the hall with shops for books, prints, gloves, &c., on each side of the whole length, the judges sitting in open court ; and the courts being partitioned off from the body of the hall to the height of eight or nine feet, with side bars on the outside, at which the attorneys moved for their rules of court. The judges must have been occasionally interrupted by the conversation and noise in the hall, and the solemnity of the place in no small degree destroyed by the flirtations with the sempstresses and the shopwomen.1

1 Gent. Mag. Nov. 1853, p. 480; Hone's Ancient Mysteries.

14

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES

OP

THE JUDGES UNDER THE REIGN OF GEORGE I.

ALAND, JOHN FORTESCUE.

B. E. 1716. Just. K. B. 1718. See under the reign of George II.

BANISTER, WILLIAM.

B. E. 1714. See under the Reign of Anne.

The family of William Banister resided at Turk Dean in the County of Gloucester in possession of a very considerable estate. Of his early history we have no information except that he received his legal education at the Middle Temple and that he was honoured with the degree of the coif in 1706. He was then appointed one of the judges of South Wales ; from which position he was advanced on the recom- mendation of Lord Harcourt to be a baron of the Exchequer on June 8, 1713, when he was knighted. He occupied this seat for little more than a year, being superseded on October 14, 1714, not three months after the accession of George L, having been reported by Lord Cowper as " a man not at all qualified for the place." So brief a period of judicial exist- ence can supply little worthy of record.1

1 Atkyns' Gloucestersh. 413; Lord Raymond, 1261, 1318; Lord Campbell's Chancellors, iv. 350.

1714—1727.

JOHN BLENCOWE.

15

BLENCOWE, JOHN.

Just. C. P. 1714.

See under the Reigns of William III. and Anne.

The manor of Marston St. Lawrence on the Oxford border of Northamptonshire, where this judge was born in 1642, was granted in the reign of Henry VI. to Thomas Blencowe, whose family originally came from a place of that name in Cumberland. John Blencowe was the eldest son of Thomas Blencowe, the great-great-great-grandson of the grantee, by his second wife, Anne the daughter of the Rev. Dr. Francis Savage of Bipple in Worcestershire. He was educated at Oriel College, Oxford ; and having been admitted a student at the Inner Temple in 1663 he was called to the bar by that society in 1673 and elected a bencher in 1687. So successful was he in his practice that he was raised to the degree of the coif in 1689, and was elected member for Brackley in his native county in the parliament of 1690. Though not a prominent debater, he was, during the five years of its continuance, a firm supporter of the government. To his marriage with Anne the daughter of Dr. John Wallis, the celebrated Savilian professor of geometry and " custos archivorum " of Oxford, and the great decipherer of his day, he probably owed in some measure his advancement to the bench. When the professor was offered the deanery of Hereford in 1692 he declined the advancement, but in his letter of refusal he intimated that a favour to his son-in-law would be more acceptable to him. " I have," he said, w a son-in-law, Mr. Serjeant Blencowe of the Inner Temple, a member of the House of Commons, an able lawyer and not inferior to many of those on the bench, of a good life and great integrity, cordial to the Government and serviceable in it." l

1 Baker's Northamptonshire, 639-646; Inner Temple Books.

16 JOHN BLENCOWE. George I.

It was not however till four years afterwards that the recommendation produced the desired effect. In September 1696 the serjeant was constituted a baron of the Exchequer in the place of Sir John Turton removed to the King's Bench ; but in Michaelmas Term of the following year he was further promoted to the Court of Common Pleas and knighted. He sat in that court for the next five-and-twenty years ; though several memorialists of the judge, as Baker, Noble and others, have represented him as having been re- moved to the Queen's Bench, for the whole of Queen Anne's reign from 1702 to 1714. Luttrell records that in the beginning of her reign such removal was intended : but it is clear from Lord Raymond's Reports that he was then re- appointed to the Common Pleas, and that he was still in that court "at the end of it ; and he is never mentioned as acting in the Queen's Bench.1 On the accession of George I. he was replaced in the same seat, and in 1718 he concurred with most of the other judges in favour of the king's prero- gative over the marriage and education of the royal family. On June 22, 1722, being then eighty years of age, he obtained permission to resign ; and a pension was granted to him for the remainder of his life, which terminated on May 6, 1726. He was buried at Brackley, where there is a monument to his memory.

Sir John is represented as an honest, plain, blunt man, with no brilliancy of genius nor any extraordinary attain- ments. He outlived his faculties, and conceived that he had discovered the longitude. A story is told of him that once he ordered his servant to lay him out, insisting that he was dead. Indulging his whim the trusty fellow laid him on the carpet ; and after some time came to him and observed that he thought his honour was coming to life again ; to which the old judge, tired of his position, assented. A proof of

1 Lord Raymond, 769, 1317; Luttrell, v. 183.

1714—1727. THOMAS BURY. 17

his considerate kindness of heart appears in another anec- dote. Lady Blencowe having suggested to him to pension off a hewer of stones who was so old that he spoiled the work he was employed on ; he replied, w No, no, let him spoil on ; he enjoys a pleasure in thinking that he earns his bread at four-score years and ten ; but if you turn him off, he will die of grief."

He left a numerous family. His third son William was taught the mystery of deciphering by his maternal grand- father Dr. Wallis, and was employed to give evidence of the letters written in cipher which were produced on the pro- ceeding against Bishop Atterbury. He was the first person to whom a salary was granted as decipherer to the govern- ment, his allowance being 200Z. a year. The judge's second daughter became the wife of Chief Baron Probyn. The estate of Marston St. Lawrence remains in the possession of Sir John's lineal descendant, to whom I am indebted for many of the foregoing particulars,1

BURY, THOMAS. B. E. 1714. Ch. B. E. 1716.

See under the Reigns of William III. and Anne.

Thomas Bury was the youngest son of Sir William Bury, knight, of Linwood in Lincolnshire. He was born in 1655, and was brought up to the law, entering Gray's Inn in 1668, and called to the bar in 1676. After twenty-four years' practice he obtained the degree of Serjeant in 1700, and on January 26 in the next year he was made a baron of the Exchequer on the removal of Sir Littleton Powys to the Court of King's Bench. Speaker Onslow in his notes to Burnet states that it was said that it appeared by Bury's " Book of Accounts " that Lord Keeper Wright had 1,000J.

1 Noble's Cont. of Granger, ii. 180 ; Nichols' Lit. Anecdotes, ix. 273, VOL. VIII. C

18 WILLIAM COWPER. Georce I.

for raising him to the bench. This discreditable story how- ever depends on very slight testimony. The new baron was of course knighted ; and sat in that court during the remainder of his life ; for fifteen years as a puisne baron, and for six as chief baron, to which he was advanced on June 10, 1716, to supply the vacancy occasioned by the death of Sir Samuel Dodd. In the famous Aylesbury case in the House of Lords he supported the opinion of Chief Justice Holt ; when the judgment which he had opposed was reversed. So little further is recorded of Sir Thomas, either in praise or censure, that he may be presumed to have filled his judicial seat with undistinguishing credit.

He died on May 4, 1622, and was buried at Grantham, where there is a handsome monument to his memory. He left no issue, his estate descending to his great-nephew and heir William Bury.1

CARTER, LAWRENCE.

B. E. 1726.

See under the reign of George II.

COMYNS, JOHN.

B. E. 1726. See under the reign of George II.

COWPER, WILLIAM, Earl Cowper.

Lord Chancellor, 1714.

See under the Reign of Anne.

That branch of the pedigree of the Cowpers from which the lord chancellor descended held a respectable position among the county families of Sussex in the reign of Edward IV., and then resided at Strode in the parish of Slingfield.

1 Pat. 12 Will. iii. p. 5 ; Lord Raymond, 622 ; Burnet, v. 219 n. ; Wotton's Baronet, iv. 99; Lord Campbell's Chief Just. ii. 160; Monumental Inscription.

1714—1727. WILLIAM COWPER. 19

His immediate ancestor became an alderman of London in Elizabeth's time, and had a son, Sir William, who was created a baronet by Charles I., and suffered imprisonment for his loyalty to that unfortunate king. His grandson the second baronet represented Hertford, in the castle of which he resided, in several parliaments of Charles II. and William III., adopting the Whig side in politics and taking a promi- nent part in the proceedings against James II. when Duke of York. By his wife Sarah, daughter of Sir Samuel Hoiled of London, he had two sons, William and Spencer, both of whom claim a place in these pages ; one, the subject of the present sketch, as lord chancellor, and the other as a judge of the Common Pleas in the reign of George II.

William Cowper was born at Hertford Castle about four or five years after the Restoration. There is no other trace of his education than that he was some years at a school at St. Albans till he became a student at the Middle Temple on March 8, 1681-2. His years of probation were divided between his law-books and his pleasures, the latter it is reported claiming the greatest share, but the former evi- dently not neglected. Whatever were his excesses during that interval it may be presumed that before the end of it he terminated them by his marriage about 1686 with Judith, daughter of Sir Robert Booth, a merchant of London living in Walbrook. He was called to the bar on May 25, 1688, and in the next month he made his debut in the court of King's Bench. Bred up in the principles of political liberty and with a deep hatred of popery, it is not to be wondered at that his youthful ardour prompted him a few months later to offer his personal aid in resisting the obtuse tyranny of James II. He and his brother Spencer, " with a band of thirty chosen men," joined the Prince of Orange in his march to London : but on the peaceful establishment of William and Mary on the throne he returned to the stage

o 2

20 WILLIAM COWPER. George I.

of his profession ; on which whether on the home circuit, or in the courts of Westminster, he soon became a favourite performer. Collins in his " Peerage " says that he was chosen recorder of Colchester, and his familiar letters leave no doubt that he got into considerable practice, both in com- mon law and equity, within the first five years after his call. Before Easter 1694 he had been raised to the position of king's counsel ; and by his assistance to the attorney and solicitor general in the prosecutions arising out of the assassination plot in 1696, he conspicuously demonstrated his superiority as an advocate. In the only other state trial in which he appears, that of Lord Mohun for the murder of Richard Coote, the peers recognised the powers which he was afterwards to display on their own benches, and paid him the compliment of naming him particularly to sum up the evidence instead of Sir John Hawles the solicitor- general, whom from his dullness and lowness of voice they could not understand. But as it was contrary to the etiquette of the bar, Sir John was allowed to proceed.1

In 1695 he was returned with his father to parliament for Hertford, and tradition reports that on the day of his entrance into the house he spoke three times, and with such effect as to establish his character as an orator and to foreshadow the position he was soon to acquire as the senatorial leader of his party. He represented the same constituency in the parlia- ment of 1698, but in the following year the family interest in the borough was disturbed, and his own professional success materially endangered, by the unfounded charge brought against his brother Spencer of the murder of a young Quaker named Sarah Stout, the extraordinary circum- stances attending which will be related in the memoir of the future judge. Notwithstanding the acquittal that followed,

1 Collins, ir. 166; Lord Raymond's List; State Trials, xii. 1446, xiii. \ 23, 1055.

1714—1727. WILLIAM COWPER. 21

the influence of the Cowpers in Hertford was so damaged that they did not venture to stand in the election of 1701 ; but William was too useful a member not to be immediately provided with a seat in the house, and was accordingly returned for Beeralston in that and the last parliament of William III. and in the first of Queen Anne ; at the end of which he ceased to be a commoner. High as was his repu- tation as an orator, the parliamentary history affords very few examples of his powers. It records only two important speeches delivered by him while in the House of Commons ; one on the bill of attainder against Sir John Fenwick in 1696, and the other on the Aylesbury case in 1704. In defending the former, though he may shine as a rhetorician, he falls very far short of the argumentative power manifested by Sir Simon Harcourt in opposing it : but in the latter he has the advantage of his rival in his resistance of the uncon- stitutional claim of privilege advanced by the commons, and in his support of the right of the subject to seek redress at law against a returning officer for corruptly refusing to receive his legal vote. Other authorities inform us that he defended Lord Somers when impeached, and that in 1704 he was censured by the house for pleading for Lord Halifax.1

When the Tory ascendency which had distinguished the first years of the reign of Queen Anne began to be dimi- nished, the removal of Lord Keeper Wright, the weakest and most inefficient man of the party, was determined on. Passing over the attorney and solicitor general, Cowper, at the urgent instigation of the Duchess of Marlborough, was selected from the Whig ranks to hold the Seal. It was delivered to him as lord keeper on October 11, 1705, with an assurance of a retiring pension of 2000/. a year. The com- mencement of his judicial career was illustrated by a noble reform. It had been a custom of long standing for the

1 Pari. Hist. v. 1007, 1141; vi. 279; Burnet, iv. 480 ; Luttrell, v. 488.

22 WILLIAM COWPER. George 1.

officers of the court and the members of the bar to present new-year's gifts to the chancellor or keeper ; a practice, which if not actual bribery, he considered looked very like it. These he at once refused to receive ; and the extent of the sacrifice may be estimated, if not by his wife's calculation that they amounted to nearly 3000/., by Burnet's more probable computation of 1500/. With such a proof of his moderation and delicacy it is curious that he did not abolish the equally obnoxious custom of selling the offices in the chancellor's gift. By the evidence on the trial of the Earl of Macclesfield it appears that he received 500/. on the admission of a master in chancery. Although it is difficult to perceive the distinction between the two customs, it is clear that he did not consider them as coming under the same category ; and that he did not anticipate the evil con- sequences to which the latter might lead. At the same time he forbad the clerks to demand any extra fee for the per- formance of their duties. On the death of his father in November 1706 the lord keeper succeeded to the baronetcy; and on the 9 th of the same month he was ennobled with the title of Lord Cowper of Wingham.1

His first wife having died six months before his elevation, leaving no surviving issue, he married secondly Mary, daughter of John Clavering, Esq. of Chopwell in the bishoprick of Durham. This marriage was for some months kept secret from the world; having been solemnised in September 1706, and not acknowledged till the end of February 1707 ; when Luttrell in his Diary (vi. 143) states that " The lord keeper, who not long since was privately married to Mrs. Clavering of the bishoprick of Durham, brought her home this day." The reason for the concealment does not appear in the Diary of Lady Cowper which has

1 Lord Raymond, 12G0; Evelyn, iii. 407; Burnet, v. 243; Lord Campbell's Chanc. iv. 299; Luttrell. vi. Ill; State Trials, xvi. 1154.

1714—1727. WILLIAM COWPER. 23

been recently published, though the fact is stated; but it may not improbably be explained by the lord keeper's desire not to disturb the last days of his father, who might per- haps have been disappointed that the selection had not fallen on some other lady to whom he had wished his son to be united.

Lord Cowper was one of the commissioners for the Union with Scotland, and zealously assisted Lord Somers in the negotiations. Upon its being completed the queen invested him on May 4, 1707, with the title of lord high chancellor of Great Britain; and from that time the designation of lord keeper fell into desuetude, only one other possessor of the Great Seal having been so distinguished up to the pre- sent day. For the next three years the Whig party retained its influence ; but at last by its own folly the popularity it had acquired was transferred to its political opponents. The suicidal error of the Whigs was the unwise and useless measure of the impeachment of Dr. Sacheverell for a ser- mon, which, if it had been unnoticed by the ministry, would probably have fallen dead from the press. The prosecution stirred up all the dormant feelings of the people, revived the cry of " The church in danger," and so strengthened the efforts of the Tory advisers of the queen that the Whig members of the government were soon after dismissed. The Duke of Marlborough had during the contest ambitiously demanded to be made captain-general for life: but Lord Cowper, though united with him in politics, represented to the queen that such an appointment would be highly uncon- stitutional ; and by his advice the application was rejected. In the new arrangement Harley the Tory leader admiring Lord Cowper's honesty and talents, and conscious of his popularity, was desirous of retaining him in his post as lord chancellor ; but his lordship, though strongly pressed by the queen to keep the Seal, was firm in his resolve to follow the

24 WILLIAM COWPEK. George I.

fate of his colleagues, and resigned on September 23, 1710.1 He then entered at once into an avowed and it must be acknowledged sometimes a factious opposition to the new ministry ; and, according to the fashion then prevalent, occasionally supported his views and answered the attacks of his opponents in the periodical publications of the day. He remained unemployed for the four remaining years of Queen Anne's reign : but on her death he was found to be one of the lords justices nominated by the Elector of Hanover, who showed the tendency of his opinions by selecting them prin- cipally from the Whig party. The queen died on August 1, 1714, and King George arriving in England on September 18, immediately formed his ministry and reinstated Lord Cowper in the office of lord chancellor on the 21st.

On his appointment he presented to the king a long paper which he called "An Impartial History of Parties," but which is anything but what its title imports. In professing to describe the two parties, Whig and Tory, into which the people were divided, he artfully depreciates all the acts and principles of the latter, and represents the former as the only one which it would be expedient or safe for his majesty to trust. The antipathy of one faction against the other was at its height; and was exhibited by the vindictive course which the new ministry pursued against the leaders of the party they had supplanted. Lord Cowper took too prominent a part in these proceedings, and it may not be improbable that the extremes to which their animosity was carried, hur- ried on the Rebellion of 1 7 1 5. To his energetic representation to the king may perhaps be attributed the speedy suppression of that rebellion. His conduct on the trial of the rebel

1 Lord Cowper commenced a Diary when he received the Great Seal in 1 705, which was privately printed and presented in 1833 by Dr. Hawtrey to the Koxburgh Club. It contains little of general interest, and, with long intervals, terminates with his entering on his second chancellorship in 1714.

1714—1727. WILLIAM COWPER. 25

lords, when he acted as lord high steward, supported his previous reputation ; and when he afterwards presided in the same character at the pretended trial of his old antagonist the Earl of Oxford, it is not unlikely that, his enmity having subsided after two years' reflection, he did not regret the resolution of the commons not to proceed.

During his second chancellorship the Riot Act, the Sep- tennial Bill, and the Mutiny Bill, after violent opposition, became law, and to the passing of them he gave his powerful aid. But though a zealous partisan, a judicious and active statesman, and extremely popular both with the bar and with the public, and apparently with the king himself, in- trigues were formed early for his removal. The Diary of Lady Cowper, who held a position in the household of the Princess of Wales, proves that they began as early as October 1715, and continued in the two succeeding years ; till at last, though his party remained in power, and without any appa- rent or publicly acknowledged cause, he resigned the Seal on April 15, 1718 ; having been on the 18th of the preceding month honoured, as a special mark of the royal approbation, with the additional title of Viscount Fordwich and Earl Cowper. He lived more than four years afterwards, and continued to the last days of his life to take a prominent lead in the debates, and a deep and impartial interest in the various measures proposed on the one side or the other. He died after a few days' illness at his seat at Colne Green on October 10, 1723 ; and was buried in the parish church of Hertingfordbury. His wife followed him four months after- wards, literally dying of a broken heart.

Of Lord Cowper's character as a statesman there will always be two opinions. The course of his conduct that would excite Burnet's or Wharton's applause, would cer- tainly be decried by Swift and the Tory writers. But all would allow that he was a firm adherent to the principles

26 WILLIAM COWPER. George I.

he professed, and that those principles tended to civil and religious liberty, and that the motives which guided him were pure and straightforward, though occasionally tainted with a little too much of party prejudice. Of his extraordi- nary oratorical powers, of the singular gracefulness of his elocution, of the sweetness of his disposition, and of his integrity and impartiality as a judge, there has never been any question ; and though the term " Cowper-law " has been sometimes applied to his decisions by those who were arguing against them, it was merely used in joke, in allusion to an indecent expression of the Earl of Wintoun, one of the rebel lords, on his trial before Lord Cowper as lord high steward, — hoping that the lords would do him justice, " and not make use of Cowper (Cupar)-law, — hang a man first, and then judge him." l Of his urbanity and consideration for the feelings of others we have a striking instance in his repress- ing the harsh personal remarks made by a counsel against Richard Cromwell, in a cause to which he was a party, by immediately addressing the old protector, and kindly begging him to take a seat beside him on the bench.

The observations of other writers compel the acknowledg- ment that his moral character is not so clear. Setting aside the calumnies of Mrs. Manley as totally unworthy of atten- tion, the nickname of Will Bigamy fixed on him by Swift, though not to be considered as proof of his guilt, must be received as an evidence that there were stories afloat that were detrimental to his fame. That they did not apply to his union with his two acknowledged wives is certain, as the first, Miss Booth, had been dead nearly eighteen months when he married Miss Clavering his second and last wife. Mr. Welsby states that he had two children by a Miss Cul- ling of Hertingfordbury Park while very young; but he does not say whether before or after his first marriage.

1 State Tiials, xv. 347.

1714 — 1727. WILLIAM COWPER. 27

Swift intimates that the bigamy was perpetrated by convinc- ing the party of the lawfulness of such a union ; while Mr. Welsby says that " it was alleged that he deceived her by an informal marriage " ; ! so that we are left in doubt which lady was the deceived one. His marriage with Miss Booth took place in 1686 or 1687, when he was two or three-and-twenty, and the intercourse between them seems to have been most affectionate and uninterrupted. If he had two children by Miss Culling before his marriage with Miss Booth, his con- nection with her must have commenced some time before he was of age ; which, together with the fact that no contest is alluded to as occurring between the ladies during their lives, conveys a sufficient discredit, if not a complete contradiction, to the slander. It probably arose from the notoriety of his youthful license, and in some measure acquired strength from the mysterious concealment of his marriage with his last wife. To that lady, who was a very superior and amiable person, he was evidently most devotedly attached ; and no one has ventured to impugn the correctness of his conduct during their nuptial intercourse, nor indeed to have laid any charge on his morals since he entered into public life.

Though not particularly eminent for classical learning, he was well versed in the literature of his country, and was a generous patron to its professors. John Hughes, the author of many popular pieces in verse and prose, owed much to his bounty and encouragement ; which he repaid by a glowing preamble to the patent of the earl's last peerage, and by a couple of panegyrical odes. The Whig poet Ambrose Philips also devoted some graceful lines to his memory. Among his prose eulogists were Burnet, Steele, Lords Chesterfield and Wharton, and a host of other minor authors. Even Swift himself, in his " Four Last Years of Queen Anne,"

1 Examiner, No. 22; Welsby's Lives, 136.

28 SAMUEL DODD. George I.

is compelled to speak of him with as much praise as his crabbed nature and party prejudices would allow.

The earl's London residences were in Russell Street and Powis House, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and subsequently in Great George Street ; and his country one was at a spot called Colne Green in the parish of Hertingfordbury, the manor of which he had purchased. The house which he built there was pulled down in the beginning of this century, and replaced by the present stately mansion of Penshanger, where his successors flourish. The lord chancellor left two sons, from the eldest of whom, William, the present earl lineally descends. The second son, Spencer, became dean of Durham.1

DENTON, ALEXANDER.

Just. C. P. 1722.

See under the reign of George II.

DODD, SAMUEL. CHo B. E. 1714.

Samuel Dodd was the first of the six chief barons of the Exchequer during the short reign of George I., which seems to have been peculiarly fatal to those officers, since no less than four of them died in the thirteen years of its continuance. He was descended from a Cheshire family. There is a monu- ment to his grandfather and grandmother, Randall and Elizabeth Dod (both aged nearly ninety) at Little Budworth in that county, erected by their son Ralph Dod, who describes himself " Civis et Pellio Londini." Samuel Dodd was the son of Ralph and was born about 1652. The Inner Temple was his school of law, which he entered in 1670, and was called to the bar in 1679, and admitted to the bench of that society in 1700. His progress was very successful ;

1 Collins' Peerage, iv. 162; Lives, by Mr. Welsby aud Lord Campbell.

1714—1727. ROBERT DORMER. 29

but the only public trial in which he is recorded as being engaged is the ill-judged impeachment of Dr. Sacheverell in 1710, where he appeared as counsel for the doctor, and pleaded so manfully and ably, leading the defence of the three last articles, that he obtained a great amount of popu- larity among the high-church party.

On the accession of George I. there was a vacancy in the office of lord chief baron. Mr. Dodd being nominated to supply it was knighted on October 11, 1714, made a serjeant on the 26th, and sworn into office on November 22. He had very little opportunity of exhibiting his judicial powers, since he occupied his seat barely seventeen months. He died on April 14, 1716, and was buried in the Temple Church, where there is a monumental inscription giving a very favourable account of his character. He left a manu- script volume of Reports, which is preserved among the Hargrave Collection in the British Museum.

By his wife Elizabeth, sister and coheir of Sir Robert Croke of Chequers, Bucks, he had two sons, who both died without issue. Surviving her husband six years Lady Dodd founded the Almshouses at Ellesborough in that county.1

DORMER, ROBERT.

Just. C. P. 1714. See under the Reign of Queen Anne.

Robert Dormer was a descendant of the Buckinghamshire family of that name, a branch of which was ennobled by James I., with the title of Lord Dormer of Wenge, which has flourished ever since. The judge was the grandson of Sir Fleetwood Dormer, and the second son of John Dormer of Ley Grange and Purston, a barrister, by Katherine, daughter of Thomas Woodward of Ripple in Worcestershire.

1 State Trials, xv. 213, &c; Lord Raymond, 1319. I am indebted for the pedigree of the family to Robert Phipps Dodd, Esq.

30 ROBERT DORMER. George I.

To his elder brother John, Charles II. in 1661 presented a baronetcy, which became extinct in 1726. Robert was born in 1649, and was brought up to his father's profession at Lincoln's Inn, which he entered in May 1669, and was called to the bar in January 1675. He is mentioned as junior counsel for the crown in the trial of Sir Thomas Gas- coigne in 1680 on an indictment for high-treason, in which there was an acquittal ; and again in the same year on the trial of Mr. Cellier for a libel. He soon afterwards was constituted Chancellor of Durham.

He entered Parliament in 1698 as a member for Ayles- bury. In 1701 he represented the county of Bucks, and in 1702, Northallerton. In the great question of Ashby and White he opposed the assumed privilege of the House of Commons, which would have prevented an elector from pro- ceeding at common law for the injury he sustained by the returning officer refusing his vote. Before the next par- liament he received his call to the bench, and on January 8, 1706, he kissed hands as a judge of the Common Pleas in the place of Sir Edward Nevil deceased. He sat there nearly one-and-twenty years; and died on September 18, 1726.

His seat was at Arle Court near Cheltenham, a property which came to his grandfather, Sir Fleetwood, by marriage ; and he inherited Lee Grange and Purston from his nephew the last baronet, Sir William, whose death preceded his own about six months. His marriage with Mary daughter of Sir Richard Blake of London produced him four daughters only, one of whom married Lord Fortescue of Credan, and another John Parkhurst of Catesby in Northamptonshire, the father of the author of the Greek Lexicon to the New Testament.1

1 Atkyns' Gloucestersh. 174; State Trials, vii. 967, 1188; Pari. Hist. vi. 267; Lord Eaymond, 1260, 1420; Luttrell, vi. 15; Gent. Mag. Ixx. 615; Burke's Ext. Baronet. 162; Lord Campbell's Chancellors, iv. 306.

1714—1727. JEFFREY GILBERT. 31

EYRE, ROBERT,

Just. K. B. 1714. Ch. B. E. 1723. Ch. C. P. 1725.

See under the reigns of Anne and George II.

GILBERT, JEFFREY. B. E. 1722. Com. G. S. 1725. Ch. C. B. 1725.

Of the ancestors or descendants of this eminent jurist there is no certain account. From his arms being somewhat similar to those of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, the noted sea- man and discoverer in Queen Elizabeth's reign, he is supposed to have belonged to a branch of that family. His birthplace is said to be Burr's Farm, a manor in the parish of Goudhurst in Kent, which he afterwards purchased. In the baptismal registry there is the following entry, " 1674, Oct. 10. Jeffrey son of William Gilbert and Elizabeth his wife." But of these parents nothing is known, except that in his admission to the Inner Temple on December 20, 1692, the father is designated w esquire." He was called to the bar in June 1698 ; and, judging from the numerous treatises of which he was the author, he must have been indefatigable in his early studies. He commenced taking notes of cases in 1706, when his Equity Reports begin. It is evident that he had established a good legal reputation before 1714, as on November 8 of that year he was appointed one of the judges of the King's Bench in Ireland ; from which he was promoted on the 16th of the following June to be chief baron of the Exchequer there. In the year 1719 he and the other barons were committed by the Irish House of Lords to the custody of the usher of the black rod, for granting an injunc- tion in pursuance of an order of the English House of Lords in an appeal from the Irish courts (Annesley v. Sherlock.) l In the next year an act of parliament was passed putting an

1 Smyth's Law Off. of Ireland, 109, 143; State Trials, xv. 1301-16

32 JEFFREY GILBERT. George I.

end to the dispute by excluding the Irish House of Lords from any jurisdiction ; and though this act was afterwards repealed, the whole question is since settled by the Act of Union. How long the barons remained in custody is not mentioned ; but the conduct of the chief was evidently approved by the English Government. His epitaph says that he was offered the Great Seal of Ireland and that he refused the honour, and resigned his place upon being made a baron of the Eng- lish Exchequer in May 1722. He was of course previously invested with the coif, but did not receive the honour of knighthood till January 1724. On the resignation of Lord Macclesfield he was nominated second commissioner of the Great Seal, and filled that position from January 7 to June 1, 1725, when Lord King became lord chancellor. On the same day he was promoted to the place of chief baron, on the elevation of Sir Robert Eyre to the presidency of the Common Pleas; which seat he only occupied for fifteen months ; being snatched away by an early death on October 14, 1726. This event occurred at Bath ; in the abbey church of which he was buried. A tablet to his memory is placed in the Temple Church with an elegant eulogium in Latin of his legal and scientific attainments.

Of all the works that appear under his name, and which exhibit so much learning in . almost every variety of legal investigation that they are still constantly referred to as authority, it is extraordinary that none were published in his lifetime. They comprehend Reports in Equity, histories of the courts of Exchequer, Common Pleas and Chancery, and treatises on Uses and Trusts, Tenures, Devises, Ejectments, Distresses, Executions, Rents, Remainders, and Evidence. This latter Blackstone describes as excellent, and calls it " a work which it is impossible to abstract or abridge, without losing some beauty and destroying the chain of the whole. " Most of these works were published soon after his death, and many

1714—1727. SIMON HARCOURT. 33

of them have been several times reprinted, edited by men eminent in the law. He was a fellow of the Royal Society, and was equally famous for his mathematical as for his legal studies ; and for his refined taste in polite literature. The modesty he showed in not himself publishing any of his works distinguished him throughout his career; and he was held in as much esteem by his contemporaries, as he is regarded with respect and admiration at the present day.

Though, according to Lord Campbell, Sir Jeffrey had a " scolding wife," her name has not come down to us. That he left no children seems probable, as he bequeathed his manor of Frensham, in Rolvenden in Kent, to Phillips Gybbon, Esq., one of his executors who put up his monu- ment in the Temple Church.1

HALE, BERNARD.

B. E. 1725.

See under the reign of George II.

HARCOURT, SIMON, Lord Harcodrt.

Lord Chancellor, 1714. See under the reign of Anne.

Few members of the House of Lords could boast a more ancient lineage or a more noble ancestry than the subject of this sketch, when he entered that august assembly. Directly descended from Bernard, of the royal blood of Saxony, who with other lordships received that of Harcourt near Falaise from Hollo on his settlement in Normandy in the ninth century, and whose descendant Robert de Harcourt accom- panied William the Norman on his invasion of England, his family had flourished during the succeeding period in knightly

1 Lord Raymond, 1380-1420; Noble's Contin. of Granger, iii. 198; Capel Lofft's Life, prefixed to the Law of Evidence; Hasted's Kent, vii. 77, 195; Lord Campbell's Ch. Just. ii. 177.

VOL. VIII. D

34 SIMON HAKCOURT. George I.

distinction, and had been resident during the twelfth century at Stanton near Oxford, from that time called Stanton- Harcourt. The chancellor's grandfather, Sir Simon Har- court, loyally distinguished himself in the Irish rebellion of 1641, and was killed at the siege of Carrick Main in the following year ; leaving a son, Sir Philip, who by his first wife, Anne daughter of Sir William Waller the parliamentary general, was the father of the subject of the present memoir. The family estate, from the one side or the other in the pre- vious troubles, had been seriously diminished at the time of the Restoration.

Simon Harcourt1 was born in 1660, and while receiving his education at Pembroke College, Oxford, was, according to the entry in the Inner Temple books, "specially" admitted on April 16, 1676, as a member of that society at the request of Mr. Holloway of Oxford, his father's neighbour in the country, who was then reader, and afterwards one of the judges excluded from the Act of Indemnity at the Revolution. After the usual seven years' probation he was called to the bar on November 25, 1683 ; and before his father's death in 1688 he was elected recorder of Abingdon.2 That borough returned him to parliament in 1690, and so fully did his con- stituents approve his political sentiments that they returned him their representative in all the future parliaments of King William's reign. That he was strongly imbued with Tory principles he evinced on his first entrance into the house, by the objections he then raised in the discussions on the bills for the settlement of the government; and afterwards in 1696 by powerful speeches in opposition to the bill of

1 There was another Simon Harcourt, who was conspicuous about this time as a successful claimant of the office of clerk of the peace for Middlesex. He was afterwards clerk of the crown and member for Aylesbury in the Parlia- ment of 1702. Luttrell frequently mentions him.

2 Inner Temple Books; Wood's Ath. Oxon. iv. 214.

1714—1727. SIMON HARCOURT. 35

attainder against Sir John Fenwick, as a proceeding both unconstitutional and unjust. He carried his party feeling so far, that he declined in the first instance to subscribe the Association of the Commons on the discovery of the assassi- nation plot.

The tide of party turned, however, towards the latter end of King William's reign ; and the Whigs declined in popu- larity till they became a minority in the House of Commons. The consequence of this was first the removal, and then the impeachment, of Lord Somers ; the duty of carrying up the charge against whom to the House of Lords was intrusted to Harcourt, to whose management or mismanagement (as it may be variously considered) may probably be attributed the non-appearance of the prosecutors at the trial.1 At this time he had acquired a complete ascendency not only in the house but in general estimation. His wit and eloquence, in addition to his legal ability, were so universally acknowledged that in after years they were specially brought forward in a public document as a principal reason for his advancement. In the preamble to his patent of peerage " his faculty in speaking " is prominently noticed, with the addition that " it is unanimously confessed by all, that among the lawyers he is the most eloquent orator, and among the orators the most able lawyer."

But whatever his popularity may have been with the general public, it did not exempt him from the attacks of those who set all law at defiance. He is identified by a memorandum in LuttrelPs Diary (iv. 631) as the subject of the following curious extract given by Mr. Welsby from the "London Post" of June 1, 1700:—

" Two days ago a lawyer of the Temple coming to town

his coach was robbed by two highwaymen on Hounslow ieath of 50/., his watch, and whatever they could find

' Tarl. Hist. v. 582, 596, 606, 958, 1016, 1067, 1136, 1246, 1314.

i. 2

36 SIMON HARCOURT. George I.

valuable about him ; which being perceived by a countryman on horseback, he dogged them at a distance ; and they taking notice thereof, turned and rid up towards him ; upon which he, counterfeiting the drunkard, rid forward making antic gestures, and being come up with them, spoke as if he clipped the king's English with having drunk too much, and asked them to drink a pot, offering to treat them if they would but drink with him ; whereupon they, believing him to be really drunk, left him and went forward again, and he still followed them till they came to Cue (Kew) ferry, and when they were in the boat, discovered them, so that they were both seized and committed ; by which means the gentleman got again all that they had taken from him."

With the accession of Queen Anne the Tories were esta- blished in power, and Harcourt was at once admitted to partake it. He superseded Sir John Hawles as solicitor- general on June 1, 1702, was immediately knighted, and called to the bench of his inn of court. On the queen's visit to Oxford in the following August, he was in her suite and was honoured by that university with the degree of LL.D. In the first parliament of that reign he was again returned for Abingdon, but in the second and third he sat for Bossiney in Cornwall. He supported the extraordinary claims of the Commons to decide on the rights of electors in the famous Aylesbury case ; and has the credit of drawing the bill for the Union with Scotland in such a manner as to prevent a discussion of the articles upon which the commissioners had agreed. While solicitor-general he acted as chairman of the Buckinghamshire quarter sessions ; and of his charges to the grand jury there are manuscript notes in the British Museum. In April 1707 he succeeded to the post of attorney-general, but before a year elapsed he resigned it, in February 1708, on the change of ministry and the admission of the Whigs into the cabinet. In the new parliament called in November

1714—1727. SIMON HARCOURT. 37

of that year he was returned again by his former constituents for Abingdon, but on a petition against him by his Whig opponent, the house, notwithstanding the majority of legal votes at the close of the election were palpably in his favour, decided against him. He thus became the victim of an iniquitous system he had himself encouraged when in power in former parliaments, by which the faction in the ascendant decided on all petitions in favour of their own partisan. The Duke of Marlborough soon after removed him from the stewardship of the manor of Woodstock which he had held for some time. '

Before the close of that parliament he was elected member for Cardigan; but during his recess from the house the absurd impeachment of Dr. Sacheverell was resolved on, and Sir Simon was thus enabled to appear as his leading counsel at the bar of the House of Lords, and by a powerful argu-

ime^ to expose the folly of prosecuting his vain and silly client. No sooner had he delivered his opening speech than the announcement of his return for Cardigan prevented him from taking any further part in the trial, as being a member of the commons who had instituted the proceedings. He was obliged soon after this to submit to the operation of couching one of his eyes, which was performed with success by Sir William Read. The prosecution of Sacheverell was the deathblow of the Whigs. The Tories were restored to power, and Sir Simon on September 19, 1710, resumed his office of attorney-general. He was returned to the new parliament for Abingdon ; but before it met the Great Seal was delivered into his hands on October 19, with the title of lord keeper. He then took up his residence in Powis House, Lincoln's Inn Fields.2

Of his professional exertions while at the bar there is little

1 Burnet, v. 10, 48, 287, 345; Pari. Hist. vi. 264, 778; Luttrcll, vi. 442. ■ State Trials, xv. 196; Luttrell, vi. 620, 6.*i0, 644; Burnet, vi. 10, 11.

38 SIMON HARCOURT. George I.

record. He probably practised principally in the court of Chancery, in the Keports of which the names of the counsel were then rarely noted. John Philips seems to refer to this employment in his invocation to Sir Simon's son, which opens the second book of his poem on Cyder, published in 1706 :

u Let thy father's worth excite Thirst for pre-eminence ; see how the cause Of widows and of orphans he asserts With winning rhetoric and well-argued law."

Before he was solicitor-general his name only once occurs in the State T rials ; as the last of five counsel engaged for the defence in the prosecutions against Duncombe in 1699 for falsely indorsing exchequer bills ; and after he obtained office there are only three cases in which he acted besides that of Dr. Sacheverell : viz. Swensden for forcibly marrying Plea- sant Rawlins ; David Lindsay for high treason ; and John Tutchin for a libel.1

The new lord keeper presided in the House of Lords for nearly a year without a title: but on September 3, 1711, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Harcourt of Stanton- Harcourt. The preamble to his patent was expressed in such glowing terms of eulogy that it is impossible to believe that he himself, as Lord Campbell (Chancellors, i v. 462) more than in- sinuates, was its author. On April 7,1713, the queen changed his title of lord keeper to lord chancellor, which he retained till her death on August 1, 1714, steering cautiously amidst the dissensions in the cabinet and through the agitating scenes by which the last months of her reign were troubled. Although as chancellor he was forced to take the formal proceedings necessary for proclaiming the Hanoverian king, there was too much reason for believing that he had pre- viously joined in the intrigue with Bolingbroke and Atter- bury to restore the exiled family.

1 State Trials, xiii. 1084; xiv. 561, 989, 1100; xv. 196.

1714—1727. SIMON HARCOURT.' 39

The lords justices however replaced him in his position as lord chancellor ; and notwithstanding the suspicion attaching to him, he escaped the consequences with which his col- leagues were visited, and received no other punishment than an immediate discharge from his office on the arrival of George I. The king made his first entry into London on September 20, and on the next day he sent to Lord Har- court for the Seal, which was delivered to Lord Cowper. Towards his old coadjutors he acted a friendly part; managing to defeat the impeachment of Oxford, and pro- curing a qualified pardon for Bolingbroke.1

After some years, when the Hanoverian succession was recognised by the great majority of the people, he joined the Whig party under Sir Robert Walpole, which while it accounts for the modified praise awarded to him by Whig writers, either throws a considerable doubt over the sincerity of his previous professions, or loads him with the imputation of deserting his principles from unworthy and avaricious motives. It procured him from his old allies the nickname of the Trimmer. His change of politics was accompanied on July 24, 1721, by an advance in the peerage to the dignity of viscount, and an increase of his retiring pension from two to four thousand a year. To that administration he continued his support through the remainder of the reign ; though he never held any other official position than that of one of the lords justices during the king's occasional visits to his German dominions. He survived George I. not quite two months, when being seized with a paralysis he died at his house in Cavendish Square on July 28, 1727. His remains were removed to the family cemetery at Stanton- Harcourt.

With undoubted abilities and a power of eloquence uni- versally acknowledged, Lord Harcourt's reputation as a 1 Lord Raymond, 1318; Pari. Hist. vii. 485.

40 SIMON HARCOURT. Geobge I.

judge is not very great. During the four years that he presided in equity, no insinuations of bribery were levelled against him, nor was a whisper heard against the honesty of his judgments ; but his decisions are not held in high esti- mation at the present day. That he was kind and amiable in his disposition, polished in his manners, and of social habits, may be inferred from the number of friends that circled around him, from his being a frequenter of several literary and political clubs, and from his intimate association with Pope, Swift, Philips, Gay, and the other wits by which that age was distinguished. No published work of his enables us to judge of his learning ; and his poetic effusions are confined to his commendatory lines prefixed to Pope's collected Poems, if they be his, and not his son's, as appears not unlikely, as they are subscribed, not with the title " Harcourt " only, but with " Simon Harcourt," the son's name at length. That son had already proved his poetic inclinations by the complimentary verses recited on the queen's visit to Oxford; and Pope's intimacy with him is testified by the graceful lines inscribed by the poet on his tomb when he died in 1720: —

u To this sad shrine, whoe'er thou art, draw near ; Here lies the friend most loved, the son most dear, Who ne'er knew joy, but friendship might divide, Or gave his father grief, but when he died.

How vain is reason, eloquence how weak ! If Pope must tell what Harcourt cannot speak. Oh! let thy once-lov'd friend inscribe thy stone, And, with a father's sorrows, mix his own."

Lord Harcourt was married three times : first, to Rebecca, daughter of Mr. Thomas Clark; secondly to Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Spencer, Esq., and widow of Richard Anderson, Esq. ; and lastly, to Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Thomas Vernon of Twickenham Park, and widow of Sir

1714—1727. JAMES MONTAGU. 41

John Walter of Saresden in Oxfordshire, Bart. He had issue by his first wife only ; and his son Simon having died before him, he was succeeded by his grandson, to whose other titles an earldom was added in 1749. These honours became extinct on the death of the third earl without issue in 1830.1

JEKYLL, JOSEPH.

M. R. ;i717.

See under the reign of George II.

KING, PETER, Lord King. Ch. C. P. 1714. Lord Chanc. 1725. See under the reign of George II.

MACCLESFIELD, EARL OF. See T. Parker.

MONTAGU, JAMES. B. E. 1714. Com. G. S. 1718. Ch. B. E. 1722.

James Montagu was the grandson of Sir Henry, the first Earl of Manchester, chief justice of the King's Bench in the reign of James I. ; being the son of the Hon. George Montagu, of Horton in Northamptonshire, one of the earl's children by his third marriage. His mother was Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Anthony Irby; and his brother Charles, the eminent statesman and poet, was created Baron Halifax in 1710, to which was added an earldom in 1714 : but the latter title became extinct on the death of the third earl in 1771. Four of the judge's family having attained high dignities in the law, James as a younger son naturally selected the same profession, no doubt hoping to acquire some of those honours to which he might consider he had a sort of hereditary claim. He was therefore entered of the Middle Temple, by which

1 I owe much of this sketch to the excellent memoir of Lord Harcourt by W. N. Welsby, Esq. Lives, 172.

42 JAMES MONTAGU. George I.

society he was called to the bar. On attaining the rank of solicitor-general he removed to Lincoln's Inn, of which he was elected a bencher on May 2, 1707.

The register of St. Andrew's, Holborn, records his mar- riage "at the Rose" with " Tufton Ray" on October 6, 1694. This lady was the daughter of Sir William Wray of Ashby, Bart., a descendant of chief justice Sir Christopher Wray, and died in 1712. Soon after this marriage he entered into parliament, being elected for Tregony in 1695, and for Beeralston in 1698; in which year he was appointed chief justice of Ely. He did not obtain a seat in the two remain- ing parliaments of William, nor in the first parliament of Anne; devoting himself entirely to professional avocations in which he was very generally employed. In 1704 he made a bold and successful fight in defence of John Tutchin (a former intended victim of Jeffrey's in his western cam- paign), who was indicted for a libel published in " The Observator." In Michaelmas Term of the same year he was one of the counsel who moved for a habeas corpus in favour of the Aylesbury men committed to Newgate by the House of Commons for bringing actions against the return- ing officer, and pleaded strongly against the absurd privilege claimed by the house. For the mere exercise of this duty as a barrister, the commons on February 26, 1705, committed him and his colleagues to the custody of the serjeant-at-arms, where he remained till March 14, when the queen felt compelled to prorogue, and afterwards to dissolve the parliament, in order to prevent the collision between the two houses, of which there was every appearance. In the following April the queen conferred the honour of knight- hood upon him at Cambridge ; and in November appointed him one of her majesty's counsel.1

1 State Trials, xiv. 808, 850, 1119; Luttrcll, v, 524, 542, 609.

1714—1727. JAMES MONTAGU. 43

In the second parliament of Queen Anne he was elected member for the city of Carlisle, which he continued to repre- sent till 1714 ; but of his speeches in the house little record remains, though he became solicitor-general on April 28, 1707, and attorney-general on October 6, 1708. From the latter office he was removed in September 1710, but the queen granted him a pension of 1000/. This pension, which was represented by Colonel Gledhill as intended to defray the expenses of Sir James's election at Carlisle, was in 1711 made the subject of a complaint to the house, which resulted in the complete disproval of the charge. Sir James, how- ever, was not returned for Carlisle in the queen's last parliament of 1714; and before the first parliament of George I. he was raised to the judicial bench. In 1705 he was leading counsel in the prosecution of Robert Fielding for bigamy in marrying the Duchess of Cleveland ; in 1710 while attorney-general he opened the charges against Dr. Sacheverell in the House of Lords ; and when that trial was concluded he conducted the prosecutions of the parties who were found guilty of high treason, for pulling down meeting- houses in the riots that followed.1

On the arrival of George I. in England and his settlement of the judges, Sir James received the degree of the coif on October 26, 1714, and on November 22 was sworn a baron of the Exchequer. While holding that position he was nominated one of the lords commissioners of the Great Seal, on the resignation of Lord Cowper, and held it from April 18 till May 12, 1718, when Lord Parker was appointed lord chancellor. On May 4, 1722, Chief Baron Bury died, and before the end of the month Sir James was sworn as his successor. He presided in the Exchequer little more than a year, his death occurring on October 1, 1723.

1 Pari. Hist. vi. 1009; State Trials, xiv. 1329, xv. 53, 549-680.

44 THOMAS PARKER. George I.

His second wife was Elizabeth, daughter of Robert third Earl of Manchester ; by whom he had a son, Charles, who was afterwards member for St. Albans.1

PAGE, FRANCIS.

B. E. 1718. Just. C. P. 1726. See under the reign of George II.

PARKER, THOMAS, Lord Parker, Earl of

Macclesfield.

Ch. K. B. 1714. Lord Chanc. 1718.

See under the reign of Anne.

The efforts too universally made to give heraldic distinction to persons who have been elevated to high honours solely by their own merits and exertions, are often laughable and some- times contemptible ; as if the eminence to which they have climbed is rendered more luminous by the occurrence of a name similar to their own in possession of an estate in the time of the Plantagenets. Few men, however humble may be their present state, will fail to find among their ancestors, if they will take the trouble to search, some such owner of property ; but they will soon discover that it will have no effect, nor much influence, in procuring their advancement, unless aided by energy and industry on their own behalf.

Though Thomas Parker may not be able to trace a connec- tion (as the peerages insinuate) with the William le Parker who had a grant of free warren over his lands in Norfolk in the reign of Henry III., it is enough to record of him that he belonged to a branch of a respectable family long seated at Norton Lees in Derbyshire. His father Thomas Parker, a younger son of George Parker of Park Hall in Stafford- shire, high sheriff of that county in the reign of Charles I.,

1 Lord Raymond, 1319, 1331; Collins' Peerage, ii. 83; Gent Mag. v. 151.

1714—1727. THOMAS PARKER. 45

was an attorney practising in the neighbouring town of Leek ; and his mother was Anne, daughter and co-heir of Robert Venables of Wincham in Derbyshire. He was born at Leek, and his birthday, July 23, 1666, was commemorated in a future year by the poet John Hughes, to whom both he and Lord Cowper had been munificent benefactors, in the following eulogistic lines : —

u Not fair July, tho' Plenty clothe his fields,

Tho' golden suns make all his mornings smile, Can boast of aught that such a triumph yields, As that he gave a Parker to our isle.

Hail, happy month ! secure of lasting fame !

Doubly distinguished thro' the circling year : — In Rome a hero gave thee first thy name,

A patriot's birth makes thee to Britain dear."

After receiving the rudiments of his education at New- port in Shropshire and at Derby, his father sent him to complete it at the university of Cambridge, where he was entered a pensioner at Trinity College on October 9, 1685.1 He had already been admitted a student at the Inner Temple on February 14, 1683-4, before which time his father had removed to Newcastle-under-Lyne ; but there is no record of the course of his studies at the one, nor of his taking any degree at the other. It is not impossible, though very unlikely, that he might have been articled to his father at the time he became a member of the Inner Temple ; but his subsequent entry at Cambridge, and still more his call to the bar on May 21, 1691, seem completely to negative the story mentioned by Lysons, and asserted as a fact by Lord Camp- bell, that he was placed on the roll of the junior branch of the profession, or practised as an attorney at Derby, w at the foot of the bridge next the Three Crowns." a He could not

1 Collins' Peerage, iv. 190 ; Quarterly Review, lxxxii. 594.

2 Inner Temple Books; Lysons' Derbysh, 111; Campbell's Chanc. iv. 503.

46 THOMAS PARKER. George I.

at the same time be a barrister and an attorney; and though nine years elapsed after his call to the bar before his name appears in the Reports, yet from the importance of the cases in which we find him engaged, amongst which was the famous prosecution against John Tutchin for libel, he must have had many previous opportunities of making his name known and respected.1 He attended the Midland circuit, and probably acted as a provincial counsel in the town of Derby, of which he was soon elected recorder. The statement that he was designated the " silver-tongued counsel " is merely a second edition of the title given forty years before to Heneage Finch, afterwards Earl of Nottingham ; — and seems to have been a compliment not uncommonly paid to legal dignitaries, since we have found a chief justice above two hundred years before spoken of as the " sweet-tongued Bryan."

The town of Derby returned him as one of its represen- tatives to the parliament of November 1705, and again in the two following parliaments ; but though he sat as a member for the five years he continued at the bar, there is no record of any speech he delivered in the house, nor of any part he took, except in the proceedings against Dr. Sacheverell. He owed his first election probably to the interest of the Duke of Devonshire, as his colleague was Lord James Cavendish, and as in the previous June he was by the recommendation of that duke, and of the Dukes of Newcastle and Somerset, not only raised to the degree of the coif, but immediately made one of the queen's Serjeants and knighted. In the previous month he had been called to the bench of his inn, as a compliment on his intended promotion. Attached to the Whig party, he was naturally appointed one of the managers in the unpopular impeachment of Dr. Sacheverell in 1710, when his speeches were so effective, and his denunciations against the vain and factious doctor were

1 Lord Raymond, 812, 856; State Trials, xiv. 1173.

1714—1727. THOMAS PARKER. 47

so strong, that in his return to his chambers he with difficulty escaped from the mob, which since the commencement of the trial had been furiously excited against the prosecution. His exertions were soon rewarded and his fright quickly compensated by the chief justiceship of the Queen's Bench, which became vacant by the death of Sir John Holt during the progress of the trial; and on March 13, before the sentence was pronounced, Sir Thomas Parker was sworn into the office.

Within a month after his appointment he was called upon to preside at the trial of Dammaree, Willis, and Purchase, who had been engaged in the riots arising out of Sacheve- rell's trial, and were charged with pulling down dissenting meeting-houses ; and though he summed up for the convic- tion, and they were found guilty of high- treason, he inter- ceded for them and procured their pardon. During the eight years of his presidency he fully justified the wisdom of the choice ; for though immediately following so renowned a lawyer as Sir John Holt, he escaped any injurious comparison, and conducted the business of his court with discrimination and learning ; though of course Swift and the other Tory writers of the day did not fail to charge him with partiality.

Two years after the accession of George I., on March 10, 1716, he was raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Parker of Macclesfield ; being the second chief justice of the King's Bench ennobled while holding that office ; and at the same time he received the grant of a pension for life of 1,200/. a year. This is a sufficient proof of the estimation with which he was regarded by the king, whose favour was two years after firmly established by the opinion which the chief justice gave, that his majesty had the sole control over the education and marriages of his grandchildren ; l an

1 Stnte Trials, xv. 1222.

48 THOMAS PARKER. George I.

opinion which, though subsequently confirmed, insured the enmity of the Prince of Wales. The fruits of the king's favour were immediate ; the effect of the prince's animosity was for some time concealed.

A month after the resignation of Lord Cowper, the interval being filled up by the appointment of commissioners, the Great Seal was presented to Lord Parker on May 12, 1718, with the title of lord chancellor, accompanied by the extraordinary present of 14,000/. from the king. To his son also a yearly pension of 1,200/. was at the same time granted till he obtained the place of teller of the Exchequer, to which he was appointed in the following year. Lord Parker held the Seal for nearly seven years, and proved himself as able in equity as he had shown himself in law, his decisions being regarded to this day with as much respect as those of any of his predecessors. On November 5, 1721, he was created Viscount Parker of Ewelme and Earl of Macclesfield, with a remainder, failing his issue male, to his daughter Elizabeth, the wife of William Heathcote, Esq., and her issue male. This uncommon limitation may have been caused by his son's absence abroad and the uncertainty of the father as to his existence. The earl had been already made lord lieutenant of the counties of Warwick and Oxford, in the latter of which he had purchased Sherburn Castle near Watlington. In September 1724 he was chosen lord high steward of the borough of Stafford. Yet with these and other proofs of the king's countenance and favour, with the reputation of an able dispenser of justice, in the full possession of his faculties and without any change, or any dissension in the ministry, he suddenly resigned the Great Seal on January 4, 1725.

His high position for the last four years in which he filled it had been anything but a bed of roses. In the latter end of 1720 Mr. Dormer, one of the masters in chancery, had

1714—1727. THOMAS PARKER. 49

absconded in consequence of the failure of a Mr. Wilson his goldsmith or banker, in whose hands he had deposited a large amount of the suitors' cash. The deficiency this occasioned, added to his own losses by speculating with the same cash in the South Sea bubble, which at that time burst, amounted to nearly 100,000/., which it was impossible for him to meet from his own private means. Those means were applied as far as they would go, and various palliatives were adopted by the chancellor, to satisfy the incoming claims ; such as by applying for that purpose the price given by the successor for the mastership ; by obtaining a contri- bution of 500/. from each of the other masters, except one ; and by some payments out of his own pocket. But these were not nearly sufficient ; and the refusal of the masters to make any further contribution, with the urgency of unsatisfied applicants, determined the chancellor to put an end to his anxiety by resigning the Seal.

Then did he experience the effect of the prince's dis- pleasure. He had not resigned three weeks before petitions were presented to the House of Commons by his royal highness's friends from parties complaining of non-payment of the moneys they were entitled to; addresses to the king were voted ; commissions of inquiry granted ; and reports made, which resulted in the earl's impeachment for corruption on February 12. The charges were not like those against Lord Chancellor Bacon for taking bribes of the suitors, but the twenty-one articles were confined to his selling offices con- trary to law, and for taking extortionate sums for them, with the knowledge that the payment was defrayed out of the suitors' money. The trial lasted thirteen days, from the 5th to the 27 th of May ; and the report occupies no less than 632 columns of the " State Trials" (vol. xvi. 767, et seq.). The proceedings were most tiresome, and the repetitions and the quibblings do no credit either to the managers for the

VOL. VIII. E

1

50 THOMAS -PARKER. Gkorce I.

commons or to the accused earl. The lords unanimously found him guilty and fined him 30,0007. This sum the king, though he was obliged to strike his name from the privy council, intimated to him that he would pay out of his privy purse as fast as he could spare the money ; and actually gave him 10007. towards it in the first year, and in the second directed 20007. more to be given to him ; but before the earl applied for it the king died, and Sir Robert Walpole evaded the payment, probably from his fear of offending the implac- able successor.

This prosecution was attended with important results. Though many will consider that the earl was treated harshly and made to suffer for irregularities introduced by his pre- decessors, all must rejoice in the exposure and removal of them which the investigation produced. A vicious system had prevailed for a long series of years, not only in the court of Chancery, but in the other courts also, of disposing of the various offices in the gift of the chiefs to any person who would offer what was called " a present " to the bestower. In the court of Chancery not only the executive and hono- rary officers who were entitled to fees were expected to contribute to the purse of the chancellor, but the system extended to the masters in Chancery, who were the chancel- lor's judicial assistants, and moreover were entrusted with the care of the moneys, the right to which was disputed, or the application of which was to be determined, in the various causes that came within the jurisdiction of the court. The practice had been notoriously acted upon for many years by the chancellor's predecessors, and, though the equally objec- tionable custom of receiving new-year's gifts had been abrogated by those whom he immediately succeeded, Lords Cowper and Harcourt, yet even they had not hesitated to receive payment from those masters whom they had ap- pointed. Bad as the system was, the blot would not have

1714—1727. TnOMAS PARKER. 51

been removed but for the accident of Mr. Dormer's insol- vency, and even with that discovery Lord Macclesfield would probably have escaped censure had he confined himself to the former practice, which had been in some sort recognised by the legislature, — inasmuch as at the Revolution a clause prohibiting the sale of the office of master of Chancery, which had been proposed to be inserted in a bill then before the house, had been negatived by the lords. Either his acquittal, or his condemnation, would have equally resulted in the abolition of that practice, and in a more safe investment of the suitors' money. But unfortunately for the accused earl the investigation proved that he had not been content with the accustomed honorarium, but had increased the price so enor- mously, that it became next to impossible for the appointees to refund themselves, or even to pay the amount, without either extorting unnecessary fees by delaying causes before them, or using the money deposited with them, to defray the sum demanded. That he employed an agent to bargain for him and to higgle about the price there is no doubt, and

tthat he was aware of the improper use that was made of the suitors' money and took means to conceal the losses that occasionally occurred, there is too much evidence. Though therefore his friends might assert that he was made to suffer for a system of which he was not the author, and which had been knowingly practised by his predecessors with impunity, it is impossible to acquit him entirely of the charge of carry- ing that system to an exorbitant extent, and of corruptly recognising, if not encouraging, practices dangerous to the public credit and destructive of that confidence which should always exist in the judicature of the country. The contra- dictions sometimes found in human nature are extraordinary ; for while the disclosures of the trial tend to exhibit an avaricious disposition in the earl, the evidence he produced, with questionable delicacy, satisfactorily proves that he was

E2

52 LITTLETON POWYS. George I.

at the same time extremely liberal, dispensing with an almost extravagant hand large sums in the promotion of learning and in aid and encouragement of poor scholars and distressed clergymen. That the price paid by the masters for their places was considered a legitimate part of the profit of the chancellor, received a curious confirmation in the grant to Lord Macclesfield's immediate successor, Lord King, of a considerable addition to his salary, as a compensation for the loss occasioned by the annihilation of the practice consequent upon this investigation.

Lord Macclesfield lived seven years afterwards, but mixed no more in public affairs. He spent his time between Slier- burn Castle, his seat in Oxfordshire, and London, where at the time of his death he was building a house in St. James's Square, afterwards inhabited by his son. He died at his son's house in Soho Square on April 28, 1732, and was buried at Sherburn.

His wife, Janet, daughter and coheir of Charles Carrier of Wirksworth in Derbyshire, Esq., brought him two children only, a son and a daughter. The daughter married William (afterwards Sir William) Heathcote ; and the son, who suc- ceeded to the earldom, was renowned as a philosopher, and had a principal share in preparing the act of parliament for the alteration of the style. The present earl is the sixth who has borne the title.

PENGELLY, THOMAS.

Ch. B. E. 1726. See under the Reign of George II.

POWYS, LITTLETON,

Just. K. B 1714.

See under the Reigns of William III. and Anne.

The pedigree of Sir Littleton Powys is authentically traced up to the Princes of Powys in the twelfth century by

1714—1727. LITTLETON POWYS. 53

veracious genealogists, who carry it clown through a multi- tude of Aps, Barons of Main-yn-Meifod in Powys-land, till the reign of Edward II. ; about which time the Welsh appendage was discarded, and the more pronounceable name of Powys adopted. The family subsequently divided into several branches, one of which settled in Shropshire. Thomas Powys of Henley in that county, who was autumn reader of Lincoln's Inn in 1667, and serjeant-at-law in 1669, by his first wife Mary daughter of Sir Adam Littleton, Bart., was the father of four sons, the eldest of whom, who was baptized with his mother's maiden name, and the second, Thomas, both became judges.1

Littleton Powys was born about the year 1648, and was instructed in the mysteries of law at Lincoln's Inn, where he was admitted in 1664, his father being at that time a bencher there, and was called to the bar after the customary period of preparation in May 1671. He obtained no rank in the profession before the Bevolution, when he took arms in favour of William with three servants, and read aloud that prince's declaration at Shrewsbury. He was rewarded for his zeal by being made in May 1689 second judge on the Chester circuit. In 1692 he was raised to the degree of the coif, and soon after knighted; and on October 29, 1695, he was promoted to the bench as a baron of the Exchequer. In that court, and afterwards in the King's Bench, to which he was removed on January 29, 1701, he sat during three reigns till October 26, 1726, when being then seventy-eight years old he was allowed to retire on a pension of 15007. 2

On the accession of George I. in 1714 Lord Cowper had represented to the king that as the judge and his brother fre- quently acted in opposition to their two colleagues in the

1 Collins' Peerage, viii. 577; Burke ; Dugdalc's Orig. Jur. 256.

2 9 Rep. Pub. Rec. App. ii. 252; Lord Raymond, 622, 1420; Pat. 12 Will. III. p. 5.

54 LITTLETON POWYS. George I.

court, it was expedient to remove one of them, and recom- mended that Sir Littleton should be retained as a blameless man, though " of less abilitys and consequence." l

He was a good plodding judge, though, according to Duke Wharton's satire, he could not " sum a cause without a blunder," and was somewhat too much inclined to take a political view in the trials before him. In the absurd prose- cution in 1718 of Hendley a clergyman, for preaching at Christchurch a charity sermon for the children of St. Ann's, Aldersgate Street, whom he caused to be convicted; and particularly in his letter of explanation to Lord Chancellor Parker, he was evidently influenced, not by the real question of law, but by a spirit of antagonism to Bishop Atterbury, who had authorised the sermon, and by a ridiculous pretence that such charitable collections might be applied to the injury of the Protestant Church and to the furtherance of the objects of the pretender. With moderate intellectual powers he filled his office with average credit, but was commonly laughed at by the bar for commencing his judgments with " I humbly conceive," and enforcing his arguments with " Look, do you see." He is the reputed victim of Philip Yorke's badinage, who dining with the judge and being pressed to name the subject of the work which he had jokingly said he was about to publish, stated that it was a poetical version of Coke upon Littleton. As nothing would satisfy Sir Littleton but a specimen of the composition, Yorke gravely recited,

u lie that holdeth his lands in fee

Need neither to shake nor to shiver,

I humbly conceive ; for look, do you see,

They are his and his heirs' for ever."

That Sir Littleton was ridiculed by the bar, appears in another metrical lampoon written by Philip Yorke called

1 Lord Campbell's Chancellors, iv. 349, 634.

1714—1727. THOMAS POWTS. 55

"Sir Lyttleton Powis's Charge in Rhyme, 1718," humor- ously quizzing his insipid phraseology.1

The judge lived nearly six years after his retirement, and died on March 16, 1732.

POWYS, THOMAS,

Just. KB. 1714.

See under the Reign of Anne.

Thomas Powys was the brother of Sir Littleton, and only a year his junior. He filled a larger space in the history of his time, though he occupied a judicial position for the brief period of a year and a quarter. After being educated at Shrewsbury school, he became a student at Lincoln's Inn in February 1665, and was called to the bar in April 1673. Burnet calls him a young aspiring lawyer ; and he certainly outstripped his elder brother in the race for legal honours, though neither of them had any eminence in legal attain- ments.

When James II. found that his law officers declined to comply with his arbitrary requirements, he selected Thomas Powys on April 23, 1686, to fill the post of solicitor-general in the place of Heneage Finch, and thereupon knighted him. Offering no objection to the issue of warrants to avowed papists to hold office, and arguing Sir Edward Hale's case in favour of the power assumed by the king to dispense with the test, he was advanced in December of the next year to the attorney-generalship on the discharge of Sir Robert Sawyer. In that character he conducted the case against the seven bishops in June 1688, when the moderation, if not lukewarmness of his advocacy contrasted strongly with the indecent intemperance of Williams, the solicitor-

1 State Trials, xv. 1407-1422; Cooksey's Essays on Lords Somcrs and Hardwicke, 57, C6; Harris's Life of Lord Hardwicke, i. 84.

66 THOMAS POWYS. George I.

general. It may readily be believed, as he expressed himself in a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury in the following January, excusing his acting in that " most unhappy perse- cution," that " it was the most uneasy thing to him that ever in his life he was concerned in." *

The abdication of James of course brought his official career to a close ; and during William's reign, though he was a fair lawyer and fully employed, especially in the defences on state prosecutions, he remained on the proscribed list. In the latter part of that reign he became a member of parlia- ment representing Ludlow in 1701, and was returned for the same place till 1713. At the beginning of Queen Anne's reign he was made at one step Serjeant and queen's Serjeant ; and before the end of it, on June 8, 1713, was promoted to a seat in the Queen's Bench, where his brother was then second judge. He did not long remain there, for the queen dying in August 1714, King George on his coming to Eng- land superseded him on October 14, at the instigation of Lord Chancellor Cowper, who, though he allowed that he had " better abilitys " than his brother, objected to him as zealously instrumental in the measures that ruined King James, and as still devoted to the pretender. He was, how- ever, restored at the same time to his rank as king's Serjeant.2 He survived his dismissal nearly five years, and dying on April 4, 1719, he was buried under a splendid monument at Lilford in Northamptonshire, the manor of which he had purchased in 1711.

Though strongly opposed in politics, Burnet had evidently a high opinion of him ; and the following extract from his epitaph, wTritten by Prior, gives a graceful summary of his legal character :

1 Burnet, iii. 91, 223; State Trials, xii. 280; Clarendon Corresp. ii. 507.

2 Lord Raymond, 1318; Lord Campbell's Chancellors, iv. 349.

1714—1727. JOHN PRATT. 57

u As to his profession,

In accusing cautious, in defending vehement,

In his pleadings sedate, clear, strong ;

In all his decisions unprejudiced and equitable ;

He studied, practised, and governed the law

In such a manner, that

Nothing equalled his knowledge

Except his eloquence ;

Nothing excelled both

Except his justice ;

And whether he was greater

As an advocate or a judge

Is the only cause he left undecided."

He married twice. His first wife was Sarah, daughter of Ambrose Holbech of Mollington in Warwickshire ; his second was Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Philip Medows, knight; by both of whom he had a family. His great- grandson Thomas Powys was created Lord Lilford in 1797, and his descendants still enjoy the title.1

PRATT, JOHN. Just. K. B. 1714. Com. G. S. 1718. Cn. K. B. 1718.

The name of Pratt is highly distinguished in legal annals, having been borne both by a lord chief justice, and by a lord chancellor, father and son. None of the biographers of the family state who the chief justice's father was ; but they record that his grandfather, Richard Pratt, was ruined by the civil wars and obliged to sell his patrimonial estate at Carcwell Priory near Collumpton in Devonshire, which had been long in possession of his ancestors. The parents of John Pratt, however, had sufficient means to afford him a liberal education. He was sent to Oxford and eventually became a fellow of Wadham College. He studied the law at the Inner Temple from November 18, 1675, till February

1 Burnet, ut supra; Collins' Peerage, vii. 579.

58 JOIW PRATT. George I.

12, 1681, when he was called to the bar. His name does not appear during the succeeding eventful period, but he obtained sufficient prominence in his profession to be in- cluded in the batch of Serjeants who were honoured with the coif in 1700, and to be employed in 1711 to defend the prerogative of the crown in granting an English peerage to the Scotch Duke of Hamilton ; against which the lords decided by a small majority. Speaker Onslow calls him a man of parts, spirits, learning and eloquence, and one of the most able advocates of that time.1 Lord Campbell says he went by the name of the " lively serjeant " in Westminster Hall. Whatever authority his lordship has for this, his suc- cess in that arena must have been very considerable to have enabled him to purchase in 1703 the manor and seat of Wilderness (formerly called Stidulfe's Place) in the parish of Seale in Kent. In the parliament of November 1710 he was returned for Midhurst, of which he was again the repre- sentative in that of February 1714, after the first session of which the queen died. In neither parliament did he take any prominent part in the debates, nor is there any appear- ance of his being specially connected with either of the political parties in the state ; except that on the accession of George I. he was recommended by Lord Cowper to be a judge of the King's Bench, as one " whom the chief justice, Mr. Justice Eyres, and every one that knows him, will approve." 2

He was accordingly sworn into office on November 22, 1714, and knighted. In Hilary Term 1718 he gave a decided opinion in favour of the crown respecting the education and marriage of the royal family ; and on the resignation of the Seals by Lord Cowper in the same year he was appointed one of the lords commissioners; holding that office from

1 Collins' Peerage, v. 264; Burnet, vi. 80, note.

2 Lord Raymond, 1319; State Trials, xv. 1216; Strange, 86.

1714—1727. JOHN TRATT. 59

April 18 to May 12. Three days after he was elevated to the post of lord chief justice of the King's Bench, made vacant by Lord Parker's being appointed the new chan- cellor.1

He presided over the court for nearly seven years, and ably supported its dignity. In the only two reported criminal cases that came before him, those of Reason and Tranter for murder, and Christopher Layer for high treason, he acted with equal patience and fairness ; and in the exer- cise of his civil jurisdiction his rulings are looked upon with respect and consideration. One of them, which has how- ever been partially overruled, formed a subject for the wits of Westminster Hall. A woman who had a settlement in a certain parish had four children by her husband, who was a vagrant with no settlement. The chief justice decided that the wife's settlement was suspended during the husband's life, but that it was revived on his death, and that the children were then chargeable on the mother's parish. This judg- ment, though not regularly reported, is preserved and quoted in the following catch :

" A woman having a settlement Married a man with none : The question was, he being dead, If that she had were gone.

Quoth Sir John Pratt ..." Her settlement

Suspended did remain Living the husband ; but he dead,

It doth revive again."

Chorus of puisne judges :

" Living the husband j but he dead, It doth revive again." l

Sir John died at his house in Ormond Street on February 14, 1725. He married twice. His first wife was Elizabeth

1 State Trials, xvi. 45, 290; Burrow's Sett. Cases, 124.

60 WILLIAM SIMPSON. George I.

daughter and co-heir of the Rev. Henry Gregory, rector of Middleton Stoney in Oxfordshire. By her he had four daughters (one of whom married Sir John Fortescue Aland, a judge of the Common Pleas), and five sons, three of whom died in infancy, and the fourth married for his second wife a daughter of Robert Tracy, also a judge of the Common Pleas. Sir John's second wife was Elizabeth daughter of the Rev. Hugh Wilson, canon of Bangor. She produced to him, besides four daughters, four sons, the third of whom, Charles, became lord chief justice of the Common Pleas and lord chancellor in the reign of George III.1

PRICE, ROBERT.

B. E. 1714. Just. C. P. 1726.

See under the Reigns of Anne and George II.

PROBYN EDMUND.

Just. K. B. 1726.

See under the Reign of George II.

RAYMOND, ROBERT.

Just. K. B. 1724. Com. G. S. 1725. Ch. K. B. 1725.

See under the Reign of George II.

REYNOLDS, JAMES.

Just. K. B. 1725.

See under the Reign of George II.

SIMPSON, WILLIAM.

Curs. B. E. 1714.

See under the Keigns of William III. and Anne.

Of William Simpson, who was cursitor baron of the Exchequer under three sovereigns, from the ninth year of William III. to the last year of George I., there is the

1 Lord Raymond, 1381; Collins' Peerage, v. 264

1714—1727. JOHN SMITH. 61

usual deficiency of information. In his admission to the Inner Temple in November 1657 he is described as of Bromsgrove in the county of Worcester. His call to the bar did not take place till November 1674, seventeen years after ; and he was not elected a bencher of the society till he was constituted cursitor baron. He succeeded Richard Wallop in that office on October 2, 1697, receiving the honour of knighthood on December 12, and filled it nearly nine-and-twenty years, when his great age obliged him to surrender it on May 23, 1726.1

SMITH, JOHN.

B. E. 1714. See under the Reign of Anne. This judge is distinguished by having held a judicial seat in each of the three kingdoms. He was the son of Roger Smith, Esq. of Frolesworth in Leicestershire, and went through his legal training at Gray's Inn, to which society he was admitted on June 1, 1678, and was called to the bar on May 2, 1684. From his reputation in the profession he obtained a seat on the Irish bench, and receiving the degree of the coif in 1700, was sent as a judge of the Common Pleas to that country on December 24 of that year. In less than a couple of years he was recalled and made a baron of the English Exchequer on June 24, 1702.

In the great case of Ashby and White on the Aylesbury election, he opposed the judgment of the three puisne judges of the Queen's Bench, concurring in the opinion of Chief Justice Holt in favour of the voter who had been deprived of his franchise by the returning officer. The reversal of that judgment and the confirmation of Holt's opinion by the House of Lords, was then represented as a Whig triumph,

1 Pat. 9 Will. HI. p. 5; Lord Raymond, 748, 1317; Luttrell, iv. 237, 319; 6 Report Pub. Rec. App. ii. 117.

62 ROBERT TRACY. Geokge I.

but must be considered, now that party spirit no longer is predominant, as a triumph of common-sense over a fanciful claim of privilege by the House of Commons. In May, 1708, he was selected to settle the Exchequer in Scotland, and was sent as lord chief baron for that purpose ; being still allowed, though another baron was appointed here, to retain his place in the English court, and receiving 500/. a year in addition to his salary. He enjoyed both positions till the end of his life, being resworn on the accession of George I. in his office of baron of the English Exchequer, although lie performed none of its duties. His death occurred on June 24, 1726, and by his will he founded and endowed a hos- pital at his native village of Frolesworth for the maintenance of fourteen poor widows of the communion of the Church of England.1

THOMSON, WILLIAM.

Curs. B. E. 1726.

See under the reign of George II.

TRACY, ROBERT.

Just. C. P. 1714. Com. G. S. 1718

See under the Reigns of William III. and Anne.

The Hon. Robert Tracy was the eldest son of Robert, second Viscount Tracy in Ireland (of whose ancestor Henry de Tracy some account has been given as a baron of the Ex- chequer in the reign of Henry III.), by his second wife Dorothy daughter of Thomas Cocks, Esq. of Castleditch in Herefordshire. He was born at his father's seat at Tod- dington in Gloucestershire, in 1655, and acquired the rudiments of law in the Middle Temple from 1673 to 1680, when he was called to the bar.2

1 Nichols' Leicestersh. 185; Smyth's Law Off. Ireland, 130; Lord Raymond, 769, 1317; Lord Campbell's Ch. Just. ii. 160; Gent. Mag. lxiii. 1131; Luttrell, iv. 713, v. 184, vi. 299.

2 Atkyns' Gloucestersh. 410; Middle Temple Books.

1714-1727. ROBERT TRACY. 63

In July 1699 King William made him a judge of the King's Bench in Ireland, but soon translated him from that country to be a baron of the Exchequer in England. This appointment took place on November 14, 1700 ; but in less than two years he had a second removal, replacing Mr. Justice Powell in the Common Pleas in Trinity Term, 1702, soon after the accession of Queen Anne. Here he remained for four-and-twenty years, during which period he was selected both by that Queen and by George I. to be one of the commissioners of the Great Seal on vacancies in the office of Lord Chancellor. The first occasion was from September 14 to October 19, 1710, between the resignation of Lord Cowper and the appointment of Lord Harcourt ; and the second was from April 15 to May 12, 1718, between the second resignation of Lord Cowper and the appointment of Lord Parker. He resigned his place on the bench on October 26, 1726, on the plea of ill health, but he lived nine years afterwards in the enjoyment of a pension of 1500/. a year. He died on September 11, 1735, aged eighty, at his seat at Coscomb in the parish of Didbrooke, Gloucestershire.

He is described as u a complete gentleman and a good lawyer, of a clear head and honest heart, and as delivering his opinion with that genteel affability and integrity that even those who lost a cause were charmed with his beha- viour." This character, as it was written at the time of his death, may be regarded, with some allowance for its affected phraseology, as substantially true, especially when the Duke of Wharton in one of his satires declares that he will be con- stant to his mistress until the time —

u "When Tracy's generous soul shall swell with pride." ,

1 Smyth's Law Off. Ireland, 100; Pat. 12 Will. III. p. 2; Lord Raymond, 7G9, 1420; Luttrell, iv. 707, v. 184, vi. 633; Gent. Mag. v. 569.

64 JOHN TREVOR. George I.

He married Anne, daughter of William Dowdeswell of Pool Court in Worcestershire ; and had, besides two daughters, three sons, Robert, Richard, and William. By the failure in 1797 of the line of descent from the judge's father's first marriage, the Irish peerage would of course have devolved on a descendant of the judge, as the eldest son by his father's second marriage. Of Robert and Richard, the two elder sons of the judge, the former had died without issue ; and the latter together with his only son had died long before the death of the last viscount. William, the judge's third son, was said to have so deeply offended his father by marrying a woman of low degree in Ireland, that he was not even mentioned in his will. A person however, who professed to be the great-grandson of this William, claimed the peerage in 1843 : but the House of Lords after various hearings, which extended to 1849, were not satisfied with the evidence in support of his claim.

TREVOR, JOHN.

M. R. 1714. See under the Reigns of James II., William III., and Anne.

From an elder branch of the old Welsh family from which Thomas Trevor the baron of the Exchequer in the reign of Charles I. sprung, the subject of the present sketch may claim a descent; his ancestor (who first adopted the name) being seated at Brynkynalt in Denbighshire at his death in 1494. John Trevor was second, but eldest surviving son of John Trevor of that place by Mary daughter of John J efireys of Helon in the same county, the aunt of the Judge Jeffreys of infamous memory. At the time of his admission to the Inner Temple in November 1654 his father is described of Ross-Trevor in Ireland, whither he had probably retired in reduced circumstances, if Roger North's statement be

1714—1727. JOHN TREVOR. 65

true, that the son " was bred a sort of clerk in the chambers of old Arthur Trevor, an eminent and worthy professor of the law in the Inner Temple." "A gentleman," he adds, " that observed a strange-looking boy in his clerk's seat (for no person ever had a worse sort of squint than he had), asked who that gentleman was : ( A kinsman of mine,' said Arthur Trevor, c that I have allowed to sit here to learn the knavish part of the law.' " l That he was bettered by the instruction may be doubted; but that he became an able proficient there is evidence in the reputation he gained of being the best judge in all gambling transactions, of the tricks and intricacies of which he had personal experience.

He was called to the bar in May 1661, two years before the commencement of the novitiate of his cousin George Jeffreys, who soon distanced him in the race of advance- ment, having been elected common Serjeant of London in March 1671, and recorder in October 1678. That he was indebted to his cousin (with whom he contracted an early friendship, repaying it according to common report by in- triguing with his wife) for some of his future preferments is indisputable ; but it is not so clear that he owed his knighthood to his cousin's recommendation, since it was conferred in January 1671, before Jeffreys could boast much ascendency at court. That Trevor had acquired some eminence in the law is apparent from his being elected treasurer of his inn in October 1674, and autumn reader in 1675. In the parliament of March 1679 he was elected for the borough of Beeralston, which returned him again for that called in October of the same year, but which did not meet till October in the next. In the Oxford Parliament of March 1681 he represented his native county of Denbigh: but during the whole of the reign of Charles II. the parlia- mentary history does not record one speech that he delivered.

1 Collins' Peerage, vi. 292; Life of Lord Keeper North, 218. VOL. VIII. F

I

66 JOHN TREVOR. George I.

Sir John Bramston, however, informs us that he was the only man who spoke in favour of Jeffreys, when the com- plaint against him as recorder of London was discussed in the house.1

On the accession of James II., his cousin, who was then chief justice, had an opportunity of showing his gratitude. Trevor having obtained a seat in that king's only parliament for the town of Denbigh, Jeffreys, in opposition to Lord Keeper North, succeeded in recommending him to be the speaker. So inefficient was he in the requirements of the office, that he was even obliged to read from a paper the few formal words in which he announced to the house the king's approbation ; and was guilty of some other irregularities that were inexcusable in one who had had so long a senatorial experience. He showed more boldness and self-possession on the occasion of presenting the revenue bill on May 30, when he assured the king that the commons entirely relied on his majesty's sacred word to support and defend the religion of the Church of England. Of this reminder of the royal promise the king took not the slightest notice, nor apparently any offence, as on the 20th of the following October he promoted Sir John to the office of master of the rolls, then vacant by the death of Sir John Churchill.2

This elevation occurred at the period when his relative and patron had returned from his bloody campaign and been rewarded with the Great Seal. The court of Chancery was then presided over by two judges of kindred spirit, and it might be a question which of the two exceeded the other in want of principle, or in the use of coarse vituperation. Yet they both deserve praise in the exercise of their judicial functions, and the decrees they pronounced in private causes were able and just. A sort of rivalry, however, soon rose

1 Noble's Cromwell, ii. 116; Dugdale's Chron. Ser. 122; Bramston, 208.

2 Bramston, 197, 207; Pari. Hist. iv. 1359; Pat. 1 Jac. II. p. 9, n. 32.

1714—1727. JOHN TREVOR. 67

up between them. Jeffreys sometimes reversed his coadju- tor's decrees and adopted other irritating measures against him. Trevor, who could on occasion imitate not unsuccess- fully the objurgatory style of his patron, now feeling himself no longer a dependent, assumed a dictatorial manner, found fault with the chancellor's proceedings, and very early after his appointment told him that if he pursued Alderman Cornish to execution it would be no better than murder. Indeed, Roger North tells us, " like a true gamester, he fell to the good work of supplanting his patron and friend, and had certainly done it, if King James's affairs had stood right much longer ; for he was advanced so far with him as to vilify and scold with him publicly at Whitehall."

He was not admitted to the privy council till July 6, 1688 ; and on August 24 he was sent for in a hurry from " the Wells " to be present at that meeting when the king resolved to have another parliament. He was again present in October, when proof was given of the genuineness of the birth of the Prince of Wales: and after the king's first escape he was one of the faithful councillors who attended at his levee on his return from Rochester.1

At the Revolution he, with all the other judges, lost his place, which was given to Henry Powle, the speaker of the Convention Parliament. But he managed by his open pro- fessions of adherence to the extreme doctrines of the Church of England to keep up some degree of popularity with that party which was gradually superseding the ministers, who, though they had been chiefly instrumental in effecting the great change in the government of the kingdom, soon disgusted the king by assuming too great a control over him. To the Convention Parliament he did not venture to offer himself: but the borough of Beeralston, which had originally returned Sir John Maynard as its member and on his election to sit

1 Brainstem, 311-312; State Trials, xii. 123. F 2

68 JOHN TREVOR. George I.

for Plimpton had chosen Sir John Holt, now, on the latter being raised to the bench, put Sir John Trevor in his place. Before the end of the year he entered into the debates as boldly as if he had never been connected with King James's court. In the next parliament of March 1690 he was re- turned for Yarmouth; and was selected by the minister Carmarthen to be the speaker of it, as the most fit instru- ment in the practice too openly encouraged and too long continued, of buying off those members who opposed the government.1

At this time Lord Macaulay (iii. 547) thus graphically describes him : — " It was necessary for the lord president to have in the House of Commons an agent for the purchase of members; and Lowther was both too awkward and too scrupulous to be such an agent. But a man in whom craft and profligacy were united in a high degree was without difficulty found. This was the master of the rolls, Sir John Trevor, who had been speaker in the single parliament held by James. High as Trevor had risen in the world, there were people who could still remember him a strange-looking lawyer's clerk in the Inner Temple. Indeed, nobody who had ever seen him was likely to forget him. For his grotesque features and his hideous squint were far beyond the reach of caricature. His parts, which were quick and vigorous, had enabled him early to master the science of chicane. Gambling and betting were his amusements ; and out of these amusements he contrived to extract much busi- ness in the way of his profession. For his opinion on a question arising out of a wager or a game of chance had as much authority as a judgment in any court in Westminster Hall. He soon rose to be one of the boon companions whom Jeffreys hugged in fits of maudlin friendship over the bottle at night, and cursed and reviled in court the next morning.

1 Burnet, iv. 74.

1714—1727. JOHN TREVOR. 69

Under such a teacher, Trevor rapidly became a proficient in that peculiar kind of rhetoric which had enlivened the trials of Baxter and of Alice Lisle. Report indeed spoke of some scolding-matches between the chancellor and his friend, in which the disciple had been not less voluble and scurrilous than the master. These contests, however, did not take place till the younger adventurer had attained riches and dignities such that he no longer stood in need of the patron- age which had raised him. Among high churchmen Trevor, in spite of his notorious want of principle, had at this time a certain popularity, which he seems to have owed chiefly to their conviction that, however insincere he might be in general, his hatred of the dissenters was genuine and hearty. There was little doubt that, in a House of Commons in which the Tories had a majority, he might easily, with the support of the court, be chosen speaker. He was impatient to be again in his old post, which he well knew how to make one of the most lucrative in the kingdom; and he willingly undertook that secret and shameful office, for which Lowther was altogether unqualified."

Being " a bold and dexterous man," Trevor soon after had a renewal of his legal honours. On May 14 he was made one of the lords commissioners of the Great Seal on the retirement of Sir John Maynard ; an office which he enjoyed for nearly three years till the nomination of Somers as lord keeper on March 23, 1693. On the 13th of the previous January he had been replaced in his old position as master of the rolls vacant by the death of Henry Powle. Not satisfied with all these honours and the emoluments that flowed from them, Trevor with unblushing rapacity partici- pated largely in the corruption that then too universally prevailed. In the investigation instituted by the parliament it was found that he had, among other bribes suspected but not proved, received a present from the city of London for

70 JOHN TREVOR. George I.

getting the orphans' bill passed, which had several times before been brought into the house without success. He was condemned to sit for six hours hearing himself abused, and at last was obliged to put the question and to declare himself guilty of " a high crime and misdemeanor." A new speaker was immediately appointed, and he was expelled the house on March Id, 1695 ; having only a fortnight before attended in all state the queen's funeral in Westminster Abbey.1 No further punishment being awarded, the wits re- marked "that Justice was blind, but Bribery only squinted." He never afterwards offered himself as a member; but so little was he abashed by his expulsion, that soon after on meeting Archbishop Tillotson he muttered loud enough to be heard, u I hate a fanatic in lawn sleeves." The archbishop answered, " And I hate a knave in any sleeves."

This disgrace did not deprive him of the mastership of the rolls, that office having been conferred upon him for life. Though Lord Raymond (p. 566) names him as joined with the three chiefs as commissioner of the Great Seal on the dismissal of Lord Somers in 1700, the " Crown Office Minute-book" (p. 141) proves that the appointment was to the three chiefs alone ; his commission being solely to hear causes till a new lord keeper was appointed. He continued master of the rolls for twenty-two years after his expulsion ; possessing so high a reputation as a lawyer that he was frequently appealed to as authority in doubful points by Lord Chancellor Harcourt ; but with the character of being dead to every sense of shame, and of treating the counsel who attended his court with coarse and unfeeling brutality. So rough were his public reproaches to a nephew of his, that it is said the sensitive young barrister sunk under them and never recovered. The only honour he received in the reign of Queen Anne was that of constable of Flint Castle in

1 Pat. 4 W. & M. p. 8, n. 20; Pari. Hist. v. 901-910; Bramston, 386.

1714—1727. THOMAS TREVOE. 71

1705, in the place of his father-in-law Sir Roger Mostyn. He died on May 20, 1717, at his house in Clement's Lane, and was buried in the Rolls Chapel, his memorial stone very wisely recording nothing more than the date of his death.1

The avarice for which he was notorious was not redeemed, as it often is, by occasional fits of generosity. Various stories are told of his meanness. One of them is that on a relation calling upon him while he was drinking his wine, he exclaimed to the servant, " You rascal, you have brought my cousin Roderick Lloyd, Esq., prothonotary of North Wales, marshal to Baron Price, and so forth, up my back stairs. Take him down again immediately, and bring him up my front stairs." During the operation, the bottle was removed and Sir John saved his wine.2

He married Jane the daughter of Sir Roger Mostyn, Bart., and the widow of Roger Puliston of Emeral in Flint- shire ; and had by her four, sons and a daughter, who by her marriage with Michael Hill of Hillsborough in Ireland was the mother of Arthur, first Viscount Dungannon, who suc- ceeding to his grandfather's estates took the name of Trevor. Anne the daughter of Arthur was the mother of the great Duke of Wellington.3

TREVOR, THOMAS, Lord Trevor.

Ch. C. P. 1714. See under the Reigns of William III. and Anne.

Thomas Trevor the future chief justice was the grandson of Sir John Trevor of Trevallyn in Flintshire, an elder brother of Sir Thomas Trevor the baron of the Exchequer under Charles I. His father, also Sir John, became secre- tary of state to Charles II. and died in 1672, leaving by his

1 Luttrell, iv. 641, v. 540; Collins' Peerage, vi. 292, note.

2 Yorke's Royal Tribes of Wales, 109.

• Townsend's Ho. of Commons, ii. 53 ; Woolrych's Judge Jeffreys.

72 THOMAS TREVOR. George I.

wife Ruth, a daughter of the celebrated John Hampden, four sons, of whom this Thomas was the second. Born about the year 1659, he entered the Inner Temple on May 1, 1672 (just before the death of his father who had been a bencher of the inn), and was called to the bar on November 28, 1680. So early did he distinguish himself in the courts that he was elected a bencher in 1689, and was elevated to the post of solicitor-general on May 3, 1692; and thereupon knighted. He refused the attorney-generalship in 1693 when his official colleague Sir John Somers was promoted ; but on the next change on June 8, 1695, he accepted the office.1

During the six years that he filled that responsible place he had to conduct the trials of the persons implicated in the Assassination Plot, in all of which he acted with a fairness and candour that formed a remarkable contrast to the cri- minal proceedings in the late reigns. In the progress of those trials the Act of Parliament (St. 7 Will. III. c. 3) for regulating trials for treason, which gave to the prisoners so charged the privilege of having counsel, came into operation, and Sir Thomas met the multiplied objections that were consequently urged by the defending advocates with temper, ability and learning. On the removal of Lord Somers in May 1700, he declined the offer to be made lord keeper; but on June 28, 1701, he accepted the more permanent place of chief justice of the Common Pleas, which had been vacant for six months since the death of Sir George Treby. He was member of one parliament only, that of 1695, in which he represented Plimpton, and according to Speaker Onslow he divided against Sir John Fenwick's attainder, although he was an officer of the government.2

On the accession of Queen Anne he was reappointed

1 Luttrell, iii. 68 ; Lord Raymond, 57.

2 State Trials, vols. xii. xiii.; Luttrell, iv. 645; Burnet, iv. 334.

1714—1727. THOMAS TREVOR. 73

chief justice and presided in the Court of Common Pleas during the whole of her reign. In the short interval be- tween the chancellorships of Lords Cowper and Harcourt, from September 26 to October 19, 1710, he was entrusted with the Great Seal as first commissioner ; and on December 31, 1711, he was called to the peerage by the title of Baron Trevor of Bromham in Bedfordshire, being one of the twelve peers whom Queen Anne by an unusual exercise of her prerogative created at once, to secure a majority for the proposed peace in the House of Lords. He was the first chief justice of the Common Pleas who was ennobled while holding that office. Though commencing his professional career as a Whig, and being united in office with Somers, he gradually joined the Tory party, and attached himself to it while Queen Anne reigned. He is thus described in the account of the judges of the different Courts given by Lord Cowper to George I. on his accession : —

" The first [the chief justice] is an able man, but made one of the twelve lords, wch the late ministry procur'd to be created at once (in such haste, y* few, if any, of their patents had any preamble, or reasons of their creation), only to support their peace, wcb the House of Lords, they found, would not without that addition. From that time, at least, he went violently into all the measures of that ministry, and was much trusted by them ; and when they divided, a little before the queen's death, he sided wth Ld Bolingbr. ; and for so doing, 'tis credibly said, was to have been made ld pre- sident. Many of ye lords think his being a peer an objn to his being a judge ; because, by ye constitution, ye judges ought to be assistants to the House of Lords, wch they can't be, if a part of that body. Ther is but one example known of the like ; wch is that of Ld Jefferys, ch. just, of the King's Bench, and after chancellor to K. Ja. ye 2nd. 'Tis natural to think, ye other judges stomach ye distinction, while he is

74 THOMAS TREVOR. George I.

among them : and tis said y* ye suitors dislike ye difference they find in his behaviour to them since he had this dis- tinction. He is grown very wealthy. If it be thought fit to remove him, Sr Peter King, record1" of the City of London, I should humbly propose as fit to succeed him." l

Upon the hint thus given Lord Trevor was removed on October 14, 1714. As his appointment was " quamdiu se bene gesserit," he said he would have tried the question as to the king's power to eject him, if Chief Justice Holt had not, by taking out a new commission when Queen Anne came to the throne, decided that in his opinion his former com- mission had expired on the demise of the crown.2 Lord Trevor lived sixteen years afterwards; and changing his party again became in 1726 Lord Privy Seal, and in the next year was one of the lords justices during the last absence of George I. He retained the Privy Seal under George II., by whom he was raised on May 8, 1730, to the high office of lord president of the council, an honour which he did not enjoy for more than six weeks, as he died on the 19th of the next month at his seat at Bromham, where he was buried under a monument with an elegant Latin inscription.

He was generally admitted to have been an able and upright judge, though Chief Justice Holt is said to have disparaged his law. But the facility with which he deserted one party to side with the other, and returned again to the party he had left, could not but be detrimental to his cha- racter. Yet Speaker Onslow says, " he was the only man almost that I ever knew that changed his party as he had done, that preserved so general an esteem with all parties as he did. When he came back to the Whigs he was made

1 Lord Campbell's Chancellors, iv. 349.

2 Lord Raymond, 1318; Burnet, v. 12, Speaker Onslow's note.

1714—1727. THOMAS TREVOR. 75

lord privy seal and afterwards president of the council, and had much joy in both. He liked being at court and was much there after he had these offices, but was very awkward in it, by having been the most reserved, grave, and austere judge I ever saw in Westminster Hall." Lord Hervey de- scribes him as being " by principle (if he had any prin- ciple) a Jacobite. However, from interest and policy he became like his brother convert and brother lawyer, Lord Harcourt, as zealous a servant to the Hanover family as any of those who had never been otherwise ; for as these two men were too knowing in their trade to swerve from the established principles of their profession, they acted like most lawyers, who generally look on princes like other clients, and without any regard to right or wrong — the equity or injustice of the cause — think themselves obliged to maintain whoever fees them last and pays them best." l

This is a very prejudiced portrait and a most unfair judgment of lawyers. Trevor, like most sensible men, did not approve of the extreme views of either party ; and seeing the impossibility of restoring the exiled family, and that any attempt to do so would inevitably be accompanied by all the horrors of a civil war, wisely lent his aid in supporting the Hanoverian princes in the peaceful possession of the throne to which they had been called.

He married twice. By his first wife Elizabeth, daughter and co-heir of John Searle, Esq., of Finchley, he had two sons and three daughters: and by his second wife Anne, daughter of Robert Weldon, Esq., and widow of Sir Robert Bernard, Bart, (whom he married in 1704, and who died in December 1746), he had three sons. The fourth of these five sons became Bishop of Durham in 1752, and the three elder brothers held the title of Lord Trevor successively.

1 Burnet, iv. 344, note; Lord Hervey's Memoirs, i. 114.

76

THOMAS TREVOR.

George I.

The last of them, Robert fourth Lord Trevor, adopted the name of Hampden in 1754, in compliance with the will of his relative John Hampden, and in 1776 was advanced to the dignity of Viscount Hampden ; both titles becoming extinct in 1824. *

1 Collins' Peerage, vi. 302; Nicolas' Synopsis; Luttrell, v. 421, 468 ; Gent. Mag. xvi. 668.

77

GEORGE II.

Reigned 33 years, 4 months, and 14 days ; from June 11, 1727, to October 25, 1760.

SURVEY OF THE REIGN.

The beneficial innovation which had been introduced in the time of the Commonwealth, and which had been captiously repealed at the Restoration, was now acknowledged to be a great necessity. Complaints were so loudly made of the inconvenience and injustice of carrying on legal proceedings in Latin, which scarcely any of the litigants understood, that it was resolved at once to remedy the evil. Accordingly by Statute 4 George II. c. 26, it was enacted that all proceedings in the courts should be in the English language, and should be written in common legible hand and in words at length. This valuable improvement was not generally acceptable to the old lawyers, and Sir James Burrow in the preface to his Reports thus records his objections : — " A statute," he says, now took place for converting them [common-law pleadings] from a fixed dead language to a fluctuating living one ; and for altering the strong solid compact hand (calculated to last for ages), wherein they used to be written, into a species of handwriting so weak, flimsy, and diffuse, that (in consequence and corruption of this statute, though undoubtedly contrary to its intention) many a modern record will hardly outlive its writer, and few perhaps will survive much above a century." Lord Raymond opposed the bill in the House of

78 CHANCELLORS AND KEEPERS. George II.

Lords ; and Judge Blackstone and Lord Ellenborough have objected to its provisions : but few in our day have expe- rienced the resulting mischiefs anticipated by either of them.

Michaelmas Term, which had commenced on October 23 for above one hundred years, being shortened in 1640 by the cutting off of two returns, was in 1751 still further abbre- viated by Stat. 24 Geo. II. c. 48, and its commencement fixed to be on November 6 ; the reason assigned in the preamble of the Act being that " very little business can be done by reason of the several holidays that are observed by the High Courts of Record between the first day of the said Term and the sixth day of November following." After this Act had continued in operation for eighty years, a further change was enacted in 1831, by which the commencement of Michaelmas Term was fixed to be on November 2 ; and thus it still remains.

During the thirty-three years of this reign there were only three lord chancellors, Lord King, Lord Talbot, and Lord Hard wi eke, the latter holding the Great Seal for nearly twenty years. Lord Henley held it for three years with the title of lord keeper only ; and it was placed in the hands of commissioners for seven months. The sittings in Chancery during the vacations were in Lincoln's Inn Hall.

Lord Chancellors, Keepers and Commissioners of the Great Seal.

Peter, Lord King, who had been lord chancellor for two years at the end of the last reign, was continued for upwards of six years in this. On his resignation,

Charles Talbot, Esq., the solicitor- general, receivet the Great Seal, with the same title, on November 29, 1733 ; and on December 5 was created Baron Talbot, of Hensol in

1727—1760. ROLLS. 79

Glamorganshire. He died on February 14, 1737, in posses- sion of the office ; and was succeeded in it by

Philip, Lord Hardwicke, lord chief justice of the King's Bench, on February 21, 1737. After presiding in the court of Chancery for nearly twenty years, during which he was advanced in the peerage to the earldom of Hard- wicke, his second title being Viscount Royston, he resigned on the breaking up of the Duke of Newcastle's administra- tion ; and the Seal was placed in the hands of Sir John Willes, Ch. C. P., Sir Sidney Stafford Smythe, B. E., and Sir John Eardley Wilmot, Just. K. B., as lords commissioners, on November 19, 1756. They held it for seven months, when

Sir Robert Henley, the attorney-general, was ap- pointed lord keeper on June 30, 1757. He retained the Seal till the king's death ; a few months before which he was ennobled by the title of Baron Henley of Grange in Hamp- shire.

Masters of the Rolls.

Sir Joseph Jekyll filled the office of master of the Rolls for one-and-twenty years, ten in the last reign, and eleven in this. On his death he was succeeded by

The Hon. John Verney, chief justice of Chester, on October 9, 1733. After enjoying his office for three years he died, and

William Fortescue, Esq., a judge of the Common Pleas, received the appointment on November 5, 1741, and retained it till his death eight years after. His successor,

Sir John Strange, one of the king's counsel, and who had formerly been solicitor-general, received his patent on January 11, 1760. He lived little more than four years.

Sir Thomas Clarke, also king's counsel, succeeded him on May 29, 1754, and held the office at the king's death.

I

80 CHANCERY — KING'S BENCH. George II.

The patent to John Verney is the first in the English

language ; and includes the grant of " one tunn or two pipes of Bordeaux wine " every year.

Masters in Chancery.

Sir Joseph Jekyll, M. R. - - - 1 to 7 Geo. II.

Robert Holford - - - - - 1 to 24 —

Henry Lovibond 1 —

John Bennett - - - - - ltol2 —

James Lightboun - - - - ltoll —

William Kynaston - - - - 1 to 22 —

Thomas Bennett - - - - 1 to 34 —

Francis Elde - - - - - 1 to 33 —

Mark Thurston, A. G. 1731-1749 - - 1 to 23 —

Francis Cudworth Masham, A. G. 1727-1731 - lto 4 -

Samuel Burroughs - - - - lto34 —

Robert Yard 1 —

Anthony Allen - - - - - 1 to 27 —

John Tothill - - - - - lto 5 -

William Spicer - - - - - 4to34 —

Richard Edwards - - - - 5 to 34 —

John Verney, M. R. - - - - 7 to 15 —

Edmund Sawyer - - - - 11 to 33 —

Henry Montague - - - - 12 to 34 —

William Fortescue, M. R. - - 15 to 23 —

Thomas Lane - - - - - 22 to 34 —

John Waple, A. G. 1749-1759- - - 23 to 33 —

Sir John Strange, M. R. - - 23 to 27 —

Peter Holford - - - - 24 to 34 —

Thomas Harris - - - - - 27 to 34 —

Sir Thomas Clarke, M. R. - - 27 to 34 —

Peter Davall, A. G. 1759-1760 - - - 33 to 34 —

Peter Bonner - - - - - 33 to 34 —

John Browning - - - - - 33 to 34 —

Chief Justices op the King's Bench.

Sir Kobert Raymond, the chief justice at the end of

the reign of George I., retained his seat till his death ; hav- ing been created Lord Raymond on January 15, 1731. He died on March 19, 1733 ; but his successor,

1727—1760. KING'S BENCH — COMMON PLEAS. 81

Sir Philip Yorke, the attorney-general, was not ap- pointed till October 31, 1733. He was created Lord Hardwicke on November 23 in the same year; and on his being made lord chancellor on February 21, 1737, he filled both offices for nearly four months ; when

Sir William Lee, a judge of this court, was raised to the head of it on June 8, 1737. After presiding for seven- teen years, he was succeeded on his death by

Sir Dudley Ryder, the attorney-general, on May 2, 1754 ; on whose death on May 28, 1756, the office remained vacant for nearly six months ; when

The Honourable William Murray, the attorney- general, became chief justice on November 8, 1756, and was on the same day created Lord Mansfield, under which title he presided during the remainder of the reign.

Justices of the King's Bench.

I. 1727. June. John Fortescue Aland, ^ the judges at

James Reynolds, J- the end of the

Edmund Probyn, J last reign.

Sept. Francis Page, vice J. F. Aland.

III. 1730. June 1. William Lee, vice J. Reynolds.

XI. 1737. June 16. William Chappie, vice W. Lee.

XIV. 1740. Nov. 28. Martin Wright, vice E. Probyn.

1741. Feb. 10. Thomas Denison, vice F. Page.

XVIII. 1745. April 22. Michael Foster, vice W. Chappie. X XVIII. 1755. Feb 3. John Eardley Wilmot, vice M. Wright.

The judges of the King's Bench at the end of the reign were

Lord Mansfield, chief justice, Sir Thomas Denison, Sir Michael Foster,

Sir John Eardley Wilmot.

Chief Justices of the Common Pleas.

Sir Robert BtbI kept his seat as chief justice of the Common Pleas till his death; when

Sir THOMAfl Rsbte, a judge of the same court, was VOL. vn i. G

82

COMMON PLEAS— EXCHEQUER.

George II.

raised to its head in January 1736. Dying the next year, his place was filled by

Sir John Willes, the attorney-general, from January 1737 till the king's death.

Judges of the Common Pleas.

judges under George I. retained.

II.

VI.

IX.

XII.

XIII.

XV.

XVI.

XIX.

XXHI.

XXVI.

XXVII.

XXX.

I. 1727. June. Robert Price,

Francis Page, Alexander Denton, Spencer Cowper, vice F. Page. John Fortescue Aland, vice S. Cowper. Thomas Reeve, vice R. Price. John Comyns, vice T. Reeve. "William Fortescue, vice J. Comyns. Thomas Parker, vice A. Denton. Thomas Burnet, vice W. Fortescue.

1729. 1733. 1736. 1738. 1740. 1741. 1743. 1746. 1750. 1753. 1754. 1757.

Oct. 24.

Jan. 27.

April.

Jan.

July 7.

April 21.

Oct.

Feb.

June.

May.

Jan.

May 2.

March.

Thomas Abney, vice T. Parker.

Thomas Birch, vice J. F. Aland.

Nathaniel Gundry, vice T. Abney.

Edward Clive, vice T. Burnet.

Henry Bathurst, vice N. Gundry

William Noel, vice T. Birch. The Common Pleas judges on the death of George II. were

Sir John Willes, chief justice, Sir Edward Clive, Hon. Henry Bathurst,

Hon. William Noel.

Chief Barons of the Exchequer.

Sir Thomas Pengelly, chief baron in the last year of the reign of George I., was continued in his place, but enjoyed it less than three years. On his death

James Beynolds, Esq., a judge of the King's Bench, was appointed on April 30, 1730. After presiding eight years he resigned, and

Sir John Comyns, a judge of the Common Pleas, suc- ceeded him on July 7, 1738. On his death two years after,

Sir Edmund Probyn, a judge of the King's Bench, was appointed on November 28, 1740. Within eighteen months he died also, and

1 727-— 1760.

EXCHEQUER.

83

Sir Thomas Parker, a judge of the Common Pleas, was made chief baron on November 29, 1742, and presided in the court during the remaining eighteen years of this reign.

Barons of the Exchequer.

I. 1727. June. Bernard Hale, -» _ .

Lawrence Carter, L barons of the la&t

John Comyns, J ^eign continued.

William Thomson, cursitor baron.

Ditto made B. E., vice B. Hale.

John Birch, cursitor, vice W. Thomson.

George Clive, cursitor, vice J Birch.

William Fortescue, vice J. Comyns.

Thomas Parker, vice W. Fortescue.

Martin Wright, vice W. Thomson.

(?) William Kynaston, cursitor, vice G.

Clive. James Reynolds (2), vice T. Parker. Thomas Abney, vice M. Wright. Charles Clarke, vice T. Abney. Edward Barker, cursitor, vice G. Clive or

(?) W. Kynaston. Edward Clive, vice L. Carter. Heneage Legge, vice J. Reynolds. Sidney Stafford Smythe, vice C. Clarke. Richard Adams, vice E. Clive. John Tracy Atkins, cursitor, vice E. Barker. Richard Lloyd, vice II. Legge. At the end of the reign the barons of the Exchequer were

Sir Thomas Parker, chief baron, Sir Sidney Stafford Smythe, Sir Richard Adams, Sir Richard Lloyd, John Tracy Atkins, Esq.,

cursitor.

Cursitor Baron George Clive having died on December 31, 1739, the "Gentleman's Magazine" announced that William Kynaston, the master in Chancery, was appointed to the office in February 1740 ; — and in " Beatson's Political Index" (ed. 1788) his name is so recorded. But in the absence of any patent to Mr. Kynaston, and in the omission

o 2

III.	1729. Nov. 27.
	Dec. 11.
IX.	1735. Nov. 6.
	1736. Feb. 9.
XII.	1738. July 7.
XIII.	1739. Nov.
	1740. Feb.
	May.
XIV.	Nov.
XVI.	1743. Feb.
XVII.	1744. May.
XVIII.	1745. April.
XXI.	1747. June.
XXIII.	1750. May.
XXVI.	1753. Feb. 3.
XXVTII.	1755. April. 22,
XXXIII.	1759. Sept.

84

CHANCERY.

George II.

of his name in the agenda book of the Exchequer, it seems probable that, if he held the office at all, he only officiated temporarily till the vacancy was supplied, especially as the patent to Edward Barker in 1744 refers to George Clive as " lately deceased," and does not mention Mr. Kynaston.

The removal of Cursitor Baron Thompson to a seat on the bench as a baron of the coif, is the only instance of such a promotion.

When the court of Exchequer sat in equity the chancellor of the Exchequer was constitutionally chief judge ; and on the day of his being sworn into office he takes his seat on the bench and some motion of course is made before him. In 1732, whilst Sir Robert Walpole held the office, he heard a cause in which Chief Baron Reynolds and Baron Comyns were of one opinion, and Barons Carter and Thomson were of the contrary, and in a learned speech gave his decision. In 1735 an equal division of the ordinary court obliged him to pursue the same course.1

Court of Chancery.

A.R. 1	A.D.	Lord Chancellors, &c.	Masters of the Rolls.
1727.	June.	Peter, Lord King, Chancellor	Sir Joseph Jekyll.
7	1733.	Oct. 9.	—	Hon. John Verney.
		Nov. 29.	Charles Talbot, Chancellor	—
		Dec. 5.	cr. Lord Talbot
10	1737.	Feb. 21.	Philip,Lord Hardwicke, Chancellor	—
15	1741.	Nov. 5.	—	"William Portescue.
23	1750.	Jan. 1 1 .	—	Sir John Strange.
27	1754.	April 2.	cr. Earl of Hardwicke	—
		May 29.	—	Sir Thomas Clarke.
30	1756.	Nov. 9.	Sir John Willes,Ch.C.P.* Sir Sidney Stafford	Commis-
			Smythe, B. E.	* sioners
			Sir J. Eardley Wilmot,
			Just K. B.		—
91	1757.	June 30.	Sir Robert Henley, Keeper	—
33	1760.	March 27.	cr. Lord Henley

Manning's Serv. ad legem, 174; Gent. Mag. ii. 825, v. 618.

727—1760. KING'S BENCH, COMMON PLEAS, EXCHEQUER. 85

Court of King's Bench.

A.R.	A.D.	Chief Justices.	Judges of the King's Bench.
1	1727. June.	Robert Raymond	J. Fortescue Aland	James Reynolds	Edmund Probyn.
	Sept.	—	Francis Page	—	__
3	1730. June.	—		William Lee
4	1731. Jan. 31.	cr. Lord Raymond	_		__
7	1733. Oct. 31.	Philip Hirdwicke	—
	Nov. 23.	cr. Lord Hardwicke
10	1737. June 8.	William Lee		William Chappie
14	1740. Nov. 28.	—	—	—	Martin Wright.
	1741. Feb. 10.	__	Thomas Denison	__
18	1745. April 22.			Michael Fost°r	_
27	1754. May 2.	Dudley Ryder
28	1755. Feb. 3.				J.EardleyWilmot.
30	1756. Nov. 8.	Wm .Lord Mansfield	—	—	~*

Court of Common Pleas.

A.R.	A.D.	Chief Justices.	Judges of the Common Pleas.
1	1727. June.	Robert Eyre	Robert Price	Francis Page	Alexander Denton .
	Oct. 24.	—	—	Spencer Cowper
2	1729. Jan. 27.		—	J. Fortescue Aland	_
6	1733. April.		Thomas Reeve
9	1736. Jan.	Thomas Reeve	John Comyns		__
10	1737. Jan.	John Willes		__	_
12	1738. July 7.		William Fortescue
13	1740. April 21.			__	Thomas Parker.
15	1741. Oct.		Thomas Burnet	__
16	1743. Feb.		—		Thomas Abney.
19	1746. June.	_	_	Thomas Birch	_
23	1750. May.	_	__		Nathaniel Gundry.
26	1753. Jan.		Edward Clive
27	1754. May 2.		— .		Henry Bathurst.
30	1757. March.	"■	—	William Noel	—

Court of Exchequer.

A.R.	A.D.	Chief Barons	Barons of the Exchequer.
1	1727. June.	Thomas Pengelly	Bernard Hale	LawrenceCarter	John Comyns.
3	1729. Nov. 27.		WilliamThomson	_	__
	1730. April 30.	James Reynolds
9	1736. Feb. 9.	—	—	—	William Fortescue.
12	1738. July 7.	John Comyns	—	—	Thomas Parker.
13	1739. Nov.	—	Martin Wright	—
	1740. May.	—	—	—	James Reynolds (2).
14	Nov. 28.	Edward Probyn	Thomas Abney	—
16	1742. Nov. 29.	Thomas Parker	Charles Clarke
18	1745. April.	_		Edward Clive
21	1747. June.			__	Heneage Legge.
23	1750. May.	—	SidneyStaffordSmythe	—
26	1753. Feb. 3.	_	__	Richard Adams	__
33	1759. Sept.	—	—	—	Richard Lloyd.
		<	Uursitor Barons.
	1727. June.	William Thomsoi	i.	1740.	Feb. William Kynaston(?).
	1729. Dec. 11.	John Birch.		1744.	May. Edward Barker.
	1735. Nov. 6.	George Clive.		1755.	April 22. John Tracy Atkins.

86 JUDGES — WESTMINSTER HALL. George II.

The salaries of the puisne judges and barons received an increase of 500/. a year by Stat. 32 Geo. EL, c. 35, s. 9 ; and of the chief baron of 10007. a year.

The custom of knighting the judges upon their appoint- ment was not at this time universally practised. Chief Baron James Reynolds and Justices Robert Price, Alexander Denton, Spencer Cowper, William Fortescue, Charles Clarke, Nathaniel Gundry and William Noel, do not appear to have ever received the distinction ; besides some, who as sons of peers were of course omitted ; and the knighthood of Sir William Lee, Sir Martin Wright, Sir James Rey- nolds (the baron), Sir Thomas Burnet, and Sir Thomas Denison, was delayed till several years after their promotion to the bench ; the last four receiving it together, upon going up with the inns of court to present an address on the occa- sion of the rebellion in 1745. Towards the winter relief and support of the soldiers engaged in the suppression of that rebellion, the judges afterwards subscribed 12007.1

An engraving from a painting by Gravelot represents the interior of Westminster Hall during this reign, with three of the courts in the hall ; the courts of Chancery and King's Bench at the upper end, and the court of Common Pleas on their left hand side. That part of the wall, not occupied by the latter court, was filled with shops or stalls for the sale of books and fancy articles, as well as the whole length of the opposite side.

In March 1735 the Thames rose so high that the Hall was overflowed, and the lawyers were conveyed away in boats. Henry Fielding alludes to this event in his dramatic satire of " Pasquin," where Law says :

" We have our omens too. The other day A mighty deluge swam into our Hall, As if it meant to wash away the law :

1 Gent. Mag. xv. 612, 666.

1727—1760. WESTMINSTER HALL. 87

Lawyers were forc'd to ride on porters' shoulders ;

One, O prodigious omen ! tumbled down,

And he and all his briefs were sous'd together."1

In July in the following year the hall was frightened out of its propriety by a sudden explosion in the court of Chan- cery. Under the idea that there was another gunpowder plot the judges, counsel, attorneys, and clients started from their places, and took to their heels in such confusion that wigs and gowns were discarded and left in the scuffle. On recovering their senses and examining into the cause of the tumult, the remains of a bag were found, in which gunpowder had been placed, for the purpose of blowing up five unpopu- lar acts of parliament, and of dispersing vast numbers of a handbill describing them " as destructive of the product, trade and manufacture of the kingdom, and tending to the utter subversion of the liberties and properties thereof." These five acts were, the Gin Act, — the Mortmain Act, — the Act for building Westminster Bridge, — the Smugglers Act, — and the Act to apply 600,000/. of the Sinking Fund to the service of the year. How the fire was applied to the gunpowder nobody could discover ; but so indignant were Lord Chancellor Talbot and Lord Hardwicke at this insult, that a royal proclamation was issued, and a strict inquiry instituted for its perpetrator. He was at last discovered to be one Nixon, a poor half-mad, non-juring parson, who was fined and imprisoned for the offence. The whole affair was the subject of a debate in the ensuing parliament.

The wits of Westminster Hall seem to have been pecu- liarly lively, and give us an idea that there were as many briefless barristers in the reign of George II. as encumber the back seats of the different courts at the present day. One of them produced a satire entitled " The Causidicade, a

1 Ireland's Inns of Court, 251.

2 Lord Hervey's Memoirs, ii. 136; Pari. Hist. ix. 1281, et seq.

88 ATTORNEY- AND SOLICITOR-GENERALS. George II.

Panegyri-serio-comic-dramatical Poem, on a Strange Resig- nation, and a stranger Promotion ; by Porcupine Pelagius :" on the occasion of Sir John Strange resigning the office of solicitor-general in 1742, and the appointment of the Hon. William Murray (afterwards Lord Mansfield) as his suc- cessor. It professes to give the pleadings of the various candidates, detailing their different claims and qualifications for the post, before the president of the supposed court, the then Lord Chancellor Hardwicke. It quizzes no less than thirty-four individuals, five of the then existing judges being incidentally introduced, and seven who were afterwards pro- moted to the bench ; the respective victims being portrayed with their distinguishing characteristics ; and the whole forming a very amusing picture. Two lines of it prove that a custom then existed which has only been discontinued within the latter half of the present century. The chan- cellor is represented as daintily wielding

" A nosegay compos'd of the flow'rs of the field, And eke of the garden."

Attorney-Generals.

I. 1727. June Sir Philip Yorke, made Ch. K. B.

VII. 1734. Jan. John Willes, Esq., made Ch. C. P.

X. 1737. Jan. Dudley Ryder, Esq., made Ch. K. B.

XXVII. 1754. May. Hon. William Murray, made Ch. K. B.

XXX. 1756. Nov. Sir Robert Henley, made lord keeper.

XXXI. 1757. June. Sir Charles Pratt.

Solicitor-Generals.

I. 1727. June Charles Talbot, Esq., made lord chancellor.

VII. 1734. Jan. Dudley Ryder, Esq., made attorney-general.

X. 1737. Hil. John Strange, Esq., resigned.

XVI. 1742. Hon.William Murray, made attorney-general.

XXVII. 1754. May. Sir Richard Lloyd, removed.

XXX. 1756. Nov. Hon. Charles Yorke.

1727—1760. serjeants-at-law. 89

Serjeants-at-Law.

The added initial marks the inn of court to which they belonged ; and those who became judges are distinguished by a *.

I. 1727. *Spencer Cowper (L.) Edward Corbet (L.)

HI. 1729. *WiUiam Thomson (M.) IV. 1730. *William Lee (I.) "Thomas Birch (I.)

VII. 1733. *Philip Yorke (M.) 'Thomas Keeve (M.)

*Martin Wright (I.) IX. 1736. "Thomas Parker (I.) John Agar (M.)

Thomas Hussey (M.) Eichard Draper (G.)

Abraham Gapper (L.) R. Johnson Kettleby (M.)

♦Robert Price (M.) William Hayward (M.)

•Michael Foster (M.) Samuel Prime (M.)

Thomas Burnet (M.) Thomas Barnardiston (M.)

William Wynne (M.) Edward Bootle (L.)

Motto, a Nunquam libertas gratior." *William Fortescue (I.) •John Willes (L.)

♦James Reynolds (L.) *Thomas Abney (I.)

*Thomas Denison (I.) Edward Leeds.

•Charles Clarke (L.)

•Edward Clive (L.) WiUiam Eyre.

*Heneage Legge (I.) David Poole.

Motto, "Mens bona, fama, fides." 1750. *Nathaniel Gundry (L.) *Sidney Stafford Smythe (I.) Motto, " Libertas, fides, Veritas." *Richard Adams (I.) George Wilson.

•Dudley Ryder (M.) *Henry Bathurst (L.)

Motto, u Venturo prospicit sevo." XXVni. 1755. *JohnEardleyWilmot(I.) * James Hewitt (M.) Lomax Martin. William Davy.

Motto, u Diu intersit populo." XXX. 1766. *William Murray (L.)

Motto, u Servate Domum." 1757. *William Noel (M.) Thomas Stanyforth (I.)

James Foster (G.)

Motto, " Avi munerentur avorum." XXXII. 1759. William Whitaker *George Nares (I.)

Anthony Keck.

Motto, " Te metuant tyranni." XXXIH. •Richard Lloyd.

Motto, "In dubiis rectus."

X.	1737.
XIV.	1740.
XV.	1742.
XVI.	1743.
XVIII..	1745.
XXI.	1747.
XXIV.	1750.
XXVT.	1753.
XXVII.	1754.

90 SERJEANTS. George II.

King's Serjeants.

III. 1729. "William Chappie. IX. 1736. *Thonias Parker (I.) Giles Eyre.

XIV. 1740. "Thomas Burnet (M.) XVIII. 1745? *Thomas Birch (I.) Matthew Skinner.

Samuel Prime. Edward Willes.

XX. 1747. Edward Leeds. XXX. 1757. David Poole. XXXII. 1759. Mames Hewitt (M.)1 William Whitaker.

*George Nares (I.)

A proposition was made in 1755 by Lord Chief Justice Willes that the Court of Common Pleas should be opened to all barristers : but the rest of the judges, as well as Lord Hardwicke, strongly opposed this encroachment on the ancient privileges of the Serjeants, and unanimously rejected the scheme. Before another century had elapsed however the alteration was effected without any practical inconvenience.

During this reign there seems to have been only one general call ; the remaining Serjeants, with some few exceptions, being appointed on promotion to the bench. At that call the feast was in Middle Temple Hall, and it appears from Serjeant Wynne's account, that the expense to each of the fourteen Serjeants was 185Z. ; the aggregate bill for robes being 360/. ; for the dinner 315/. ; for the rings (1409 in number) 773/. ; for wine 334/. ; for the use of Serjeants' Inn 500/. ; the rest being made up by the cost of biscuits, music, and small fees.2

The lease of Serjeants' Inn, Fleet Street, which was granted by the dean and chapter of York in 1670 for sixty years, came to a .termination in September 1730. Up to that time it had been inhabited by some of the judges and Serjeants, and occasionally used for judicial conferences : but

1 He resigned his patent in 1764.

2 Wynne's Serj. at Law, 10, 114; Manning's Serv. at Legem, 22.

1727—1760. KING'S COUNSEL. 91

then the division of the order into two bodies being found to be inconvenient, it was determined not to renew the lease. Two years, previous to the expiration of the term, a con- ference was held between the judges and Serjeants of this society and that of Chancery Lane, in which the expediency of erecting a public building on some convenient spot for the benefit of both societies, was discussed. This project was however given up ; and the result was the junction of the two societies in Serjeant's Inn, Chancery Lane. That in Fleet Street being evacuated, the whole was pulled down, and the site was devoted to private dwellings, as it now appears.

About this time a custom was introduced of granting patents of precedence to such barristers as the Crown con- sidered proper to honour with that mark of distinction, instead of appointing them king's counsel. It probably originated in the division of parties, and the disinclination of the sovereign to name those as his own counsel who were opposed to his ministry, and yet who by their talents or command of business had obtained a lead in the courts. They were entitled to wear a silk gown and to sit within the bar ; and their places were generally assigned next after the existing king's counsel. The only real distinction between them and the king's counsel was the privilege of being retained in causes against the crown. The fees payable on these patents in the reign of Queen Victoria amounted to 637. lis. 6d.

In the following list of king's counsel, those who held patents of precedence as ranking with them, are included ; and for greater convenience, an alphabetical arrangement has been adopted.

Thomas Abney. Henry Bathurst.

Kichard Aston. Thomas Boo tie.

Henry Banks. A. Hume Campbell.

92 Lincoln's inn— inner temple. George 11.

Thomas Clarke. William Noel.

William De Grey. Fletcher Norton.

William Fortescue. George Perrott.

Henry Gould. Charles Pratt.

Nathaniel Gundry. Thomas Reeve.

Eliab Harvey. Thomas Sewell.

Robert Henley. Sidney Stafford Smythe.

Paul Joddrell. John Strange.

Matthew Lamb. John Trevor.

Heneage Legge. John Verney.

Richard Lloyd. Edward Willes.

John Morton. Charles Yorke.

Lincoln's Inn. — A tremendous fire occurred in the New square of this Inn in June 1752, destroying the chambers of several eminent lawyers, among which were those of the Hon. Charles Yorke, the son of the chancellor, and with them unfortunately a large collection of the MSS. of Lord Somers. The inconvenience occasioned by it was so great that Lord Hardwicke was obliged to suspend all proceedings in his court.1

The Temples. — The deed of 1732 between the two societies declaratory of the property belonging to each, has been already noticed in Vol. V. p. 26.

Inner Temple. — A great fire also occurred in the Temple in January 1737, by which upwards of twenty chambers were destroyed.

This society commemorated the elevation of Lord Talbot, a member of their house, to the chancellorship, by one of those ancient revels, which had been for some time past discontinued. It took place on Candlemas day, 1734, Mr. Wollaston acting as master of the revels, and Mr. Baker as master of the ceremonies ; and commenced between two and three o'clock with a grand dinner, fourteen students of the house attending as waiters, among whom was Mr. Talbot, the chancellor's son. By means of these honorary attendants,

1 Gent. Mag. xxii. 287, 333.

1727—1760. INNER TEMPLE. —STAPLE INN. 93

the barristers and students, for whom only the customary fare was provided, obtained an ample supply of the good things from the upper table ; and were further feasted with a flask of claret for each mess, besides the common allowance of port and sack. As soon as the dinner was ended, Congreve's comedy of " Love for Love " was performed, followed by Coffey's farce of " The Devil to Pay " then recently pro- duced : the actors coming ready dressed in chairs from the Haymarket, and refusing to receive any gratuity for their trouble. After the play the old ceremony of the solemn dance, or rather march, round about the coal fire three times was revived ; the master of the revels taking the lord chan- cellor by the hand, and he the eldest judge, and so through the whole company of judges, Serjeants, and benchers: the procession being enlivened by the ancient French song, accompanied by music, sung by Toby Aston in a bar gown. The Prince of Wales came incog, to witness the ceremony from the music gallery. Retiring as soon as it was over, his absence was speedily supplied by a large company of ladies, who had graced the entertainment with their presence in the gallery, and then came down into the hall, and joining in minuets and country dances with the younger students earned the "very fine collation," with which the evening concluded.1 The prince was the last royal personage who honoured the Inns of Court by attending at their entertain- ments for more than a century. In 1845 Queen Victoria opened the new Hall in Lincoln's Inn; and her son the Prince of Wales in 1861 paid the same compliment on opening the new library of the Middle Temple.

Staple Inn. — There seems to have been an epidemic of conflagration among the haunts of the lawyers during this reign. In 1756 the pension chamber and several other

1 Notes to Wynne's Eunomus, iv. 105.

94 COKE'S REPORTS IN VERSE. George II.

buildings of this Inn were consumed by fire. They were insured for 680Z. 16s. 6d., and the rebuilding cost 1053/.

A curious volume was published by Henry Lintotin 1742, of " The Reports of Sir Edward Coke, Knt., in verse, where- in the name of each case, and the principal points are con- tained in two lines." We are not aware that this abridg- ment has ever been quoted in Court, but it assisted the memory of the student, and was made more useful by the tables and references which are annexed to it.

95

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES

OP

THE JUDGES UNDER THE REIGN OF GEORGE II.

ABNEY, THOMAS. B. E. 1740. Just. C. P. 1743.

The Abneys were originally seated, almost from the time of the Conquest, at a village of that name in Derbyshire. They afterwards settled at Willesley in the same county; and the judge was the son of Sir Edward Abney, LL.D., of that place, an eminent civilian and member of parliament for Leicester in 1690 and 1695, and the nephew of Sir Thomas Abney the famous lord mayor of London in 1701, whose virtues are celebrated m an elegy by Dr. Isaac Watts.1 His mother was Judith, daughter and co-heir of Peter Barr, a London merchant. He commenced his career in the legal profession at the Inner Temple in 1697, put on his bar gown in 1713, and was made a bencher of that society in 1733.

Being placed on the commission of the peace for Middle- sex he was so well reputed among his colleagues that in February 1731 he was chosen for their chairman of the quarter sessions at Hicks's Hall. In 1733 he was one of the commissioners to inquire into the fees, &c. of the officers of the Exchequer; and in the same year he received the appointment of attorney-general for the Duchy of Lancaster, with the grade of king's counsel. From this he was advanced

1 Funeral Sermon, by Jer. Smith, 1722.

96 THOMAS ABNEY. George II.

in December 1735 to be judge of the Palace Court and steward of the Marshalsea, and was then knighted. At the same time he was in full practice, and among the causes in which he distinguished himself was that of Moore v. The Corporation of Hastings, in which he established the right of the eldest son of a freeman to be admitted a freeman of the borough.1

By this progressive advance in the honours of his profes- sion, his ultimate elevation to the bench at Westminster might easily be foreseen. It was not long delayed, for on the transfer of Mr. Baron Wright from the Exchequer to the King's Bench, Sir Thomas Abney was selected to supply his place in the former court in November 1740. In little more than two years he was removed in February 1 743 to the Common Pleas. There he sat for the rest of his life, which was terminated by one of those afflicting visitations, too commonly occasioned by the infamous manner in which the common gaols were then conducted, and the confined con- struction of the criminal courts. The Black Sessions at the Old Bailey in May 1750 will be long remembered. An unusually large number of prisoners were arraigned, all most uncleanly and some suffering from the gaol distemper ; and a great concourse of spectators were crowded in the narrow court to hear the trial of Captain Clarke for killing Captain Innes in a duel. These, added to the filthy state of the rooms in connection with the court, so tainted the air, that many of those assembled were struck with fever, of whom no less than forty died. Of the judges in the commission only the chief justice (Lee) and the recorder (Adams) escaped. Those who fell a sacrifice to the pestilence were Mr. Justice Abney, who died May 19, Mr. Baron Clarke, who died on the 17th, Sir Samuel Pennant, lord mayor, and

1 Strange, 1070; State Trials, xvii. 845.

1727—1760. THOMAS ABNEY. 97

Alderman Sir Daniel Lambert ; besides several of the counsel and jurymen.

The following lines, taken from a copy of verses published soon after the mournful event, afford some evidence of the estimation in which Sir Thomas's character was regarded: —

a Yes, 'tis a glorious thought ! The worthy mind, Matur'd by wisdom, and from vice refin'd, In various scenes of social life approv'd, Of men the lover, and by men belov'd, Must, sure, divested of its kindred clay, Soar to the regions of empyreal day.

u Such Abney shone ; to deck whose mournful hearse, The Muse lamenting pays her grateful verse, The Muse long wont to love, as to revere, The judge impartial, and the friend sincere! How has she oft with fix'd attention hung On the great truths that grac'd his flowing tongue ! Truths, that he joy'd with candid warmth to draw Fair from the moral, as the Christian law. How oft beheld him glad the friendly scene, Without all cheerful, and all calm within j And, far from mad ambition's noisy strife, Taste the pure blessings of domestic life ! How oft in him, with pleasing wonder, view'd A soul, where lawless passions sank subdued, Where virtue still her rightful rule maintain'd, While generous zeal, by bigotry unstain'd, And freedom, that protects with watchful care Man's sacred rights, serenely triumph'd there ! "

Though this may seem the effusion of personal affection, the truth of the delineation is confirmed by the more dis- passionate testimony of that eminent judge, Sir Michael Foster, who in his report of the Trial of the Rebels (p. 75), after designating Sir Thomas Abney as "a very worthy man, learned in his profession, and of great integrity," pro- ceeds thus : — " He was through an openness of temper, or a pride of virtue habitual to him, incapable of recommending himself to that kind of low assiduous craft, by which we

VOL. VIII. H

98 JOHN FORTESCUE-ALAND. George II.

have known some unworthy men make their way to the favour of the great. ... In his judicial capacity he con- stantly paid a religious regard to the merits of the question in the light the case appeared to him ; and his judgment very seldom misled him. In short when he died, the world lost a very valuable man, his majesty an excellent subject, and the public a faithful able servant."

He married Frances, daughter of Joshua Burton of Brack- ley in Northamptonshire, and by her he left a son, Thomas, whose only daughter married General Sir Charles Hastings, Bart. Their descendants have assumed the name of Abney, in addition to their own, and possess Willesley Hall, the judge's seat. Another branch of the Abney family is seated at Measham Hall in the same county.1

ADAMS, RICHARD.

B. E. 1753. See under the Reign of George III.

ALAND, JOHN FORTESCUE, afterwards Lord Fortescue.

Just. K. B. 1727. Just. C. P. 1729.

See under the Reign of George I.

Hugh Fortescue, the grandfather of this judge, was the seventh in lineal descent from the illustrious chief justice of Henry YI. His second son, Arthur, was the grandfather of the first Lord Fortescue of Castle Hill, to which the earldom now enjoyed by his successors was added in 1789. Hugh's third son, Edmond, by his marriage with Sarah, daughter of Henry Aland, Esq., of Waterford, whose name he added to his own, was the judge's father.

John Fortescue- Aland was born on March 7, 1670. Ox- ford has been supposed to be the place of his education, as he received from that university the honorary degree of

1 Gent. Mag. at the respective dates ; Burke's Landed Gentry.

1727—1760. JOHN FORTESCUE-ALAND. 99

doctor of civil law on May 4, 1733. But the language of that diploma leads to a different conclusion, and no trace is to be found of him in the register of matriculations.1 In 1688 he became a member of the Middle Temple, but after- wards removed to the Inner Temple ; and having been called to the bar in 1712, arrived at the post of reader in 1716. In October 1714, immediately after the arrival of George I., he was appointed solicitor-general to the Prince of Wales (after- wards George II.), from which he was promoted in December of the following year to be solicitor-general to the king.1 He was chosen member for Midhurst in the first parliament of George I., but only sat during its first session, being raised to the bench before the commencement of the next. This event occurred on January 24, 1717, when he was sworn a baron of the Exchequer and knighted ; having but two days before assisted at the trial of Francis Francia for high treason. He occupied that seat for little more than a year ; and one of his last duties as a baron was to give his opinion respecting the education and marriage of the royal family, his argument on which is fully reported by himself, and, though he had been one of the law officers of the Prince of Wales, was decidedly in favour of the prerogative of the crown. Soon after, on May 15, 1718, he was removed to the King's Bench on the elevation of Chief Justice Sir John Pratt. In that court he sat till the death of George I. on June 11, 1727; but George II. about the middle of Sep- tember, perhaps on account of the above opinion against his claim, superseded him.3

Sir John's retirement having lasted fifteen months, he was restored to favour, and on the death of Mr. Justice Cowper

1 Chalmers' Biog. Diet.; Professor Stanley (now Dean of Westminster) kindly furnished me with the only passages in the diploma which have any relation to the University.

2 Lord Raymond, 1318; Strange, 1.

8 State Trials, xv. 975, xvi. 1206; Strange, 86; Lord Raymond, 1510.

ii 2

100 JOHN FORTESCUE-ALAND. Georgk IT.

was placed in the Common Pleas on January 27, 1729. There he continued for above seventeen years, when his age and infirmities warned him to resign ; which he did in June 1746. He had for some time previously been in such a state of health that he could not go the circuit, even in the sum- mer season; and so long before as 1741 he had petitioned for leave to retire with a pension, accompanied by the incon- sistent request that a seat in the House of Commons might be obtained for him.1 When at last permitted to resign, after a service in all the three courts extending to twenty- eight years, his senatorial ambition was gratified by the grant of a barony in the Irish peerage in August following his resignation. His title was Lord Fortescue of Credan in the county of Waterford ; but he enjoyed it for little more than four months, dying in his seventy-seventh year on December 19, 1746.

In addition to his reputation as an excellent lawyer and an able and impartial judge, he had the character of being well versed in Norman and Saxon literature. This he fully maintained in the introductory remarks to his edition of the treatise of his illustrious ancestor Sir John Fortescue, entitled " The Difference between an Absolute and Limited Monarchy," which he published in 1714, being then a Fellow of the Royal Society. His Law Reports of Select cases were prepared for publication before his death, but not printed till 1748. His judgments may be found in Lord Raymond, Strange, and other reporters. Of his manner on the bench the following illustration in Bentley's case may serve as an example. " The laws of God and man," he said, " both give the party an opportunity to make his defence if he has any. I remember to have heard it observed by a very learned man, that even God himself did not pass sen- tence upon Adam, before he was called upon to make his

1 Harris's Life of Lord Hardwicke, i. 484, 487, 511.

1727—1760. JOHN TRACY ATKYNS. 101

defence. Adam (says God) where art thou? Hast thou not eaten of ths tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat ? And the same question was put to Eve also." Of his appearance, the " Conveyancer's Guide " (p. 107) gives this description while he was in the Exche- quer : — " The baron had one of the strangest noses ever seen ; its shape resembled much the trunk of an elephant. * Brother, brother,' said the baron to the counsel, ' you are handling the cause in a very lame manner.' ' Oh ! no, my lord,' was the reply, ■ have patience with me, and I'll make it as plain as the nose in your lordship's face.' "

He was himself long involved in law, the Reports detail- ing proceedings from 3 Geo. I. to 19 Geo. II. between him and Aland Mason, relative to some property of his maternal grandfather. The " Gentleman's Magazine" for 1741 also notices the termination in the House of Lords of a suit which had been depending for ten years between him and John Dormer, a relation of his second wife, concerning the property of her father, in which he was unsuccessful.1

Lord Fortescue's first wife was Grace, daughter of Chief Justice Pratt, by whom he had two sons, who died unmar- ried in their father's lifetime. His second wife was Elizabeth, daughter of Mr. Justice Dormer, by whom he left a son, his successor in his title and estates, one of which was Lamborn Hall in Essex; on whose death in 1781 without issue, the peerage expired.2

ATKYNS, JOHN TRACY.

Curs. B. E. 1755.

See under the Reign of George III.

1 Strange, 567, 861, 1258; Lord Raymond, 1433} Gent. Mag. xi. 106.

2 Collins' Peerage, v. 344; Biog. Diet, by Chalmers and by Kose.

102 JOHN BIRCH. George II.

BARKER, EDWARD. Curs. B. E. 1744.

Of the lineage of this officer I am ignorant. He was born at Wandsworth in 1678, and was called to the bar at the Inner Temple, of which he was not admitted a member till 1724 ; but was one of the benchers of that society when he was appointed cursitor baron of the Exchequer on May 9, 1743. He resigned the place on April 19, 1755, and was succeeded by John Tracy Atkyns. He died in 1759.1

BATHURST, HENRY.

Just. C. P. 1754.

See under the Reign of George III.

BIRCH, JOHN. Curs. B. E. 1729.

The pedigree of the family of Birch of Birch, near Man- chester, can be traced from the latter part of the reign of King John : and one of its branches settled at Ardwick in the same neighbourhood. The representatives of both in the Great Rebellion distinguished themselves on the parliament side. That of Birch was Colonel Thomas Birch, member for Liverpool in the Long Parliament ; and that of Ardwick, with which this memoir is more immediately concerned, was the more famous Colonel John Birch, whose eminent services were rewarded with many important distinctions and com- mands, and with the appointment at various times of high steward of Leominster and governor of Bridgewater and Hereford, both of which towns he had been instrumental in taking. He was elected to represent the borough of Leo- minster in the Long Parliament on a vacancy in 1646, but was excluded from it and imprisoned, by Pride's Purge in

1 Lysons, i. 507, 570; Gent. Mag. xiii. 390, xxv. 184, 237.

1727^—1760. JOHN BIRCH. 103

1648, for voting " that the king's answers to the propositions of both houses were a ground of peace." He of course was not one of Cromwell's Barebones' Parliament, but was mem- ber of every other during the interregnum, either for the city of Hereford or for Leominster ; and took an active part in preparing for the king's return. In the Convention Parliament of 1660 he represented Leominster, and was elected for Weobly in the three last parliaments of Charles II.; and again in the Convention Parliament of 1689, and then till his death in 1691. By his will he bequeathed his estates to his youngest daughter/Sarah, on condition that she should marry her cousin John, the subject of this sketch ; who soon after the marriage had taken place threatened to bring an action against the Bishop of Hereford for defacing the inscription on the colonel's monument, which the bishop thought contained words " not right for the church institu- tion." ■

This John was the second son of the Colonel's brother, the Rev. Thomas Birch, rector of Hampton Bishop in Here- fordshire, and afterwards vicar of Preston in Lancashire, by his wife Mary. He commenced his legal career at Gray's Inn in 1680, but in 1686 he transferred himself to the Mid- dle Temple, by which society he was called to the bar in 1687. His uncle's former constituents at Weobly returned him as their member to the parliament of 1700, and to all the subsequent parliaments, except one, till his death. His senatorial exertions have not been deemed worthy of record, and the only mention of his name in parliamentary history is connected with a disreputable transaction. He had been appointed one of the commissioners for the sale of the estates forfeited by the rebels of 1715; and in reference to those belonging to the Earl of Derwentwater had assisted in a most corrupt and illegal transfer. The transaction was declared

1 Whitelocke's Mem. 184; Pari. Hist. iii. 1428; Ath. Oxon. Life, cxviii.

104 THOMAS BIRCH. Georgk IT.

void, and for the notorious breach of trust Birch was expelled the house in March 1732. He however had sufficient in- fluence with his constituents to be re-elected in the new parliament that met in January 1735, but he died before the end of the year.1

In the progress of his profession he had been included in the batch of Serjeants called in 1706; and before the dis- covery of the above disgraceful transaction had been, on December 11, 1729, made cursitor baron of the Exchequer, in the place of Sir William Thomson, then removed from that office to a judicial seat in the same court. For neither of these appointments was there any precedent, no previous cursitor baron having been raised to the higher judicial position ; and no serjeant-at-law having been placed in the court of Exchequer except as a baron of the coif. He re- mained in the office till his death in October 1735, when he was succeeded by George Clive, Esq., of Lincoln's Inn.2

After the death in 1701 of his first wife Sarah, he mar- ried secondly Letitia Hampden of St. Andrew's, Holborn ; but had no children h\ either.3

BIRCH, THOMAS. Just. C. P. 1746.

Birch of Birchfield in the parish of Handworth near Birmingham, the family from which this judge sprang, flourished in the early part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Thomas Birch was born at Harborne in the same neighbour- hood in 1690, and was the eldest son of George Birch and Mary his wife, the daughter of Thomas Foster, Esq. Des- tined for the law, he took his barrister's degree at the Inner Temple, and receiving the coif in June 1730, was made one

1 Pari. Hist. viii. 1026, 1065; Pari. Reg. (1741), 251.

2 Pat. 3 Geo. II. p. 1.

* Chapel of Birch (Chetham Soc.) 70, 113, 120.

1727—1760. THOMAS BURNET. 105

of the king's Serjeants before November 23, 1745. He is so named on going up with the judges' address to the king on occasion of the rebellion ; when he received the honour of knighthood. In that year he served the office of high sheriff of Staffordshire ; and in June following he was raised to the bench as a judge of the Common Pleas, on the resignation of Sir John Fortescue- Aland ; and retained his seat for eleven years. He resided at Southgate near Lon- don ; and died on March 15, 1757, leaving by his wife Sarah, daughter and co-heir of J. Teshmaker, Esq., three sons and two daughters. The family is still represented by his lineal descendant, who now resides at Wretham near Thetford in Norfolk.1

BURNET, THOMAS. Just. C. P. 1741.

Thomas Buknet was not the first of his family who obtained a seat on the judicial bench ; his grandfather hav- ing acquired high legal eminence in the Scottish tribunal as Lord Cramond. His father was the celebrated Whig pre- late, Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, whose exertions at the Revolution, the piety of whose life, and the value of whose works have thrown around him a lustre, which is rather brightened than diminished by the controversies which the latter occasioned. His mother was the bishop's second wife, Mrs. Mary Scott, a wealthy and accomplished Dutch lady of Scottish and noble extraction. Thomas Burnet was their third and youngest son, and was born about the year 1694. After being grounded at home in the elementary parts of learning, he was first sent to Merton College, Ox- ford, and afterwards in 1706 to the University of Leyden, where he studied for two years, and then visited Germany,

1 Gent. Mag. xv. 612, xvi. 329, xxvii. 142; Burke's Land. Gentry.

106 THOMAS BURNET. George II.

Switzerland, and Italy. On his return he chose the law for his profession, entering himself at the Middle Temple in 1709.

His student life was divided between law and politics, and he acquired equal notoriety for the wildness of his dissipa- tions, and for his genius and wit. Swift in one of his letters to Stella of 1712, speaking of the Mohocks when they terrified the town by their lawless and mischievous exploits, reports that " the Bishop of Salisbury's son is said to be of the gang." This, however, may have been only a current calumny of the day, which the Tory dean found pleasure in promulgating. The groundlessness of the report seems the more probable, inasmuch as at this period Burnet was issuing from the press no less than seven pamphlets against the administration, and in defence of the Whigs ; and was engaged in the composition of several poetical pieces, which were not given to the world till long after his death ; — occupations which would leave him little leisure for the imputed connexion. One of the pamphlets, entitled a A certain Information of a certain Discourse, that happened at a certain gentleman's house, in a certain county, written by a certain person then present, to a certain friend now in London ; from whence you may collect the great certainty of the account," so stung the ministers that they imprisoned the author. There is no doubt that his course of life at this time was dissolute and licentious. A story is told that his father one day seeing him uncommonly grave, asked him the subject of his thoughts. " A greater work," replied he, " than your lordship's f History of the Reformation.' " " What is that, Tom ? " " My own reformation, my lord." The bishop expressed his pleasure, but at the same time his despair of it.

On the accession of George I. he wrote some other political squibs, now forgotten ; and at his father's death he published the "character" of the bishop, with his last will. In 1715

1727—1760. THOMAS BURNET. 107

he and Mr. Ducket wrote a travestie of the first book of the Iliad, under the title of " Homerides," which naturally pro- cured them a place in Pope's " Dunciad." On the Whig party regaining power he was sent as consul to Lisbon, where he got involved in some dispute with Lord Tyrawley, the ambassador, and adopted a curious mode of ridiculing his noble antagonist. Having learned what dress his lordship intended to wear on a birthday, he provided liveries for his servants of exactly the same pattern, and appeared himself in a plain suit. He continued at Lisbon several years, and on his recall to England he published his father's " History of his own Time ;" to the last volume of which he added a life of the Bishop.

Resuming his original profession, he was called to the bar in 1729, twenty years after his admission to the Middle Temple. He showed so much ability and met with such success that in 1736 he received the degree of the coif, and in 1740 was appointed king's serjeant. In October of the next year he succeeded Mr. Justice Fortescue on the bench of the Common Pleas, where he administered justice with a great reputation for learning and uprightness for nearly twelve years. He was not knighted till November 1745, when he and three of his brethren, who had not previously received that dignity, submitted to the ceremony, on the occasion of all the judges, Serjeants, and barristers presenting an address to the king expressive of their " utter detestation of the present wicked and most ungrateful rebellion." He died unmarried on January 5, 1753, of the gout in his stomach, and was buried near his father in St. James's Church, Clerk enw ell.

Whatever were the frailties of his youth, he redeemed them by his after life, commanding in the latter period the respect of the wise, as he had gained in the former the admiration of the wits who distinguished the reign of Queen

108 LAWRENCE CARTER. George II.

Anne. He rejoiced in the esteem of many friends, and his merits and his worth were recorded after his death in several publications. The declaration in his will that he had lived, as he trusted he should die, " in the true faith of Christ as taught in the Scriptures, but not as taught or practised in any one visible church that he knew of," occasioned much speculation at the time. But that he was a sincere Christian, unbiassed by sectarian prejudices, there can be little doubt, judging from the purity of his latter life, and his unosten- tatious bounty to the poor.1

CARTER, LAWRENCE.

B. E. 1727. See under the Reign of George I.

Lawrence Carter was born at Leicester about 1672, of a family which originally came from Hitchin in Hertfordshire, where gravestones and other monuments to its members still remain. His father, who bore the same names, having pro- jected the scheme of supplying Leicester with water, was chosen the representative of the borough in several parlia- ments of William III., of whom he was a firm supporter. His mother was Mary the daughter of Thomas Wadland, Esq., of the Neworke at Leicester, an eminent solicitor, in whose office her husband had been articled. Their son, after being called to the bar by the society of Lincoln's Inn, was elected recorder of his native town on September 1, 1697, and entered the House of Commons as its representative in the next year, and sat there till the death of William III. In 1710, and in the two following parliaments of 1714 and 1715, he was returned for Beeralston ; and at the dissolution of the latter in 1722 he was again elected for Leicester: but history has preserved no record of his senatorial eloquence. His professional career was distinguished by his being ap- 1 Life of Bishop Burnet; Chalmers' Biog. Diet. &c.

1727—1760. WILLIAM CHAPPLE. 109

pointed in 1717 solicitor-general to the Prince of Wales, afterwards George II. ; by receiving in 1724 the degree of the coif; and by being made soon after one of the king's Serjeants ; when he was knighted.

On September 7, 1726, he succeeded Mr. Baron Price as a baron of the Exchequer ; retaining his recordership for the next three years. Thoresby relates of him that "a man whom the baron in a circuit condemned to die, escaped from the cart by the assistance of the multitude, going to the place of execution, and afterwards settled at Leicester near the baron ... in Redcross Street, and became a useful member of society." The baron continued on the bench till his death on March 14, 1745, with the reputation of an upright judge. He was buried in the church of St. Mary de Castro, Leicester, where his monument is still to be seen ; and dying a bachelor he left his estates to his half-brother Thomas Carter, Esq.1

CHAPPLE, WILLIAM. Just. K. B. 1737.

This judge was of a Dorsetshire family, and resided at Waybay House in the parish of Upway. Born about 1677, and adopting the law as his profession, he pursued the ordinary course of study with industry and intelligence. In 1722 he entered parliament as member for the borough of Dorchester, which he continued to represent till he was raised to the bench. We have no means of judging of his talents as a senator; but as a lawyer his reputation was high. Having been included in the call of Serjeants in 1724, he was made a judge on the North Wales circuit in 1728; and on his

1 Ex inf. William Kelly, Esq., of Leicester, who has kindly supplied me with extracts from the Borough Books, &c. Pari. Hist. v. 219, 255; Lord Ray- mond, 1420; Gent. Mag. xv. 164; Nichols' Leicester, i. 318; Thoresby's