this eminent man were, unfortunately, in the end, the source of
difficulty and distress rather than advantage. The history of the
Cabal, of which he was the mainspring, and of which he formed the
fourth letter (Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, Lauderdale),
would suffice for his biography during the five years of its life. But
it must never be forgotten that to Shaftesbury England owes the
passing of the Habeas Corpus Bill, as likewise one for making judges
independent of the Crown.
The reader must seek elsewhere, and elect for himself, whether
Shaftesbury was or was not guilty of all the plots and conspiracies
against King and country of which he has been accused. To the Duke of
York he made himself most obnoxious. He was instrumental in
establishing the Test Act, which made Roman Catholics ineligible for
public offices; he was, moreover, the champion of the Exclusion Bill,
and opposed James’s marriage with Mary of Modena; and there is little
doubt that the Duke did all to undermine Shaftesbury’s favour with the
King.
There was always an element of humour mixed up with his doings, even
when fortune frowned on him. Finding that the King meant to unseat him
from the Woolsack, and that his successor was already named, he sought
the Royal presence. The King was about to proceed to chapel. The
fallen favourite told Charles he knew what his Majesty’s intentions
were, but he trusted he was not to be dismissed with contempt. ‘Cod’s
fish, my lord,’ replied the easy-going monarch, ‘I will not do it with
any circumstances that may look like a slight,’ upon which the
ex-Minister asked permission to carry the Great Seals of Office for
the last time before the King into chapel, and then to his own house
till the evening.
Granted permission, Shaftesbury, with a smiling countenance, entered
the sacred building, and spoiled the devotions of all his enemies,
during that service at least. Lord Keeper Finch, who was to succeed
him, was at his wit’s end, believing Shaftesbury reinstated, and all
(and there were many) who wished his downfall were in despair.
The whole account is most amusing and characteristic, including the
manner in which the Seals were actually resigned, but we have not
space to say more. Shaftesbury was indeed now ‘out of suits with
fortune.’ In 1677 he, with other noblemen, was committed to the Tower
for contempt of the authority of Parliament, and although other
prisoners were soon liberated, he was kept in confinement thirteen
months. On regaining his freedom he was made Lord President of the
Council, but, opposing the Duke of York’s succession, was dismissed
from that post in a few months. In 1681 he was again apprehended, on
false testimony, and once more sent to the Tower on charge of treason,
and that without a trial.
His papers were searched, but nothing could be found against him
except one document, ‘neither writ nor signed by his hand.’ The jurors
brought in the bill ‘Ignoramus,’ which pleased the Protestant portion
of the community, who believed the Earl suffered in the cause of
religion.
Bonfires were kindled in his honour; one of the witnesses against him
narrowly escaped from the fury of the mob; a medal was struck to
commemorate his enlargement. Hence the poem of that name from the pen
of Dryden, suggested by the King. On regaining his liberty,
Shaftesbury went to reside at his house in Aldersgate Street, when,
finding his enemies were still working against him, he took the
friendly advice of Lord Mordaunt, and after lying _perdu_ in another
part of London for a night or two, he set off for Harwich, _en route_
for Holland, with a young relative, both disguised as Presbyterian
ministers, with long black perukes. Adverse winds detained them at a
small inn, when one day the landlady entered the elder gentleman’s
room, and, carefully shutting the door, told him that the chambermaid
had just been into his companion’s apartment, and instead of a
swarthy, sour-faced dominie, had found a beautiful fair-haired youth.
‘Be assured, sir,’ said the good woman, ‘that I will neither ask
questions, nor tell tales, but I cannot answer for a young girl’s
discretion.’
The man who had been so hunted of late was touched, thanked the good
soul, and bade his handsome young friend make love to the maid, till
the wind changed.
The fugitives, however, had an extra run for it, as it was, for the
hounds were on their track. Fortunately the capture of one of
Shaftesbury’s servants, dressed like his master, gave them time to
embark.
They arrived at Amsterdam after a stormy passage, where Shaftesbury
hired a large house, with the intention of remaining some time, and
all the more that he found himself treated with great respect by all
the principal inhabitants. But misfortune pursued him. He was seized
with gout in the stomach, and expired on the 1st of January 1683. His
body was conveyed to England, and landed at Poole, whither the
gentlemen of his native county flocked, uninvited, to pay a tribute to
his memory, by attending the remains to Wimborne St. Giles.
We leave the sentence to be pronounced on the first Earl of
Shaftesbury to wiser heads than ours, but one remark we feel
authorised to make,—that we are not called on to believe him as black
as Dryden has painted him, since we cannot but question the justice of
the pen that described Charles II. as the God-like David, in the
far-famed poem of ‘Absalom (the Duke of Monmouth) and Achitophel’
(Shaftesbury), which loads the latter with invective:—
‘A name to all succeeding ages curst,
For close designs and crooked counsels fit,
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit,
Restless, unfixed in principles and place,
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace;
A fiery soul, which working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay....
Great wits are sure to madness close allied;...
Oh! had he been content to serve the Crown
With virtues only proper to the gown,’ etc. etc.
There spoke the Laureate, and woe indeed to the man who had such a
poet as Dryden for his censor! Yet for all this abuse, which he had
written to order, Dryden could not help bearing testimony as follows:—
‘Yet fame deserved no enemy can grudge,
The Statesman we abhor, but praise the Judge;
In Israel’s courts ne’er sate an Abbethdin
With more discerning eyes or hands more clean,
Unbribed, unsought, the wretched to redress,
Swift of despatch, and easy of access.’
Lord Shaftesbury was kind and charitable to the poor in his
neighbourhood, and was very hospitable. In 1669 Cosimo de’ Medici,
being in England, went to St. Giles’s, and was so much pleased with
his reception, that he kept up a correspondence with his English
friend, and sent him annually a present of Tuscan wine. It has been
adduced by some, in evidence of his immorality, that on one occasion,
while still in favour with Charles, the King said to him, ‘I believe,
Shaftesbury, you are the greatest profligate in England.’ The Earl
bowed low, and replied, ‘For a subject, sire, I believe I am.’ It
would be hard to condemn a man on the testimony of a repartee.
------------------
_No. 4._
WILLIAM, FIRST EARL COWPER, FIRST LORD CHANCELLOR OF GREAT BRITAIN.
_In Chancellor’s robes._
BORN 1664, DIED 1723.
BY SIR GODFREY KNELLER.
------------------
_No. 5._
JOHN, FIRST LORD SOMMERS, LORD CHANCELLOR.
_Violet velvet coat. Lace cravat. Fall wig._
BORN 1652, DIED 1716.
BY SIR GODFREY KNELLER.
THE fine old cathedral city of Worcester is so justly proud of its
noble citizen, the first Lord Sommers, that different districts
have contested the honour of his birthplace; but the best evidence
goes to prove that he was born at his father’s estate of Whiteladies,
which at that period was not included in the precincts of the city.
The house was a dissolved Carthusian nunnery, and had been granted to
the Sommers family at the time of the Reformation.
For two generations before the birth of Lord Sommers, the name
was spelled without the final _s_, which probably gave rise to the
supposition that it had a common origin with that of Van Somer, the
famous Flemish painter. On the other hand, some writers contend that
the name was derived from a St. Omer, as in the case of St. Maur, St.
Leger, and the like.
Be this as it may, they undoubtedly claimed kinship with the gallant
admiral, Sir George Somers, who rediscovered the island (or rather the
cluster of islands) of Bermuda, so called after one Juan Bermudez,
‘who was driven thereon by force of tempest.’ The place did not enjoy
a good reputation; it was termed ‘the island of divelles,’ or the
‘enchanted isle,’ and was supposed to harbour sea-monsters, mermen,
and ‘such cattle,’ from which legend doubtless sprang Setebos and
Caliban. Admiral Somers was also wrecked here, and thus rediscovered
the whereabouts which had been lost; and he was most desirous it
should bear his name, and so it is still called Bermuda or Somers’
(erroneously Summer’s) island.
Purchas, in his _Pilgrimage_, gives a long description of the
abundance of sea-fowl, on which the shipwrecked mariners feasted, and
of the wonderful tameness of the birds,—for Somers might have said
with Alexander Selkirk:—
‘They are so unaccustomed to man,
Their tameness is shocking to me.’
Purchas goes on to say, ‘Notwithstanding the wonted danger, you may
now touch at Bermuda, for danger hath made it not so dangerous:’ after
the fashion of many another peril that calls for precautionary
measures.
Waller, in his didactic poem on the beauties of this region, forgets
to do honour to the gallant old ‘salt,’ who was as well known for his
daring rejoinder to King James I. as for his nautical adventures; it
was when subjected to one of the tyrant’s manifold acts of injustice.
‘I hope I may be the last of sacrifices in your time. When from
private appetite it is resolved that a creature shall be sacrificed,
it is easy to pick up sticks enough from any thicket, whither it has
strayed, to make a fire to offer it with.’
The immediate ancestors of the Lord Chancellor had been settled for
some time on a small estate in Gloucestershire, called Stoke Severne,
and they also owned the ‘Whiteladies,’ then a suburb of Worcester.
Here, in 1585, the family entertained Queen Elizabeth, in her progress
through Worcestershire, and although the Sommerses afterwards
imbibed republican principles, the bed in which good Queen Bess lay,
and the cup out of which she drank, were long preserved as precious
relics in the family.
Queen Elizabeth was much pleased with her reception at the
Whiteladies, and indeed at Worcester altogether. More especially was
her Grace’s fancy taken by a conceit of Master Sommers, who
caused a splendid pear-tree, loaded with fruit, to be transplanted
from his own garden to the market-place in the town, as a decoration,
at the time of the Queen’s public reception,—in remembrance of which
Elizabeth granted an augmentation to the arms of the city, in the
shape of three pears, as may be seen to this day.
Master Sommers, the father of the future Peer, had been bred up
to the law, and practised as an attorney, but, when the civil war
broke out, in opposition to the majority of his fellow-citizens, he
took part with the Roundheads, and raised a troop of horse to serve
under Cromwell. He was for some time quartered at Upton, near his own
estate of Stoke Severne, the parish church of which he frequented.
Now the Rector was a Royalist, and a firm upholder of Divine right,
and he was very apt to mix political with theological arguments in his
sermons. Captain Sommers had constantly warned him against so
doing, but in vain; and one Sunday the good parson indulged in so much
abuse of the Cromwell men as to raise the ire of the Parliamentarian
officer, who, drawing forth a loaded pistol, lodged a shot in the
sounding-board above his reverence’s head.
In spite of all this, King Charles passed the night previous to the
battle of Worcester, and that following, at the Whiteladies, where,
after ‘shifting himself’ into a disguise, he left his trunk hose, his
garters, and two pairs of fringed gloves, to be added to the Royal
Elizabethan relics. Lord Campbell remarks that a species of sanctity
had been attached to the Whiteladies by both parties, since the
building was spared, when almost every other edifice was destroyed;
but Nash, the county historian, accounts for the circumstance by
saying that the soldiers spared the house on account of its being a
strong building, capable of holding 500 men with safety.
Not many days after the King’s flight, Captain Sommers brought
his wife, Mistress Catherine (whose maiden name was Ceaverne, a native
of Shropshire), to this stronghold, she being at the time in an
interesting condition for the second time, having already presented
her husband with a daughter; and there, to the best of our belief, was
born, a few months afterwards, the future Lord Chancellor of England,
and the first Peer of the name. Few good stories are told of his
boyhood, excepting one which was probably very much prized in the home
archives, and is remembered till this day, as an omen of his future
greatness. He was on a visit to his aunt, Mistress Bluron, the wife of
a Presbyterian minister, with whom he was walking hand-in-hand amid
the glories of her poultry-yard, when a beautiful roost-cock lighted
on the little fellow’s curly head, and crowed three distinct times
while perched thereon. No less honour than the Woolsack could surely
be prognosticated by so splendid an augury! When, in modern times,
could there have been such literal _avium garritus_?
The boy went to the College School at Worcester, where he became the
favourite model pupil of the master, Dr. Bright, a distinguished
classical scholar. He is described as weakly in health, wearing a
little black cap, but the ‘brightest boy in the whole school, so
studious and contemplative that he did not care for the sports of his
companions, and was usually seen musing alone with a book in his hand
during the hours of recreation.’ He appears to have gone to more than
one other school, and at intervals to have learned the business of an
attorney in his father’s office, the elder Sommers having by
this time resumed the profession to which he was bred before he joined
Cromwell’s army.
At the time of the Restoration he had solicited, and obtained, a
pardon, under the Great Seal, for his former disaffection to the
Crown, but, ‘being a lawyer,’ says Lord Campbell, ‘he perhaps
remembered Sir Edward Coke’s wise observation, that “good men will
never refuse pardon from God or the King, because every man doth often
offend both.”’ In 1667 young Sommers matriculated, and was
entered at Trinity College, Oxford, but apparently only remained there
a short time, and did not take his degree. While at the University he
showed more predilection for the study of the _belles lettres_ than
for that of law, in spite of which his father insisted on his becoming
his clerk at Whiteladies. The picturesque old place was now not only
inhabited by Sommers, the well-to-do solicitor, and his wife and
children, but it had been converted into a species of colony, and was
peopled by several families connected, for the most part, with the
owner, either by blood or marriage. Some of the occupants were engaged
in the cultivation of the large farm adjoining, others in producing
all kinds and colours for dyeing materials, or manufacturing cloth,
which trade was at that time in a flourishing condition in Worcester;
and, above all, in making bricks and tiles for rebuilding the ruined
city and suburbs. The latter calling gave rise to the epithet by which
the scurrilous libellers of later days thought (vainly) to lower the
pride of the great Lord Sommers, by calling him the brickmaker’s
son! When the multifarious labours of the day were at an end, the
various inhabitants, occasionally augmented by outside guests, met, to
the number of twenty or thirty, round the table, in the old refectory
of the nunnery, where the produce of the farm and gardens afforded
them a plentiful and inexpensive banquet. John Sommers, senior,
had great influence in electioneering matters, and also received and
entertained at his house many persons of weight and influence,—among
others, Sir Francis Winnington, a rising lawyer, and Member for the
city, afterwards Solicitor-General. The good knight was much impressed
by young John’s talents, and recommended that he should pursue the
study of the law, in which profession, he remarked, many
Worcestershire men had risen to eminence. It took some time to
persuade the father to send his son away from the establishment, which
was growing more lucrative every day, but at length he yielded to the
wish of Sir Francis, and entered his son as student of the Middle
Temple, 1669. The youth returned, however, and read law at Whiteladies
for a year before settling in the Temple, and, both at Worcester and
in London, he benefited by the friendship and tuition of his good
friend Sir Francis. His circle of acquaintance in London was, at
first, limited almost exclusively to lawyers, and amongst his
intimates was Sir Joseph Jekyll, afterwards his brother-in-law.
But the young Templar returned for his vacations to Worcester
(although the society did not much suit his taste) until the year
1672, when he met a genial spirit at Whiteladies. His father was agent
for the estates of several noblemen, and, among others, of the young
Earl of Shrewsbury, son to the unfortunate Peer who had been killed in
a duel with the Duke of Buckingham,—his shameless wife, at least so
goes the tradition, holding her lover’s horse while he murdered her
husband.
Grafton, the estate of the Shrewsburys, was at that time out of
repair, and the young Earl gladly accepted an invitation to
Whiteladies, and no sooner did our Templar come down from London for
his usual visit, than the two youths formed a friendship which proved
lifelong. They became inseparable companions, both in their studies
and their recreations, and the intimacy continued when they returned
to London. Lord Shrewsbury took a delight in introducing Sommers
to the most distinguished men of his acquaintance, whether remarkable
for birth or learning. John Sommers, becoming aware of his own
deficiency in education, resolved to return to the University, where
he made the Classics his more especial study, without neglecting his
legal pursuits, or giving up his visits to home. It speaks well for
the liberality both of father and son, that John was able and willing
to contribute five pounds (a large sum for a student in those days)
towards the reparation of the chapel; and in after years and better
circumstances he gave a larger donation for the same purpose, as a
proof of his attachment to his old College. We are told rather a
laughable story, which shows in what high repute he was held by his
father, who, in his frequent visits to London, used to leave his horse
at the George Inn at Acton, and in conversing with the landlord seldom
omitted a panegyric on ‘young John,’—so much so, that mine host’s
curiosity was inflamed, and he requested to be allowed some day to see
this prodigy. Mr. Sommers, in consequence, asked his son one
time to escort him on his way as far as Acton, and on entering the
inn, he took the landlord aside, and whispered, ‘I have brought him,
Cobbett, but you must not talk to him as you do to me, for he will not
suffer such fellows as you in his company.’
John Sommers, junior, was called to the bar in 1666, but did not
practise much till five years afterwards; and it was on the occasion
of the famous trial of the seven Bishops that he first made his mark.
Macaulay, in his eloquent account of the transaction, does honour to
the rising barrister. He gives an animated description of the progress
of these stout-hearted Prelates on their committal to the Tower, to
await their trial, of which we give a short extract: ‘The river was
alive with wherries when they came forth under a guard to embark, and
the emotion of the people broke through all restraint. Thousands fell
on their knees and prayed for the men who had emulated the Christian
courage of Ridley and Latimer; many dashed into the water up to their
waists, and cried on the holy fathers to bless them. All down the
stream, from Whitehall to London Bridge, the royal barge passed
between lines of boats, whence arose a shout of “God bless your
Lordships!”’
John Sommers had been chosen as junior counsel for the Bishops
on the trial. He had not yet had much opportunity of distinguishing
himself in public, ‘but his genius, industry, his great and various
accomplishments, were well known to a small circle of friends, and in
spite of his Whig opinions, his pertinent and lucid mode of arguing,
and the constant propriety of his demeanour, had already secured to
him the ear of the Court of King’s Bench, and it was said of him
beforehand that no man in Westminster Hall was so well qualified to
treat an historical and constitutional question.’
Even while endeavouring to keep within our prescribed limits, we feel
it is but simple justice to the future Chancellor to quote the great
historian’s own words: ‘Sommers rose last. He spoke little more
than five minutes, but every word was full of weighty matter, and when
he sat down his reputation as an orator and a constitutional lawyer
was established. The jury were long in coming to a decision, but when
they did return, and the foreman pronounced the verdict—“Not
guilty”—amid deathless silence, a tempest of rejoicing arose. Lord
Halifax threw up his hat, and ten thousand people who crowded the Hall
made the oaken roof crack with shouts, which, echoed by the throng
outside, resounded as far as Temple Bar, and were caught up and sent
back by all the boatmen on the river. The acquittal was mainly
attributed to Sommers’s speech, the effect of which upon the
jury was greatly heightened by the modesty and grace with which it was
delivered. He now, and ever, merited the praise that his pleading at
the bar was masculine and persuasive, free from everything that was
trivial and affected.’
Amid the solemn details of this most important trial, the comic
element cropped up in a speech of one of the jurymen, a Nonconformist,
who was brewer to the Court. The story goes that he complained
bitterly of the dilemma in which he was placed. ‘What am I to do?’ he
asked piteously; ‘if I say Not guilty, I shall brew no more for the
Court; if I say Guilty, I shall brew no more for anybody else.’ On the
same day that the Bishops were acquitted, a paper was drawn up,
entitled ‘The Association,’ censuring the Government of King James
II., and calling on William, Prince of Orange, to come over to
England, and deliver the country from Popery and despotism. The name
of Sommers did not appear, but by many it was believed that the
wording of the document emanated from him. It was signed by all his
political friends, and Lord Shrewsbury immediately afterwards went to
the Hague, laden with large supplies of money, to urge on the Prince
the advisability of his coming over without delay. William answered by
a ‘Declaration,’ announcing his readiness (as the husband of the
Princess Mary) to accede to the wishes of the nation, and promised to
proceed to England, ‘in order to have a free and lawful Parliament
assembled for the maintenance of liberty and the Protestant religion,
and by the decision of that Parliament he would abide.’
This document also was ascribed to Sommers, or at all events it
was said to have been supervised by him, for he had by this time, to
quote the words of Lord Sunderland, become the ‘very soul and spirit
of his party.’ No sooner had King James left the country than
Sommers was returned for his native city, having refused to sit
in the former Parliaments under the two last Kings.
This was in the so-called ‘Convention Parliament;’ and we give
Macaulay’s notice of the new Member’s first appearance in the House of
Commons. After enumerating the names of many political veterans, he
says: ‘But they were speedily thrown into shade by two young Whigs,
who, on this great day, took their seats for the first time, and soon
rose to the highest honours of the State, who weathered the fiercest
storms of faction together, and, having been long and widely renowned
as statesmen, as orators, and as munificent patrons of genius and
learning, died within a few months of each other. These were Charles
Montagu and John Sommers.’