FRANCIS NORTH.
We now come to one of the most contemptible of men--Francis North, known
by the title of Lord Keeper Guilford. He had not courage to commit great
crimes; but--selfish, cunning, sneaking, and unprincipled--his only
restraint was a regard to his own personal safety, and throughout his
whole life he sought and obtained advancement by the meanest arts.
Our hero, although he himself ascribed his success to his poverty, was of
noble birth. The founder of his family was Edward North, a serjeant at
law, chancellor of the Augmentations, and created a baron by writ in the
reign of Henry VIII. Dudley, the third baron, "having consumed the
greatest part of his estate in the gallantries of King James's court, or,
rather, his son Prince Henry's," retired and spent the rest of his days at
his seat in Cambridgeshire. When the civil war broke out, he sided with
the Parliament, and on rare occasions coming to London, he is said to have
sat on the trial of Laud, and to have voted for his death. Having reached
extreme old age, he died in the year 1666.
Dudley, his heir, who, at the age of sixty-three, stood on the steps of
the throne in the House of Lords as "the eldest son of a peer," was a
great traveller in his youth, and served with distinction in the Low
Countries under Sir Francis Vere. Yet he never would put on his hat, nor
sit down in the presence of his father, unless by the old peer's express
commands. Being returned to the Long Parliament for the county of
Cambridge, he strenuously opposed the Court, and signed the Solemn League
and Covenant; but, adhering to the Presbyterian party, he was turned out
by _Pride's purge_, and lived in retirement till the Restoration. He
married Anne, one of the daughters and coheirs of Sir Charles Montagu,
brother of the Earl of Manchester, by whom he had a very numerous family.
The subject of this memoir was their second son, and was born on the 22d
of October, 1637. Though he turned out such a zealous royalist and high
churchman, his early training began among republicans and fanatics. As
soon as he left the nursery, he was sent to a preparatory school at
Isleworth, the master of which was a rigid Presbyterian. His wife was a
furious Independent, and she ruled the household. "She used to instruct
her babes in the gift of praying by the Spirit, and all the scholars were
made to kneel by a bedside and pray; but this petit spark was too small
for that posture, and was set upon a bed to kneel, with his face to a
pillow."
His family becoming disgusted with the extravagance of the ruling powers,
and beginning to look to royalty as the only cure for the evils the nation
was suffering, he was removed from Isleworth, and put to a grammar school
at Bury St. Edmunds, under a cavalier master.
In 1653, he was admitted a fellow commoner at St. John's College,
Cambridge. He is said to have remained there two or three years, applying
diligently to the studies of the place; but he seems to have devoted much
of his time to the bass-viol, and he left the university without a degree.
He was then transferred to the Middle Temple. His father bought him a very
small set of chambers, in which he shut himself up, and dedicated himself
to the study of the law. He early learned and often repeated this saying
of the citizens to their apprentices, "Keep your shop, and your shop will
keep you." He did not frequent riding schools, or dancing schools, or
playhouses, or gaming houses--so dangerous to youth at the Inns of Court.
Though he could "make one at gammon, gleek, piquet, or even the
merry-main, he had ever a notable regard to his purse to keep that from
oversetting, like a vessel at sea that hath too much sail and too little
ballast."
While a student, he paid frequent and long visits to his grandfather, who
seems to have become a most singularly tyrannical and capricious old man.
Frank exerted himself to the utmost to comply with all his humors, being
allowed by him £20 a year. He was always industrious during these visits,
though he could not altogether avoid bowling, fishing, hunting, visiting,
and billiards; he spent the greater part of his time in reading and
commonplacing the law books brought down to him by the carrier.
While in town, he always dined in the hall--twelve at noon being the hour
of dinner--and supped there again at six; after which "case-putting" began
in the cloister walks; and he acquired the character of a great
"put-case." He kept a commonplace book, which seems to have been almost as
massive as Brooke's "Abridgment of the Law." He made himself well
acquainted with the Year Books, although not altogether so passionately
attached to them as Serjeant Maynard, who, when he was taking an airing in
his coach, always carried a volume of them along with him, which, he said,
amused him more than a comedy. He attended all famous legal arguments,
particularly those of Sir Heneage Finch, and taking notes in the morning
in law French, he employed himself at night in making out in English a
report of the cases he had heard.
By way of relaxation he would go to music meetings, or to hear Hugh Peters
preach. Nothing places him in such an amiable point of view as the delight
he is said to have taken, on rare occasions, in "a petit supper and a
bottle," when there really seems to have been a short oblivion of anxiety
about his rise in the world; but, to show his constitutional caution, his
brother Roger assures us that, "whenever he was a little overtaken, it was
a warning to him to take better care afterwards."
Long before he was called to the bar, "he undertook the practice of
court-keeping;" that is, he was appointed the steward of a great many
manors by his grandfather and other friends, and he did all the work in
person, writing all his court-rolls, and making out his copies with his
own hand. I am afraid he now began his violation of the rights and
liberties of his fellow-subjects by practising some petty extortions upon
the bumpkins who came before him. "His grandfather," says Roger,[83] with
inimitable simplicity, "had a venerable old steward, careful by nature and
faithful to his lord, employing all his thoughts and time to manage for
supply of his house and upholding his rents,--in short, one of a race of
human kind heretofore frequent, but now utterly extinct,--affectionate as
well as faithful, and diligent rather for love than self-interest. This
old gentleman, with his boot-hose and beard, used to accompany his young
master to his court-keeping, and _observing him reasoning the country
people out of their pence for essoines, &c._, he commended him, saying,
'If you will be contented, Master Frank, to be a great while getting a
little, you will be a little while getting a great deal;' wherein he was
no false prophet."
Having been the requisite time on the books of the society of the Middle
Temple, and performed all his moots, (upon which he bestowed great labor,)
Francis was called to the bar.
The allowance of sixty pounds a year which he had hitherto received from
his father was now reduced to fifty, in respect of the pence he collected
by court-keeping and the expected profits of his practice. He highly
disapproved of this reduction, and wrote many letters to his father to
remonstrate against it. At last he received an answer which he hoped was
favorable, but which contained only these words, "Frank, I suppose by this
time, having vented all your discontent, you are satisfied with what I
have done." The reduced allowance, however, was continued to him as long
as his father lived, who said "he would not discourage industry by
rewarding it when successful with loss."
The young barrister was now hard put to it. He took "a practising chamber"
on a first floor in Elm Court, "a dismal hole--dark next the court, and on
the other side a high building of the Inner Temple standing within five or
six yards of the windows." He was able to fill his shelves with all useful
books of the law from the produce of certain legacies and gifts collected
for him by his mother,[84] and he seems still to have had a small
pecuniary help from his grandfather. For some time he had great difficulty
in keeping free from debt; but he often declared that "if he had been sure
of a hundred pounds a year to live upon, he had never been a lawyer."
He is much praised by his brother, because it is said "he did not, (as
seems to have been common,) for the sake of pushing himself, begin by
bustling about town and obtruding himself upon attorneys, or bargaining
for business, but was contented if chance or a friend brought him a
motion, as he was standing at the bar taking notes." These, however, came
so rarely that he fell into a very dejected and hypochondriacal state.
Thinking himself dying, he carried a list of his ailments to a celebrated
physician, Dr. Beckenham of Bury, who laughed at him and sent him away,
prescribing fresh air and amusement.
He was in danger of utterly sinking in the slough of despond, when he was
suddenly taken by the hand by the great lawyer, Sir Jeffrey Palmer, who
was made attorney general on the restoration of Charles II., and who if he
had lived must have been lord chancellor. His son Edward, a very promising
young man, lately called to the bar, died about this time in the arms of
Francis North, who had been at college with him, and had shown him great
attention during his illness.
All the business destined for young Palmer now somehow found its way to
his surviving friend. His powerful protector, the attorney general,
rapidly brought him forward by employing him in government prosecutions,
and even when he himself was confined by illness, by giving him his briefs
in smaller matters to hold for him in court. North, we may be sure, was
most devotedly assiduous in making a suitable return for this kindness,
and in flattering his patron. Instead of the sentiments he had imbibed
from his family in his early days, he now loudly expressed those of an
ultra prerogative lawyer, exalting the power of the king both over the
church and the Parliament.
Being considered a rising man, his private friends and near relations came
to consult him. He was once asked if he took fees from them. "Yes," said
he; "they no doubt come to do me a kindness; and what kindness have I if I
refuse their money?"
Soon after he was called to the bar, he went the Norfolk circuit, where
his family interest lay; but here again he chiefly relied upon his grand
resource of flattering his superiors and accommodating himself to their
humors. "He was exceeding careful to keep fair with the cocks of the
circuit, and particularly with Serjeant Earl, who had almost a monopoly.
The Serjeant was a very covetous man, and when none would starve with him
in journeys, this young gentleman kept him company." They once rode
together from Cambridge to Norwich without drawing bit, to escape the
expense of baiting at an inn; and North would have been famished, if the
serjeant's man, knowing his master's habits, had not privately furnished
him with a cake. He asked the serjeant, out of compliment to his riches,
how he kept his accounts, "for you have," said he, "lands, securities, and
great comings in of all kinds." "Accounts, boy!" exclaimed the serjeant,
"I get as much as I can, and I spend as little as I can; and there is all
the account I keep." In these journeys the serjeant talked so agreeably of
law, and tricks, and purchases, and management, that North's hunger was
beguiled, and he thought only of the useful knowledge he was acquiring,
and the advantage to be derived from the countenance of a man so looked up
to.
Lord Chief Justice Hyde generally rode the Norfolk circuit, and so
completely had North taken the measure of his foot, that my lord called
him "cousin" in open court, "which was a declaration that he would take it
for a respect to himself to bring him causes." The biographer to whom we
are so much indebted lays it down that there is no harm in a judge letting
it be known "that a particular counsel will be easily heard before him,
and that his errors and lapses, when they happen, will not offend his
lordship or hurt the cause." The morality of the bar in those days will be
better understood by the following observations of simple Roger: "In
circuit practice there is need of an exquisite knowledge of the judge's
humor, as well as his learning and ability to try causes; and he, North,
was a wonderful artist at watching a judge's tendency, to make it serve
his turn, and yet never failed to pay the greatest regard and deference to
his opinion; for so they get credit; because _the judge for the most part
thinks that person the best lawyer that respects most his opinion_. I have
heard his lordship say, that sometimes he hath been forced to give up a
cause to the judge's opinion when he (the judge) was plainly in the wrong,
and when more contradiction had but made him more positive; and, besides,
that in so doing he himself had weakened his own credit with the judge,
thereby been less able to set him right when he was inclined to it. A good
opinion so gained often helps at another time to good purpose, and
sometimes to ill purpose; as I heard it credibly reported of Serjeant
Maynard that, being the leading counsel in a small feed cause, he would
give it up to the judge's mistake, and not contend to set him right, that
he might gain credit to mislead him in some other cause in which he was
well feed." These gentlemen of the long robe ought to have changed places
in court with the highwaymen they were retained to prosecute.[85]
There was no nonsense, however arrant, a silly judge might speak in
deciding for North, which he would not back. Thus a certain Mr. Justice
Archer, who seems to have been the laughing stock of the profession,
having, to the amusement of the juniors, "noted a difference between a
renunciation of an executorship upon record and _in pais_," North said,
"Ay, my lord; just so, my lord;" upon which his lordship became as fierce
as a lion, and would not hear the argument on the other side. But even
such a learned and sensible judge as Chief Justice Hale, North could win
by an affectation of modesty, diffidence, and profound veneration. Early
in his career, when he found it difficult to get to his place in a very
crowded court, Sir Matthew said from the bench, "Good people, make way for
this little gentleman; he will soon make way for himself."
His consultations were enormously long, and he gained vast applause at
them by his care and dexterity in probing the cause, starting objections,
inventing points, foretelling what would be said by the opposite counsel
and by the judge, and showing how the verdict might be lost or was to be
secured; but, to make security doubly sure, after mastering the record and
perusing the deeds to be given in evidence, he himself examined the
witnesses, and thus had an opportunity of presenting the facts properly to
their minds.
Need we wonder that from an humble beginner, rejoicing in a cause that
came to him, he soon became "cock of the circuit"--all who had trials
rejoicing to have him on their side?
I shall give one specimen of his conduct as a leader. He was counsel for
the defendant in an action tried before his friend Judge Archer, for not
setting out tithes--in which the treble value was to be recovered. Finding
that he had not a leg to stand upon, he manoeuvred to get his client off
with the single value; so he told his lordship that this was a cause to
try a right of a very intricate nature, which would require the reading a
long series of records and ancient writings, and that it ought not to be
treated as a penal action; wherefore, they should agree upon the single
value of the tithes, for which the verdict should be taken conditionally,
and then proceed fairly to try the merits. The judge insisted on this
course being adopted; and the other side, not to irritate him, acquiesced
in North's proposal. "Then did he open a long history of matters upon
record, of bulls, monasteries, orders, greater and lesser houses,
surrenders, patents, and a great deal more, _very proper if it had been
true_, while the counsel on the other side stared at him; and having done,
they bid him go to his evidence. He leaned back, as speaking to the
attorney, and then, '_My lord_,' said he, '_we are very unhappy in this
cause. The attorney tells me they forgot to examine their copies with the
originals at the Tower_;' and (so folding up his brief,) '_My lord_,' said
he, '_they must have the verdict, and we must come better prepared another
time_.' So, notwithstanding all the mooting the other side could make,
the judge held them to it, and they were choused of the treble value."
While North had such success on the circuit, he was equally flourishing in
Westminster Hall. By answering cases and preparing legal arguments for Sir
Jeffrey Palmer, and by flouting at parliamentary privilege, he was still
higher than ever in favor with that potential functionary. It happened
that in the year 1668, after the fall of the Earl of Clarendon, a writ of
error was brought in the House of Lords by Denzil Hollis, now Lord Hollis,
the only defendant surviving, upon the judgment of the Court of King's
Bench in the great case of _The King_ v. _Sir John Elliot, Denzil Hollis,
and Others_, decided in the fifth year of the reign of Charles I. This had
been a prosecution by the king against five members of the House of
Commons, for what had been done in the House on the last day of the
session, when Sir John Finch was held in the chair while certain
resolutions alleged to be seditious had been voted, and one of the
defendants had said "that the Council and judges had all conspired to
trample under foot the liberties of the subject." They had pleaded to the
jurisdiction of the Court of King's Bench, "that the supposed offences
were committed in Parliament, and ought not to be punished or inquired of
in this court, or elsewhere than in Parliament." But their plea had been
overruled, and they were all sentenced to heavy fine and imprisonment.
Although there had been resolutions of the House of Commons, on the
meeting of the Long Parliament, condemning this judgment, it still stood
on record, and Lord Hollis thought it was a duty he owed to his country,
before he died, to have it reversed.
Sir Jeffrey Palmer, as attorney general, pleaded _in nullo est erratum_;
but having returned his writ of summons to the House of Lords, and being
in the habit of sitting there on the woolsack, as one of the assessors to
the peers, he could not himself argue the case as counsel at the bar. The
king's serjeants declined to do so out of respect to the House of Commons.
Francis North, thinking this a most favorable opportunity to make himself
known at court as an anti-parliamentarian lawyer, volunteered to support
the judgment, and his services were accepted. He says himself "he was
satisfied he argued on the right side, and that on the record the law was
for the king." Accordingly, on the appointed day he boldly contended that,
as the information averred that the offences were committed _against the
peace_, as privilege of Parliament does not extend to offences in breach
of the peace, as they had not been punished in the Parliament in which
they were committed, and as no subsequent Parliament could take notice of
them, they were properly cognizable in a court of common law. The judgment
was reversed, but North's fortune was made. The Duke of York was pleased
to inquire "who that young gentleman was who had argued so well." Being
told that "he was the younger son of the Lord North, and, what was rare
among young lawyers at that time, of loyal principles," his royal highness
undertook to encourage him by getting the king to appoint him one of his
majesty's counsel. North was much gratified by receiving a message to this
effect, but was alarmed lest the Lord Keeper Bridgeman, who by his place
was to superintend preferments in the law, might conceive a grudge against
him for this interference with his patronage. The lord keeper acquitted
him of all blame, wished him joy, and with peculiar civility desired him
to take his place within the bar.
Things went on very smoothly with him now till the death of Sir Jeffrey
Palmer, when Sir Heneage Finch being promoted to be attorney general, the
solicitor's place was vacant. North, being the only king's counsel, and
having been long employed in crown business, had a fair claim to succeed,
and he was warmly supported by the lord keeper, as well as the new
attorney general, who was desirous of having him for a colleague; but the
Duke of Buckingham, at this time considered prime minister, preferred Sir
William Jones, who was North's chief competitor in the King's Bench, and
over whose head he had been put when he received his silk gown.[86]
To terminate the difference they were both set aside, and the office of
solicitor general was given to Sir Edward Turner, speaker of the House of
Commons, who held it for a twelvemonth, at the end of which he was made
chief baron of the Exchequer, in the room of Sir Matthew Hale, promoted to
be chief justice of the Common Pleas.
Buckingham's influence had greatly declined, and North was made solicitor
general without difficulty, Jones being solaced with a silk gown, and the
promise of further promotion on the next vacancy.
The Cabal was now in its full ascendancy; and as the leaders did not take
any inferior members of the government into their councils, and contrived
to prevent the meeting of Parliament for nearly two years, the new
solicitor had only to attend to his profession. Of course, he gave up the
circuit, and he set the example, generally followed for one hundred and
fifty years, of making the Court of Chancery his principal place of
practice, on being promoted to be a law officer of the crown; henceforth
going to other courts only in cases in which the crown was concerned, or
which were of very great magnitude. To keep up his law, when he could be
spared from the Court of Chancery, he stepped across the hall and seated
himself in the Court of King's Bench, "with his note book in his hand,
reporting as the students about the court did, and during the whole time
of his practice every Christmas he read over Littleton's Tenures." He had
hitherto practised conveyancing to a considerable extent; but he now
turned over this business to Siderfin the reporter, whom he appointed to
serve him in the capacity of "devil," as he himself had served Sir Jeffrey
Palmer. He was on very decent terms with Sir Heneage Finch, who had much
assisted his promotion; but he showed his characteristic cunning by an
expedient he adopted to get the largest share of the patent business.
Then, as now, all patents of dignity belong exclusively to the attorney
general; but the warrants for all other patents might be carried either to
the attorney or solicitor. North, with much dexterity, took into his
employment a clerk of Sir Jeffrey Palmer, who was reputed to have a
magazine of the best precedents, and who had great interest among the
attorneys, whereby many patents came to his chambers which otherwise would
have gone to the attorney general's.
But if he was eager to get money, he spent it freely. He was now appointed
"autumn reader" of the Middle Temple, and though the festivity was not
honored with the presence of royalty, like Finch's, in the Inner Temple,
it was conducted sumptuously, and cost him above a thousand pounds. He
took for his subject "The Statute of Fines," which he treated very
learnedly, and the arguers against him, the best lawyers of the society,
did their part very stoutly. On the "Grand Day" all the king's chief
ministers attended, and the profusion of the best provisions and wine led
to such debauchery, disorder, tumult, and waste, that this was the last
public reading in the Inns of Court, the lectures being discontinued and
the banqueting commuted for a fine.
I must not pass over his loves, although they were not very romantic or
chivalrous. He was desirous of being married, among other reasons, because
he was tired of dining in the hall and eating "a costelet and salad at
Chastelin's in the evening with a friend;" and he wished to enjoy the
pleasures of domestic life. One would have thought that the younger son of
a peer, of great reputation at the bar, solicitor general at thirty-one,
and rising to the highest offices in the law, might have had no difficulty
in matching to his mind; but he met with various rebuffs and
disappointments. Above all, he required wealth, which it seems was not
then easily to be obtained without the display of a long rent roll. He
first addressed the daughter of an old usurer in Gray's Inn, who speedily
put an end to the suit by asking him "what estate his father intended to
settle upon him for present maintenance, jointure, and provision for
children." He could not satisfy this requisition by an "abstract" of his
"profitable rood of ground in Westminster Hall." He then paid court to a
coquettish young widow; but after showing him some favor, she jilted him
for a jolly old knight of good estate. The next proposition was made by
him to a city alderman, the father of many daughters, who, it was given
out, were to have each a portion of six thousand pounds. North dined with
the alderman, and liked one of them very much; but coming to treat, the
fortune shrank to five thousand pounds. He immediately took his leave. The
alderman ran after him, and offered him to boot five hundred pounds on the
birth of the first child, but he would not bate a farthing of the six
thousand.
At last his mother found him a match to his mind in the Lady Frances Pope,
one of the three daughters and coheirs of the Earl of Down, who lived at
Wroxton, in Oxfordshire, with fortunes of fourteen thousand pounds apiece.
We are surprised to find that, with all his circuit and Westminster Hall
earnings, he was obliged to borrow six hundred pounds from a friend before
he could compass six thousand pounds to be settled upon her. He then
ventured down with grand equipage and attendance, and in less than a
fortnight obtained the young lady's consent, and the writings being
sealed, the lovers were happily married. The feasting and jollities in the
country lasted three weeks, and Mr. Solicitor, heartily tired of them, was
very impatient to get back to his briefs. However, he seems always to have
treated his wife, while she lived, with all due tenderness. He took a
house in Chancery Lane, near Serjeants' Inn, and acquired huge glory by
constructing a drain for the use of the neighborhood--a refinement never
before heard of in that quarter. This was the happiest period of his life.
In the beginning of 1673, the meeting of Parliament could be deferred no
longer, and it was considered necessary that the solicitor general should
have a seat in the House of Commons.
He remained member for Lynn till he was made chief justice of the Common
Pleas, in January, 1675; but I can hardly find any trace of his ever
having spoken in the House of Commons.
Shaftesbury was at last turned out, the great seal was given to Sir
Heneage Finch, and North became attorney general. He had for his colleague
as solicitor his old rival, Sir William Jones, who seems to have been a
considerable man, who afterwards had the virtue voluntarily to give up
office that he might join the popular party, and who, if not cut off by an
early death, would probably have acted the part of Lord Somers at the
Revolution, and left a great name in history.
Parliament met in a few weeks after North's promotion. We are told that
"little or nothing of the king's business in the House of Commons leaned
upon him, because Mr. Secretary Coventry was there, who managed for the
court." North once or twice spoke a few words, "in resolving the fallacies
of the country party," but did not venture beyond an opinion upon a point
of law which incidentally arose.
"He could not attend the house constantly, but took the liberty of
pursuing his practice in Westminster Hall."[87] There he was easily the
first; and the quantity of business which he got through in Chancery ("his
home") and the other courts where he went _special_ seems to have been
enormous. His mode of preparation was (like Lord Erskine's) to have a
consultation in the evening before reading his brief, when "he was
informed of the history of the cause, and where the pinch was". Next
morning at four he was called by a trusty boy, who never failed, winter or
summer, to come into his chamber at that hour,[88] and by the sitting of
the court he had gone through his brief, and was ready to do ample justice
to his clients.
Fees now flowed in upon him so fast that he hardly knew how to dispose of
them. He seems to have taken them from his clients with his own hand. At
one time he had had a fancy, for his health, to wear a sort of skullcap.
He now routed out three of these, which he placed on the table before him,
and into these he distributed the cash as it was paid to him. "One had the
gold, another the crowns and half crowns, and another the smaller money."
When these vessels were full, they were committed to his brother Roger,
who told out the pieces and put them into bags, which he carried to
Child's, the goldsmith, at Temple Bar.[89]
But still Mr. Attorney was dissatisfied with his position. He could not
but be mortified by his insignificance in the House of Commons. The
country party there was rapidly gaining strength, and although it was not
then usual for the crown to turn out its law officers on a change of
ministers, he began to be very much frightened by threats of impeachment
uttered against all who were instrumental in executing the measures of the
government. Shaftesbury was in furious opposition. While only at the head
of a small minority in the House of Lords, the House of Commons was more
and more under his influence. North was exceedingly timid, always
conjuring up imaginary dangers, and exaggerating such as he had to
encounter. He now exceedingly longed to lay his head on "the cushion of
the Common Pleas," instead of running the risk of its being laid on the
block on Tower Hill.
Vaughan, the chief justice of that court, died, and North's wishes were
accomplished, notwithstanding some intrigues to elevate Sir William Jones
or Sir William Montagu. When it came to the pinch, North was rather
shocked to think of the sacrifice of profit which he was making, "for the
attorney's place was (with his practice) near seven thousand pounds per
annum, and the cushion of the Common Pleas not above four thousand. But
accepting, he accounted himself enfranchised from the court brigues and
attendances at the price of the difference."
North held the office of chief justice of the Common Pleas nearly eight
years, which may be divided into two periods--1st. From his appointment
till the formation of the Council of Thirty, on the recommendation of Sir
William Temple, in the year 1679; 2dly. From thence till he received the
great seal, in the end of the year 1682. During the former he mixed little
in politics, and devoting himself to his juridical duties, he discharged
them creditably.
At this time, and for long after, the emoluments of the judges in
Westminster Hall depended chiefly upon fees, and there was a great
competition between the different courts for business. The King's Bench,
originally instituted for criminal proceedings, had, by a dexterous use of
their writ of "_latitat_," tricked the Common Pleas of almost all civil
actions; and when the new chief justice took his seat, he found his court
a desert. There was hardly sufficient business to countenance his coming
every day in term to Westminster Hall, while the serjeants and officers
were repining and starving. But he was soon up with the King's Bench, by
a new and more dexterous use of the "_capias_," the ancient writ of that
court--applying it to all personal actions.
At this time, a judge, when appointed, selected a circuit, to which he
steadily adhered, till another, which he preferred, became vacant. Chief
Justice North for several years "rode the western;" and in his charges to
juries, as well as in his conversation with the country gentlemen, he
strongly inculcated the most slavish church-and-king doctrines, insomuch
that the Cavaliers called him "_Deliciæ Occidentis_," or "The Darling of
the West."
The chief justice afterwards went the northern circuit, attended by his
brother Roger, who gives a most entertaining account of his travels, and
who seems to have thought the natives of Northumberland and Cumberland as
distant, as little known, and as barbarous, as we should now think the
Esquimaux or the aborigines of New Zealand.
Till the Popish plot broke out, Chief Justice North had no political
trials before him; and the only cases which gave him much anxiety were
charges of witchcraft. He does not appear, like Chief Justice Hale, to
have been a believer in the black art; but, with his characteristic
timidity, he was afraid to combat the popular prejudice, lest the
countrymen should cry, "This judge hath no religion; he doth not believe
witches." Therefore he avoided trying witches himself as much as possible,
and turned them over to his brother judge, Mr. Justice Raymond, whom he
allowed to hang them. He was once forced to try a wizard; but the fraud of
a young girl, whom the prisoner was supposed to have enchanted and made to
spit pins, was so clearly exposed by the witnesses, that the chief
justice had the boldness to direct an acquittal.
The Popish plot he treated as he did witchcraft. He disbelieved it from
the beginning, but was afraid openly to express a doubt of its reality. He
thought it might be exposed by the press, and he got a man to publish an
anonymous pamphlet against it, to which he contributed; but sitting along
with Chief Justice Scroggs, who presided at the trial of those charged
with being implicated in it, he never attempted to restrain this
"butcher's son and butcher" from slaughtering the victims.
So on the trial of Lord Stafford, though he privately affected severely to
condemn the proceeding, he would not venture to save Lord Nottingham,[90]
the high steward, from the disgrace of assisting in that murder; and he
dryly gave his own opinion that two witnesses were not necessary to each
overt act of treason.
We have still more flagrant proof of his baseness on the trial of Reading,
prosecuted by order of the House of Commons for trying to suppress
evidence of the plot. North himself now presided, and having procured a
conviction, in sentencing the defendant to fine, imprisonment, and
pillory, he said, "I will tell you your offence is so great, and hath such
a relation to that which the whole nation is concerned in, because it was
an attempt to baffle the evidence of that conspiracy, which, if it had not
been, by the mercy of God, detected, God knows what might have befallen
us all by this time."
We now come to present North on the political stage, where he continued to
act a very conspicuous and disreputable part down to the time of his
death. In the year 1679, when the king adopted his new plan of government
by a Council of Thirty, of which Shaftesbury was made president, and into
which Lord Russell and several of the popular leaders were introduced, it
was thought fit to balance them by some determined ultra-royalists; and
the lord chief justice of the Common Pleas, who had acquired himself the
reputation of being the most eminent of that class, was selected, although
he had not hitherto been a privy councillor. At first he seldom openly
gave any opinion in council, but he secretly engaged in the intrigues
which ended in the abrupt prorogation and dissolution of the Parliament,
in the dismissal of Shaftesbury, and the resignation of Lord Russell and
the whigs. The scheme of government was then altered, and a cabinet,
consisting of a small number of privy councillors, was formed, North being
one of them. To his opinion on legal and constitutional questions the
government was now disposed to show more respect than to that of Lord
Chancellor Nottingham.
There being much talk against the court in the London coffee houses, it
was wished to suppress them by proclamation; and our chief justice, being
consulted on the subject, gave this response--that "though retailing of
coffee may, under certain circumstances, be an innocent trade, yet as it
is used at present in the nature of a common assembly to discourse of
matters of state, news, and great persons, it becomes unlawful; and as the
coffee houses are nurseries of idleness and pragmaticalness, and hinder
the consumption of our native provisions, they may be treated as common
nuisances." Accordingly, a proclamation was issued for shutting up all
coffee houses, and forbidding the sale of coffee in the metropolis; but
this caused such a general murmur, not only among politicians and idlers,
but among the industrious classes connected with foreign and colonial
trade, that it was speedily recalled.
The meeting of the new Parliament summoned in the end of 1679 having been
repeatedly postponed, there arose the opposite factions of "Petitioners"
and "Abhorrers"--the former _petitioning_ the king that Parliament might
be speedily assembled for the redress of grievances, and the latter, in
their addresses to the king, expressing their _abhorrence_ of such
seditious sentiments. The "Petitioners," however, were much more numerous
and active, and a council was called to consider how their proceedings
might be stopped or punished. Our chief justice recommended a
proclamation, which the king approved of, and ordered the attorney
general, Sir Creswell Levinz, to draw. Mr. Attorney, alarmed by
considering how he might be questioned for such an act on the meeting of
Parliament, said, "I do not well understand what my lord chief justice
means, and I humbly pray of your majesty that his lordship may himself
draw the proclamation." _King._--"My lord, I think then you must draw this
proclamation." _Chief Justice._--"Sire, it is the office of your majesty's
attorney general to prepare all royal proclamations, and it is not proper
for any one else to do it. I beg that your majesty's affairs may go on in
their due course; but if in this matter Mr. Attorney doubts any thing, and
will give himself the trouble to call upon me, I will give him the best
assistance I can."
Sir Creswell, having written on a sheet of paper the formal commencement
and conclusion of a royal proclamation, carried it to the chief justice,
who filled up the blank with a recital that, "for spurious ends and
purposes relating to the public, persons were going about to collect and
procure the subscriptions of multitudes of his majesty's subjects to
petitions to his majesty; which proceedings were contrary to the known
laws of this realm, and ought not to go unpunished;" and a mandate to all
his majesty's loving subjects, of what rank or degree soever, "that they
presume not to agitate or promote any such subscriptions, nor in any wise
join in any petition in that manner to be preferred to his majesty, upon
pain of the utmost rigor of the law, and that all magistrates and other
officers should take effectual care that all such offenders against the
laws be prosecuted and punished according to their demerits."[91]
Parliament at last met, and strong measures were taken against the
"Abhorrers," who had obstructed the right of petitioning. An inquiry was
instituted respecting the proclamation. Sir Creswell Levinz was placed at
the bar, and asked by whose advice or assistance he had prepared it. He
several times refused to answer; but being hard pressed, and afraid of
commitment to the Tower, he named the Lord Chief Justice North, against
whom there had been a strong suspicion, but no proof. A hot debate arose,
which ended in the resolution, "That the evidence this day given to this
house against Sir Francis North, chief justice of the Common Pleas, is
sufficient ground for this house to proceed upon an impeachment against
him for high crimes and misdemeanors."
He was a good deal alarmed by the vote of impeachment,[92] but it raised
him still higher in favor at court. Next day, presiding in the House of
Lords as speaker, in the absence of the lord chancellor, and seeming very
much dejected, King Charles (according to his manner) "came and clapped
himself down close by him on the woolsack, and 'My lord,' said he, 'be of
good comfort; I will never forsake my friends, as my father did.'" His
majesty, without waiting for a reply, then walked off to another part of
the house.
A committee was appointed to draw up the articles of impeachment against
the chief justice; but before they made any report, this Parliament too
was dissolved.
Soon after the summoning of Charles's last Parliament, North was obliged
to set off upon the spring circuit; and notwithstanding his best efforts
to finish the business rapidly, he could not arrive at Oxford till the two
houses had assembled.
He was one of the small junto to whom was intrusted the secret of
immediate dissolution. The moment the deed was done, he set off for
London, pretending to be afraid of what he called "the positive armament
against the king, which manifestly showed itself at Oxford."
As soon as the Cabinet met at Whitehall, North advised the issuing of a
Declaration to justify the dissolution of the three last Parliaments which
had met respectively at Westminster and Oxford, and himself drew an
elaborate one, which was adopted. This state paper certainly puts the
popular party in the wrong upon the "exclusion question" and other matters
with considerable dexterity, and it was supposed to have contributed
materially to the reaction going on in favor of the government.
So far his conduct was legitimate, and in the fair exercise of his
functions as a privy councillor; but I am sorry to say that he now sullied
his ermine by a flagrant disregard of his duties as a judge. The grand
jury for the city of London having very properly thrown out the bill of
indictment against Stephen College, "the Protestant joiner," it was
resolved to try him at Oxford; and for this purpose a special commission
was issued, at the head of which was placed Lord Chief Justice North.
Burnet says mildly, "North's behavior in that whole matter was such that,
probably, if he had lived to see an impeaching Parliament, he might have
felt the ill effects of it." After perusing the trial, I must say that his
misconduct upon it was most atrocious. The prisoner, being a violent enemy
to Popery, had attended the city members to Oxford as one of their guard,
with "No Popery" flags and cockades, using strong language against the
Papists and their supporters, but without any thought of using force. Yet
the chief justice was determined that he should be found guilty of
compassing and imagining the king's death, and levying war against him in
his realm.[93] College's papers, which he was to use in his defence, were
forcibly taken from him, on the ground that they had been written by some
other persons, who gave him hints what he was to say. They were in reality
prepared by his legal advisers, Mr. Aaron Smith and Mr. West. The
prisoner was checked and browbeaten as often as he put a question or made
an observation. His defence was much more able than could have been
expected from a person in his station of life, but of course he was
convicted. The chief justice, in passing sentence, observed, "Look you,
Mr. College; because you say you are innocent, it is necessary for me to
say something in vindication of the verdict, which I think the court were
all well satisfied with. I thought it was a case that, as you made your
own defence, small proof would serve the turn to make any one believe you
guilty. For, as you defend yourself by pretending to be a Protestant, I
did wonder, I must confess, when you called so many witnesses to your
religion and reputation, that none of them gave an account that they saw
you receive the sacrament within these many years, or any of them
particularly had seen you at church in many years, or what kind of
Protestant you were. But crying aloud against the Papists, it was proved
here who you called Papists. You had the boldness to say the king was a
Papist, the bishops were Papists, and the church of England were Papists.
If these be the Papists you cry out against, what kind of Protestant you
are I know not--I am sure you can be no good one. How it came into your
head, that were but a private man, to go to guard the Parliament, I much
wonder. Suppose all men of your condition should have gone to have guarded
the Parliament, what an assembly had there been! And though you say you
are no man of quality, nor likely to do any thing upon the king's guards
or the king's person, yet if all your quality had gone upon the same
design, what ill consequences might have followed! We see what has been
done by Massaniello, a mean man, in another country--what by Wat Tyler and
Jack Straw in this kingdom." College asked him to fix the day of his
death, but he answered that that depended on the king; adding, in a tone
of great humanity, "that he should have due notice of it to prepare, by
repenting of his crimes." College's innocence was so manifest, that even
Hume, eager to palliate all the atrocities of this reign, says, "that his
whole conduct and demeanor prove him to have been governed by an honest
but indiscreet zeal for his country and his religion." On the 31st of
August, 1681, the sentence, with all its savage barbarities, was carried
into execution. "Sir Francis North," observes Roger Coke, "was a man cut
out, to all intents and purposes, for such a work."
He was next called upon to assist at the immolation of a nobler victim,
who escaped from the horns of the altar. Shaftesbury had been for some
time very careful never to open his mouth on politics out of the city of
London and county of Middlesex, and during the Oxford Parliament had
touched on no public topic except in the House of Lords. It was resolved
at all hazards to bring him to trial; but this could only be done by an
indictment to be found at the Old Bailey. There did North attend when the
indictment was to be preferred, and, resolutely assist Lord Chief Justice
Pemberton in perverting the law,[94] by examining the witnesses in open
court, and by trying to intimidate and mislead the grand jury; but he was
punished by being present at the shout, which lasted an hour, when
"_Ignoramus_" was returned.
He next zealously lent himself to the scheme of the court for upsetting
the municipal privileges of the city of London, and of obtaining sheriffs
for London and Middlesex who would return juries at the will of the
government. The lord mayor having been gained over, and the stratagem
devised of creating a sheriff by the lord mayor drinking to him, instead
of by the election of his fellow-citizens, the difficulty was to find any
freeman of fair character who would incur all the odium and risk of being
so introduced to the shrievalty. It so happened that at that time there
returned to England a brother of the chief justice, Mr. Dudley, afterwards
Sir Dudley North, who was free of the city from having been apprenticed
there to a merchant, and who had amassed considerable wealth by a long
residence in Turkey. It being suggested at court that this was the very
man for their sheriff; "the king very much approved of the person, but was
very dubious whether the chief justice, with his much caution and wisdom,
would advise his brother to stand in a litigious post. But yet he resolved
to try; and one day he spoke to Sir Francis with a world of tenderness,
and desired to know if it would be too much to ask his brother Dudley to
hold sheriff on my lord mayor's drinking." The wily chief justice
immediately saw the advantage this proposal might bring to the whole
family, and returned a favorable answer. "For matter of title," says
Roger, "he thought there was more squeak than wool; for whatever people
thought was at the bottom, if a citizen be called upon an office by the
government of the city, and obeys, where is the crime? But then such a
terrible fear was artificially raised up in the city as if this service
was the greatest hazard in the world." Sir Francis gently broke the matter
to his brother, saying "that there was an opportunity which preferred
itself whereby he might make a fortune if he wanted it, and much enlarge
what he had, besides great reputation to be gained, which would make him
all the days of his life very considerable, laying open the case of the
lord mayor's right very clear and plain, against which in common sense
there was no reply." Dudley, however, made many objections, and talked of
the terrible expense to which he should be exposed. The chief justice
urged that if he served, the obligation was so transcendent, that there
could be no employment by commission from the crown which would not fall
to his share, "and as for the charge," said he, "here, brother, take a
thousand pounds to help make good your account, and if you never have an
opportunity by pensions or employments to reimburse you and me, I will
lose my share; else I shall be content to receive this thousand pounds out
of one half of your pensions when they come in, and otherwise not at all."
The merchant yielded; and under this pure bargain, proposed by the judge
before whom the validity of the appointment might come to be decided, when
his health was given by the lord mayor as sheriff of London and Middlesex,
he agreed to accept the office.
But the old sheriffs insisted on holding a common hall for the election of
their successors, according to ancient usage, on Midsummer day; when Lord
Chief Justice North had the extreme meanness, at the king's request, to go
into the city and take post in a house near Guildhall, belonging to Sir
George Jeffreys, "who had no small share in the conduct of this affair, to
the end that if any incident required immediate advice, or if the spirits
of the lord mayor should droop, which in outward appearance were but
faint, there might be a ready recourse." It is true the opposite faction
had the Lord Grey de Werke and other leaders from the west end of the
town, to advise and countenance them; but this could be no excuse for a
judge so degrading himself. The poll going for the popular candidates, the
lord mayor, by Chief Justice North's advice, under pretence of a riot,
attempted to adjourn the election; but the sheriffs required that the
polling should continue, and declared Papillon and Dubois duly elected.
This causing great consternation at Whitehall, a council was called, to
which the lord mayor and aldermen were summoned. Lord Chief Justice North,
by the king's command, addressed them, saying, "that the proceedings of
the sheriffs at the common hall after the adjournment were not only
utterly null and void, but the persons were guilty of an audacious riot
and contempt of lawful authority, for which by due course of law they
would be severely punished; but in the mean time it was the lord mayor's
duty and his majesty's pleasure that they should go back to the city and
summon the common hall, and make election of sheriffs for the year
ensuing." The lord mayor, having been told that the courtiers would
bamboozle him and leave him in the lurch, when North had concluded, said,
"My lord, will your lordship be pleased to give me this under your hand?"
The king and all the councillors were much tickled to see the wily chief
justice thus nailed, "expecting some turn of wit to fetch himself off, and
thinking to have sport in seeing how woodenly he would excuse himself."
But to their utter astonishment, for once in his life Francis North was
bold and straightforward, and cheating them all, he answered, without any
hesitation, "Yes, and you shall have it presently." Then seizing a pen, he
wrote, "I am of opinion that it is in the lord mayor's power to call,
adjourn, and dissolve the common hall at his pleasure, and that all acts
done there, as of the common hall, during such adjournment, are mere
nullities, and have no legal effect." This he signed and handed to the
lord mayor, who then promised obedience.
Accordingly, another common hall was called, at which it was pretended
that Sir Dudley North and Rich were elected, and they were actually
installed in the office of sheriff. By the contrivance of Lord Chief
Justice North, the office of lord mayor for the ensuing year was likewise
filled by a thorough passive-obedience tool of the court. Gould, the
liberal candidate, had a majority of legal votes on the poll, but under a
pretended scrutiny, Pritchard was declared duly elected, and Sir John
More, the renegade mayor, willingly transferred to him the insignia of
chief magistrate, so that the king had now the city authorities completely
at his devotion. Shaftesbury fled to Holland; and it was for the court to
determine when the blow should be struck against the popular leaders who
remained.
Such were the services of Lord Chief Justice North, which all plainly saw
would ere long be rewarded by higher promotion. The health of Lord
Nottingham, the chancellor, was rapidly declining, and the court had
already designated his successor. Lord Craven, famous for wishing to
appear intimate with rising men, in the circle at Whitehall, now seized
Lord Chief Justice North by the arm and whispered in his ear; and the
foreign ambassadors so distinctly saw the shadow of the coming event that
they treated him with as great respect as if he had been prime minister,
"and when any of them looked towards him and thought he perceived it, they
very formally bowed."
We are told that in many things North acted as "co-chancellor" with
Nottingham; and for the first time the office of chancellor seems to have
been like that of sheriff of Middlesex, one in its nature, but filled by
two officers of equal authority. It is said that "the _aspirant_ dealt
with all imaginable kindness and candor to the _declinant_, and that never
were predecessor and successor such cordial friends to each other, and in
every respect mutually assistant, as those two were."
While the lord chancellor was languishing, the chief justice being at
Windsor, the king plainly intimated to him that when the fatal event,
which must be shortly looked for, had taken place, the great seal would be
put into his hands. He modestly represented himself to his majesty as
unfit for the place, and affected by all his art and skill to decline it.
In truth, he really wished to convey to the king's mind the impression
that he did not desire it, although he had been working so foully for
it--as he knew it would be pressed upon him, there being no competitor so
knowing and so pliant, and he had an important stipulation to make for a
pension before he would accept it. When he came back to London, and
confidentially mentioned what had passed between him and the king, he
pretended to be annoyed, and said "that if the seal were offered to him he
was determined to refuse it;" but it is quite clear that he was highly
gratified to see himself so near the great object of his ambition, and
that his only anxiety now was, that he might drive a good bargain when he
should consent to give up "the cushion of the Common Pleas."
Lord Nottingham having died about four o'clock in the afternoon of Monday,
the 18th of December, 1682, the great seal was carried next morning from
his house, in Great Queen Street, to the king at Windsor. The following
day his majesty brought it with him to Whitehall, and in the evening sent
for the lord chief justice of the Common Pleas, to offer it to him. When
North arrived, he found Lord Rochester, the treasurer, and several other
ministers, closeted with Charles. As yet there was no distinction between
the funds to be applied to the king's private expenses and to the public
service--the exchequer being now very empty, and the resolution being
taken never more to summon a Parliament for supplies--it was considered an
object that the keeper of the great seal should be contented with the fees
of his office, without any allowance or pension from the crown. Charles
himself was careless about such matters, but the treasurer had inculcated
upon him the importance of this piece of economy. As soon as North
entered, his majesty offered him the seal, and the ministers began to
congratulate the new lord keeper; but, with many acknowledgments for his
majesty's gracious intentions, he begged leave to suggest the necessity,
for his majesty's honor, that a pension[95] should be assigned to him, as
it had been to his predecessor, for otherwise the dignity of this high
office could not be supported. Rochester interposed, pointing out the
necessity, in times like these, for all his majesty's servants to be ready
to make some sacrifices; that the emoluments of the great seal were
considerable; and that it would be more becoming to trust to his majesty's
bounty than to seek to drive a hard bargain with him. But Sir George
Jeffreys being yet only a bustling city officer, who could not with any
decency have been put at the head of the law; the attorney and solicitor
general not being considered men of mark or likelihood; Sir Harbottle
Grimston, the master of the rolls, being at death's door, and no other
common law judge besides himself being produceable, the little gentleman
was firm, and positively declared that he would not touch the great seal
without a pension. After much haggling, a compromise took place, by which
he was to have two thousand pounds a year instead of the four thousand
pounds a year assigned to his predecessor. The king then lifted up the
purse containing the seal, and putting it into his hand, said, "Here, my
lord, take it; you will find it heavy." "Thus," says Roger North, "his
majesty acted the _prophet_ as well as the _king_; for, shortly before his
lordship's death, he declared that, _since he had the seal, he had not
enjoyed one easy and contented minute_."
When the new lord keeper came home at night from Whitehall to his house in
Chancery Lane, bringing the great seal with him, and attended by the
officers of the Court of Chancery, instead of appearing much gratified, as
was expected by his brother and his friends, who were waiting to welcome
him, he was in a great rage--disappointed that he had not been able to
make a better bargain, and, perhaps, a little mortified that he had only
the title of "lord keeper" instead of the more sounding one of "lord
chancellor." Recriminating on those with whom he had been so keenly acting
the chapman, he exclaimed, "To be haggled with about a pension, as at the
purchase of a horse or an ox! After I had declared that I would not accept
without a pension, to think I was so frivolous as to insist and desist all
in a moment! As if I were to be wheedled and charmed by their
insignificant tropes! To think me worthy of so great a trust, and withal
so little and mean as to endure such usage! It is disobliging,
inconsistent, and insufferable. What have I done that may give them cause
to think of me so poor a spirit as to be thus trifled with?" It might
have been answered that, though the king and the courtiers made use of him
for their own ends, they had seen his actions, understood his character,
and had no great respect for him. Till Jeffreys was a little further
advanced, they could not run the risk of breaking with him; but then he
was subjected to all sorts of mortifications and insults.
On the first day of the following Hilary term he took his place in the
Court of Chancery. By this time he was in possession of his predecessor's
house in Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and he had a grand
procession from thence to Westminster Hall, attended by the Duke of
Ormond, the Earls of Craven and Rochester, the great officers of state,
and the judges. He took the oaths, the master of the rolls holding the
book. He does not appear to have delivered any inaugural address. The
attendant lords staid and heard a motion or two, and then departed,
leaving the lord keeper in court.
They might have been well amused if they had remained. For the crooked
purposes of the government, with a view to the disfranchising of the city
of London by the _quo warranto_ defending against it, Pemberton[96] was
this day to be removed from being chief justice of the King's Bench to be
chief justice of the Common Pleas, and Edmund Saunders was to be at once
raised from wearing a stuff gown at the bar to be chief justice of the
King's Bench. This keen but unscrupulous lawyer was previously to be made
a serjeant, that he might be qualified to be a judge, and, coming into the
Court of Chancery, he presented the lord keeper with a ring for himself,
and another for the king, inscribed with the courtly motto, "_Principi sic
placuit_." The lord keeper then accompanied him into court where he was to
preside, called him to the bench, and made him a speech on the duties of
his office. The ceremonies of the day were concluded by his lordship
afterwards going to his old court, the Common Pleas, and there swearing in
Pemberton as his successor, whom he congratulated upon "the ease with
dignity" which he was now to enjoy.
Parasites and preferment-hunters crowded the levee of the new lord keeper.
He was immediately waited upon by the courtly Evelyn, who discovered in
him a thousand good qualities.[97]
In the midst of these blandishments he applied himself with laudable
diligence to the discharge of his judicial duties. He declared that he was
shocked by many abuses in the Court of Chancery, and he found fault with
the manner in which his two predecessors, Bridgeman and Nottingham, had
allowed the practice of the court to lead to delay and expense.
North's conduct as a law reformer was extremely characteristic. He talked
much of issuing a new set of "rules and orders" to remedy all abuses, but
he was afraid "that it would give so great alarm to the bar and officers,
with the solicitors, as would make them confederate and demur, and, by
making a tumult and disturbance, endeavor to hinder the doing any thing
of that kind which they would apprehend to be very prejudicial to their
interests."[98] Then, when he wished to simplify the practice and to speed
causes to a hearing and final decree, he considered that he was not only
to regard the suitors, but that "there was a justice due as well to the
crown, which had advantage growing by the disposition of places, profits,
by process of all sorts, as also the judges and their servants, and
counsel at the bar, and solicitors, who were all in possession of their
advantages, and by public encouragement to spend their youth to make them
fit for them, and had no other means generally to provide for themselves
and their families, and had a right to their reasonable profits, if not
strictly by law, yet through long connivance."
I think we must say that his alleged merit as a chancery reformer consists
chiefly in the profession of good intentions; that he allowed the practice
of the court to remain pretty much as he found it; and that if he saw and
approved what was right, he followed what was wrong--aggravating his
errors by disregarding the strong dictates of his conscience.
Nevertheless, he applied himself very assiduously to the business of his
court, which, from his experience at the bar, and from his having often
sat for his predecessor, was quite familiar to him; and he seems to have
disposed of it satisfactorily. He was not led into temptation by having to
decide in equity any political case; and no serious charge was preferred
against him of bribery or undue influence. Till the meeting of Parliament
in the reign of James, and the failure of his health, he prevented the
accumulation of arrears; and, upon the whole, as an Equity judge, he is to
be praised rather than censured.
I wish as much could be said of his political conduct while he held the
great seal. He may have _wished_ "to bring the king to rule wholly by law,
and to do nothing which, by any reasonable construction, might argue the
contrary;" but for this purpose he would make feeble efforts, and no
sacrifice; and all the measures of the court, however profligate, when
resolved upon, he strenuously assisted in carrying into execution.
The ministers who now bore sway, and who were on several points opposed to
each other, were Halifax, Sunderland, and Rochester. The Duke of York,
restored to the office of lord high admiral and to the Privy Council, in
direct violation of the "test act," had so much influence, that it was
said that "to spite those who wished to prevent him from reigning at the
king's death, he was permitted to reign during the king's life." The
Duchess of Portsmouth was likewise at the head of a party at court,
although Mrs. Gwin, her Protestant rival, did not interfere with politics.
With none of these would the lord keeper combine. His policy was to study
the peculiar humors of the king--to do whatever would be most agreeable
personally to him--to pass for "the king's friend"--and to be "_solus cum
solo_."
Charles, although aware of his cunning and his selfishness, was well
pleased with the slavish doctrines he laid down, and with the devoted zeal
he expressed for the royal prerogative; and till Jeffrey's superior vigor,
dexterity, and power of pleasing gained the ascendancy, usually treated
him with decent consideration.
He never would give any opinion on foreign affairs, nor attend a committee
of council summoned specially to consider them, professing himself, for
want of a fit education and study, incompetent to judge at all of these
matters, and declaring, like a true courtier, that "King Charles II.
understood foreign affairs better than all his councils and councillors
put together." But he regularly attended all other cabinet meetings, and
when there was any business of a judicial nature to be done at the
council-table, he always presided there, "the lord president not having
the art of examining into and developing cases of intricacy."
The first of these in which he had to display his powers, was the
disfranchisement of the city of London. Saunders, counsel in the _quo
warranto_, having been appointed chief justice, to decide in favor of the
sufficiency of the pleadings which he himself had drawn, the opinion of
the Court of King's Bench had been pronounced for the crown, "that all the
city charters were forfeited." Formal judgment was not yet entered on the
record, to give an opportunity to the mayor, aldermen and citizens, to
make their submission and to accept terms which might henceforth
annihilate their privileges and make them the slaves of the government.
They accordingly did prepare a petition to the king, imploring his
princely compassion and grace, which they presented to him at a council
held at Windsor on the 18th of June, 1683. The petition being read, they
were ordered to withdraw, and when they were again called in, the lord
keeper thus addressed them, disclosing somewhat indiscreetly the real
motives for the _quo warranto_: "My lord mayor, I am by the king's command
to tell you that he hath considered the humble petition of the city of
London, where so many of the present magistrates and other eminent
citizens are of undoubted loyalty and affection to his service; that for
their sakes his majesty will show the city all the favor they can
reasonably desire. It was very long before his majesty took resolutions
to question their charter; it was not the seditious discourses of the
coffee-houses, the treasonable pamphlets and libels daily published and
dispersed thence into all parts of the kingdom, the outrageous tumults in
the streets, nor the affronts to his courts of justice, could provoke him
to it. His majesty had patience until disorders were grown to that height,
that nothing less seemed to be designed than a ruin to the government both
of church and state." After pointing out the mischief of having factious
magistrates, he adds: "It was high time to put a stop to this growing
evil. This made it necessary for his majesty to inquire into the abuses of
franchises, that it might be in his power to make a regulation sufficient
to restore the city to its former good government." He then stated the
regulations to which they were required to assent, among which were--"That
no lord mayor, sheriff, or other officer should be appointed without the
king's consent; that the king might cashier them at his pleasure; that if
the king disapproved of the sheriffs elected, he might appoint others by
his own authority; and that the king should appoint all magistrates in the
city by his commission, instead of their being elected as hitherto."
The citizens refused to comply with these terms, and judgment was entered
up. Thus, on the most frivolous pretexts, and by a scandalous perversion
of the forms of law, was the city of London robbed of the free
institutions which it had enjoyed, and under which it had flourished for
many ages. The proceeding was less appalling to the public than the trial
and execution of eminent patriots, but was a more dangerous blow to civil
liberty. London remained disfranchised, and governed by the agents of the
crown, during the rest of this reign, and till the expected invasion of
the Prince of Orange near the conclusion of the next--when, too late, an
offer was made to restore its charters with all its ancient privileges.
Immediately after the revolution, they were irrevocably confirmed by act
of Parliament.
The lord keeper's conduct in this affair gave such high satisfaction at
court, that, as a reward for it, he was raised to the peerage by the title
of Baron Guilford. His brother says that he did not seek the elevation
from vanity, but that he might be protected against the attacks which
might hereafter be made upon him in the House of Commons. He obtained it
on the recommendation of the Duke of York, who overlooked his dislike of
Popery in respect of his steady hatred to public liberty.
To show his gratitude, the new peer directed similar proceedings to be
commenced against many other corporations, which ended in the forfeiture
or surrender of the charters of most of the towns in England in which the
liberal party had enjoyed an ascendancy.
Gilbert Burnet,[99] about this time appointed preacher at the rolls,
thought he had secured a protector in the lord keeper; but as soon as this
whig divine had incurred the displeasure of the court, his lordship wrote
to the master of the rolls that the king considered the chapel of the
rolls as one of his own chapels, and that Dr. Burnet must be dismissed as
one disaffected to the government. In consequence, he was obliged to go
beyond seas, and to remain in exile, till he returned with King William.
Soon after followed the disgraceful trials for high treason, which arose
out of the discovery of the rye-house plot. The lord keeper did not
preside at these; but having directed them--superintending the general
administration of justice, and especially bound to see that the
convictions had been obtained on legal evidence--he is deeply responsible
for the blood that was shed. He must have known that if, in point of law,
the witnesses made out a case to be submitted to the jury against Lord
Russell, that virtuous nobleman was really prosecuted for his support of
the exclusion bill; and he must have seen that against Algernon Sydney no
case had been made out to be submitted to the jury, as there was only one
witness that swore to any thing which could be construed into an overt act
of treason, and the attempt to supply the defect by a MS. containing a
speculative essay on government, which was found in his study, and had
been written many years before, was futile and flagitious. Yet did he sign
the death-warrants of both these men, whose names have been honored, while
his has been execrated in all succeeding times.
It is edifying and consolatory to think that he was outdone by his own
arts, and that the rest of his career was attended by almost constant
mortification, humiliation, and wretchedness. Saunders enjoyed the office
of chief justice of the king's bench only for a few months, being carried
off by an apoplexy soon after the decision of the great London _quo
warranto_ cause. An intrigue was immediately set on foot to procure the
appointment for Jeffreys, who had more than ever recommended himself to
the court by his zeal on the trial of Lord Russell, in which he had
eclipsed the attorney and solicitor general; and he was anxiously wanted
to preside at the trial of Sydney, against whom the case was known to be
so slender, but who was particularly obnoxious on account of his late
quarrel with the Duke of York, and his sworn enmity to despotism.[100]
The pretensions of Jeffreys were supported by Sunderland, probably out of
ill will to the lord keeper, who had intuitively shown a great jealousy of
the new favorite. But the proposal produced great opposition and
bickerings among different sections of courtiers. The lord keeper of
course resisted it _totis viribus_, representing to the king that the
office, according to ancient and salutary usage, ought to be offered to
the attorney and solicitor general, who had been irregularly passed over
on the appointment of the late chief justice, to gain an object of such
magnitude as the forfeiture of the city charters; that Saunders was a man
of immense learning, which countenanced _his_ sudden elevation; but that
Jeffreys, though gifted with a fluency of speech, was known to be unequal
to so high an office; and that the whole profession of the law, and the
public, would condemn an act so arbitrary and capricious. Charles was, or
pretended to be, impressed by these arguments, which he repeated to
Sunderland, and the office was kept vacant for three months after the
death of Saunders. But on the 29th of September, the lord keeper had the
mortification to put the great seal to the writ constituting Jeffreys
"chief justice of England," and on the first day of the following
Michaelmas term to make a speech, publicly congratulating him on his rise
to the supreme seat of criminal justice, so well merited by his learning,
his abilities, and his services.
What was worse, the new lord chief justice was not only sworn a privy
councillor, but, in a few weeks, was admitted into the cabinet, where he,
from the first, set himself to oppose the opinions, and to discredit the
reputation, of him who, he knew, had opposed his appointment, and whom
(his ambition being still unsatiated) he was resolved, in due time, to
supplant.
Jeffreys began with interfering very offensively in the appointment of
puisne judges, which of right belonged to the lord keeper. At first he was
contented with the reputation of power in this department.
He next resolved to make a judge, by his own authority, of a man almost as
worthless as himself. This was Sir Robert Wright, who had never had any
law, who had spent his patrimony in debauchery, and who, being in great
distress, had lately sworn a false affidavit to enable him to commit a
fraud upon his own mortgagee.[101]
Jeffreys was not satisfied with his triumph without proclaiming it to all
Westminster Hall. "Being there that same morning, while the Court of
Chancery was sitting, he beckoned to Wright to come to him, and giving him
a slap on the shoulder, and whispering in his ear, he flung him off,
holding out his arms towards the lord keeper. This was a public
declaration _that, in spite of that man above there, Wright should be a
judge_. His lordship saw all this as it was intended he should, and it
caused some melancholy." But he found it convenient to pocket the insult:
he put the great seal to Wright's patent, and assisted at the ceremony of
his installation. There is no trace of the lord keeper's speech on this
occasion, so that we do not know in what terms he complimented the new
judge on his profound skill in the law, his spotless integrity, and his
universal fitness to adorn the judgment seat.
When heated with liquor, Jeffreys could not now conceal his contempt for
the lord keeper, even in the king's presence. It is related that, upon the
hearing of a matter before the council, arising out of a controversy for
jurisdiction between two sets of magistrates, Guilford proposed some sort
of compromise between them, when the lord chief justice, "flaming drunk,"
came from the lower to the upper end of the board, and "talking and
staring like a madman," bitterly inveighed against "trimmers," and told
the king "he had _trimmers_ in his court, and he never would be easy till
all the _trimmers_ were sent about their business." "The lord keeper,
knowing that these darts were aimed at him,[102] moved the king that the
whole business should be referred to the lord chief justice, and that he
should make a report to his majesty in council of what should be fit to be
done." This was ordered, and Guilford seems to have entertained a hope
that Jeffreys, from the state of intoxication he was in, would entirely
forget the reference, and so might fall into disgrace.[103]
But the most serious difference between them in Charles's time was on the
return of Jeffreys from the northern circuit in the autumn of 1684, when,
backed by the Duke of York, he had a deliberate purpose of immediately
grasping the great seal. At a cabinet council, held on a Sunday evening,
he stood up, and addressing the king while he held in his hands the rolls
of the recusants in the north of England--"Sir," said he, "I have a
business to lay before your majesty which I took notice of in the north,
and which well deserves your majesty's royal commiseration. It is the case
of numberless members of your good subjects that are imprisoned for
recusancy:[104] I have the list of them here to justify what I say. They
are so many that the great jails cannot hold them without their lying one
upon another." After tropes and figures about "rotting and stinking in
prison," he concluded with a motion to his majesty "that he would, by his
pardon, discharge all the convictions for recusancy, and thereby restore
air and liberty to these poor men." This was a deep-laid scheme, for
besides pleasing the royal brothers, one of whom was a secret, and the
other an avowed Papist, he expected that Guilford must either be turned
out for refusing to put the great seal to the pardon, or that he would
make himself most obnoxious to the public, and afterwards to Parliament,
by compliance. A general silence prevailed, and the expectation was that
Halifax or Rochester, who were strong Protestants, would have stoutly
objected. The lord keeper, alarmed lest the motion should be carried, and
seeing the dilemma to which he might be reduced, plucked up courage and
said, "Sir, I humbly entreat your majesty that my lord chief justice may
declare whether all the persons named in these rolls are actually in
prison or not?" _Chief Justice._--"No fair man could suspect my meaning to
be that all these are actual prisoners; for all the jails in England would
not hold them. But if they are not in prison, their case is little
better; for they lie under sentence of commitment, and are obnoxious to be
taken up by every peevish sheriff or magistrate, and are made to redeem
their liberty with gross fees, which is a cruel oppression to them and
their families." _Lord Keeper._--"Sir, I beg your majesty will consider
what little reason there is to grant such a general pardon at this time.
For they are not all Roman Catholics that lie under sentence of recusancy,
but sectaries of all kinds and denominations; perhaps as many, or more,
who are all professed enemies to your majesty and your government in
church and state. They are a turbulent people, and always stirring up
sedition. What will they not do when your majesty gives them a discharge
at once? Is it not better that your enemies should live under some
disadvantages, and be obnoxious to your majesty's pleasure, so that, if
they are turbulent or troublesome, you may inflict the penalties of the
law upon them? If there be any Roman Catholics whom you wish to favor,
grant to them a particular and express pardon, but do not by a universal
measure set your enemies as well as your friends at ease. The ill uses
that would be made of such a step to the prejudice of your majesty's
interests and affairs are obvious and endless."[105] The king was much
struck with these observations, urged with a boldness so unusual in the
lord keeper. The other lords wondered, and the motion was dropped.
The lord keeper, not without reason, boasted of this as the most brilliant
passage of his life. When he came home at night, he broke out in
exclamations--"What can be their meaning? Are they all stark mad?" And
before he went to bed, as a memorial of his exploit, he wrote in his
almanack, opposite to the day of the month, "Motion _cui solus obstiti_."
By such an extraordinary exhibition of courage, to which he was driven by
the instinct of self-preservation, he escaped the peril which Jeffreys had
planned for him, and he retained the great seal till the king's death.
In the morning of Monday, the 2d of February, 1685, he was sent for to
Whitehall, by a messenger announcing that his majesty had had an
apoplectic seizure. According to the ancient custom and supposed law when
the sovereign is dangerously distempered, the Privy Council was
immediately assembled; and the lord keeper examined the king's
physicians.[106] "Their discourse ran upon indefinites--what they
observed, their method intended, and success hoped. He said to them, _that
these matters were little satisfactory to the council, unless they would
declare, in the main, what they judged of the king's case; whether his
majesty was like to recover or not_? But they would never be brought to
that; _all lay in hopes_."
With short intervals the council continued to sit day and night. After a
time, the physicians came into the council chamber, smiling, and saying
they had good news, for the king had a fever. _Lord Keeper._--"Gentlemen,
what do you mean? Can any thing be worse?" _First Physician._--"Now we
know what to do." _Lord Keeper._--"What is that?" _Second Physician._--"To
give him the cortex." The exhibition of Jesuits' bark was sanctioned by
the council, but proved fatal, and being continued, while the poor king
grew weaker and weaker, at the end of four days he expired. The lord
keeper and the council were kept in ignorance of the fact that Chiffinch
(accustomed to be employed on royal errands of a different sort) had been
sent for a Roman Catholic priest, to receive his confession and administer
the sacraments to him, when he had declined the spiritual assistance of a
bishop of the church of England.
The council was still sitting when the news was brought that Charles was
no more. After a short interval, James, who, leaving the death-bed of his
brother, had decently engaged in a devotional exercise in his own closet,
entered the apartment in which the councillors were assembled, and all
kneeling down, they saluted him as their sovereign. When he had seated
himself in the chair of state, and delivered his declaration, which, with
very gracious expressions, smacked of the arbitrary principles so soon
acted upon, Lord Guilford surrendered the great seal into his hands, and
again received it from him with the former title of lord keeper. James
would, no doubt, have been much better pleased to have transferred it to
Jeffreys; but it was his policy, at the commencement of his reign, to make
no change in the administration, and he desired all present to retain the
several charges which they held under his deceased brother, assuring them
that he earnestly wished to imitate the good and gracious sovereign whose
loss they deplored.
Jeffreys, though continued a member of the cabinet, was probably a good
deal disappointed, and he resolved to leave nothing undone to mortify the
man who stood between him and his object, and to strike him down as soon
as possible.
The first question upon which James consulted the council was respecting
the levying of the duties of customs and excise, which had been granted by
Parliament only during the life of the late king. The lord keeper
intimating a clear conviction that Parliament would continue the grant as
from the demise of the crown, recommended a proclamation requiring that
the duties should be collected and paid into the exchequer, and that the
officers should keep the product separate from other revenues till the
next session of Parliament, in order to be disposed of as his majesty and
the two houses should think fit. But the lord chief justice represented
this advice as low and trimming, and he moved that "his majesty should
cause his royal proclamation to issue, commanding all officers to collect,
and the subjects to pay, these duties for his majesty's use, as part of
the royal revenue." The lord keeper ventured humbly to ask his majesty to
consider whether such a proclamation would be for his service, as it might
give a handle to his majesty's enemies to say that his majesty, at the
very entrance upon his government, levied money of the subject without the
authority of Parliament. The chief justice's advice was far more
palatable. The proclamation which he recommended was therefore ordered to
be drawn up, and was immediately issued. The lord keeper had the baseness
to affix the great seal to this proclamation, thinking as he did of its
expediency and legality. But rather than resign or be turned out of his
office, he was ready to concur in any outrage on the constitution, or to
submit to any personal indignity.
A Parliament was found indispensable; and, counting on the very loyal
disposition manifested by the nation, writs for calling one were issued,
returnable the 19th of May.
As that day approached, the lord keeper began to write the speech which he
expected to deliver in the presence of the king to the two houses on their
assembling. He was much pleased with this performance, on which he had
taken uncommon pains, and when finished, he read it to his brother and his
officers, who highly applauded it. But what was his consternation when he
was told that he was not to be allowed to open his mouth upon the
occasion![107]
Parliament meeting, the course was adopted which has been followed ever
since. Instead of having on the first day of the session, before the
choice of a speaker by the Commons, one speech from the king, and another
from the lord chancellor or lord keeper, to explain the causes of the
summons, the Commons being sent for by the black rod, the lord keeper
merely desired them to retire to their own chamber and choose a speaker,
and to present him at an hour which was named, for his majesty's
approbation. The speaker being chosen and approved of, and having demanded
and obtained a recognition of the privileges of the Commons, on the
following day the king himself made a speech from the throne, and
immediately withdrew.
But this speech was not in modern fashion settled at the cabinet; nor was
it read the evening before at the Cockpit, or to the chief supporters of
the government in both houses at the dinner-table of the two leaders
respectively; nor was it to be treated as the speech of the minister. "At
least the lord keeper had no hand in it; for he was not so much as
consulted about either the matter or expressions the king intended to use,
as one might well judge by the unguarded tenor of it."
Yet he still was mean enough to cling to office, and to do what he could
for a government impatient to get rid of him. He had been very active in
the elections; and by his influence had procured the return of a good many
zealous church-and-king members. "And to make the attendance easy to these
gentlemen, whose concerns were in the country, he took divers of them to
rack and manger in his family, where they were entertained while the
Parliament sat." But nothing which he could do would mitigate the
hostility of those who had vowed his destruction.
At the meeting of Parliament, Jeffreys was made a peer, that he might have
the better opportunity to thwart and insult the lord keeper; although
there had been no previous instance of raising a common-law judge to the
peerage.
There were several appeals from decrees of the lord keeper speedily
brought to a hearing. "Jeffreys affected to let fly at them, to have it
thought that he was fitter to be chancellor." He attended, neglecting all
other business; and during the argument, and in giving his opinion, took
every opportunity of disparaging the lord keeper's law, preparatory to
moving reversals. He was particularly outrageous in the case of _Howard_
v. _The Duke of Norfolk_, being emboldened to talk confidently on matters
with which he was not much acquainted, by having to rest on the reputation
of Lord Nottingham. That great equity lawyer, contrary to the opinion of
the two chief justices and the chief baron, whom he had called in to
assist him, had held that an equitable estate tail might be created in a
term of years; but his successor had reversed his decree, and the decree
of reversal was now under appeal. "Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys, by means
of some encouragement he had met with, took upon him the part of slighting
and insulting his lordship on all occasions that proffered. And here he
had a rare opportunity; for, in his rude way of talking, and others of a
party after him, he battered the poor decree; not without the most
indecent affronts to his lordship that in such an assembly ever were
heard." The courtesy now prevailing between law lords of opposite
political parties was not then known between colleagues sitting in the
same cabinet; and the poor lord keeper was assailed by the coarsest
vituperation, and the most cutting ridicule. The second Earl of
Nottingham, son of the chancellor, "who hated him because he had
endeavored to detract from his father's memory," likewise took this
opportunity to attack him, and got together many instances of his ill
administration of justice, and greatly exposed him. He was not roused into
retaliation or resistance; and he contented himself with a dry legal
argument. The decree was reversed; and when he announced that the
_contents had it_, he must have felt as if he had been sounding his own
death knell. The lay lords who voted could have known nothing of the
merits of such a nice question; and must have been guided by favor or
enmity to the lord keeper or the lord chief justice. What rendered the
defeat and contemptuous usage the more galling was the presence of the
king; for James, like his brother, attended in the House of Lords when any
thing interesting was coming on; and walked about the house, or stood by
the fire, or sat in his chair of state or on the woolsack, as suited his
fancy.
"Having opened this scene," says Roger, "we are not to expect other than
opposition, contempt, and brutal usage, of that chief towards his lordship
while he lived."
There were few debates in the House of Lords during this short session;
but, even in going through the common forms of the House, Jeffreys found
opportunities publicly to testify his contempt for the lord keeper; and in
the cabinet, in discussing the dispensation to be granted to Catholic
officers to serve in the army, and other subjects, he constantly laid
traps for him, with a view of either making him obnoxious to the king, or
odious to the public--who considered him the author of every declaration
or dispensation which passed the great seal.
Sunderland and other members of the cabinet openly joined in this
persecution, and "he was little less than derided by them. Being soon to
be laid aside, he was not relied upon in any thing, but was truly a
seal-keeper rather than a minister of state, and kept on for despatch of
the formularies, rather than for advice or trust." Why did he not resign?
It is difficult to understand the reasoning of his brother, who thus
accounts for his continuing to bear such insults:--"His lordship was so
ill used at court by the Earl of Sunderland, Jeffreys, and their
sub-sycophants, that I am persuaded if he had had less pride of heart, he
had been tempted to have delivered up the seal in full health. But he
cared not to gratify, by that, such disingenuous enemies. He cared not to
humor these barkers, or to quit his place before he might do it with
safety to his dignity. He intended to stay till the king would bear him no
longer, and then make it his majesty's own act to remove him."
He felt keenly a sense of the insignificance and disfavor into which he
had fallen; and the anticipation of "the worse remaining behind," when he
was to be finally kicked out, preyed upon his spirits. No longer was he
ear-wigged by the Lord Cravens, who worship a favorite; no more did the
foreign ambassadors bow low when they thought that he observed them: his
levee was now deserted; he seemed to himself to discover a sneer on every
countenance at Whitehall; and he suspected that the bar, the officers of
the court, and the bystanders in chancery, looked at him as if they were
sure of his coming disgrace. To shade himself from observation, while he
sat on the bench he held a large nosegay before his face.
Dreadfully dejected, he lost his appetite and his strength. He could not
even get through the business of the court; and _remanets_ multiplying
upon him kept him awake at night, or haunted him in his sleep. He drooped
so much, that for some time he seemed quite heart-broken. At last, he had
an attack of fever, which confined him to his bed.
The coronation was approaching, and it was important that he should sit in
the "Court of Claims." Having recovered a little by the use of Jesuits'
bark, he presided there, though still extremely weak; and he walked at the
coronation "as a ghost with the visage of death upon him, such a sunk and
spiritless countenance he had."
While he was in this wretched state, news arrived that the Duke of
Monmouth had landed in the west of England and raised the standard of
rebellion. The Parliament, having come to a number of loyal votes, having
attainted the duke, and granted a supply, was adjourned, that the members
might assist in preserving tranquillity in their several districts.
The lord keeper talked of resigning, and wrote a letter to the Earl of
Rochester, to ask leave to go into the country for the recovery of his
health, saying, "I have put myself into the hands of a doctor, who assures
me of a speedy cure by entering into a course of physic." Leave was given,
and he proceeded to Wroxton, in Oxfordshire, the seat which belonged to
him in right of his wife.
Here he languished while the battle of Sedgemoor was fought--Monmouth,
after in vain trying to melt the heart of his obdurate uncle, was executed
on Tower Hill under his parliamentary attainder, and the inhuman Jeffreys,
armed with civil and military authority, set out on his celebrated
"campaign." Roger North would make us believe that the dying Guilford was
horrified by the effusion of blood which was now _incarnardining_ the
western counties by command of the lord general chief justice, and that he
actually interposed to stay it:--"Upon the news returned of his violent
proceedings, his lordship saw the king would be a great sufferer thereby,
and went directly to the king, and moved him to put a stop to the fury,
which was in no respect for his service; but in many respects for the
contrary. For though the executions were by law just, yet never were the
deluded people all capitally punished; and it would be accounted a carnage
and not law or justice; and thereupon orders went to mitigate the
proceeding. I am sure of his lordship's intercession to the king on this
occasion, being told it at the very time by himself." It is painful to
doubt the supposed exertion of mercy and firmness by the lord keeper; but
an attention to dates, of which this biographer is always so inconceivably
negligent, shows the story to be impossible. Jeffreys did not open his
campaign by the slaughter of the Lady Lisle, at Winchester, till the 27th
of August, and he carried it on with increased cruelty till the very end
of September. On the 5th of September died Lord Keeper Guilford, at
Wroxton, after having been for some weeks in a state of such debility and
exhaustion that, able only to attend to his spiritual concerns, he thought
no more of domestic treason or foreign levy than if he had already slept
in the grave. For a short time after his arrival there, he rallied, by the
use of mineral waters, but he soon had a relapse, and he could with
difficulty sign his will. He was peevish and fretful during his sickness,
but calmly met his end. "He advised his friends not to mourn for him, yet
commended an old maid-servant for her good will that said, '_As long as
there is life there is hope_.' At length, having strove a little to rise,
he said, '_It will not do_;' and then, with patience and resignation, lay
down for good and all, and expired."
He was buried in Wroxton Church, in a vault belonging to his wife's
family, the Earls of Down.
"He was a crafty and designing man," says Bishop Burnet. "He had no mind
to part with the great seal, and yet he saw he could not hold it without
an entire compliance with the pleasure of the court. Nothing but his
successor made him be remembered with regret. He had not the virtues of
his predecessor; but he had parts far beyond him. They were turned to
craft; so that whereas the former (Lord Nottingham) seemed to mean well
even when he did ill, this man was believed to mean ill even when he did
well." I accede to this character, with the exception of the estimate of
North's "parts," which I think are greatly overrated. He was sharp and
shrewd, but of no imagination, of no depth, of no grasp of intellect, any
more than generosity of sentiment. Cunning, industry, and opportunity may
make such a man at any time. A Nottingham does not arise above once in a
century.
Guilford had as much law as he could contain, but he was incapable of
taking an enlarged and commanding view of any subject. In equity, he did
nothing to rear up the system of which the foundations had been so
admirably laid by his predecessor. His industry was commendable; and I
think he may be fairly acquitted of corruption, notwithstanding his
indiscreet acceptance of a present of one thousand pounds from the six
clerks, when they had a dispute with the sixty, on which he was to
adjudicate. Where he was not under the apprehension of personal
responsibility, there was nothing which he would not say or do to exalt
the prerogative and please his patrons. I shall add only one instance. Sir
Thomas Armstrong was outlawed for high treason while beyond the seas
unless he surrendered within a year. Being sent over a prisoner from
Holland within a year, he insisted that he was entitled to a writ of error
to reverse the outlawry and to be admitted to make his defence; but the
lord keeper refused him his writ of error, first, on the pretence that
there was no fiat for it by the attorney general, and then, that he had no
right to reverse his outlawry, as he was present by compulsion. Thus the
unhappy victim was sent to instant execution without trial.
So zealous a conservative was Guilford, that "he thought the taking away
of the tenures" (_i. e._ the abolition of wardship and the other
oppressive feudal burdens introduced at the conquest) "a desperate wound
to the liberties of the people."
The court wags made great sport of him, the Earl of Sunderland taking the
lead, and giving out the signal, while Jeffreys was always ready to join
in the laugh. I may offer as an example "the story of the rhinoceros." My
lord keeper went one day into the city, accompanied by his brother Sir
Dudley, to see a rhinoceros of enormous size lately imported, and about to
be exhibited as a show.[108] Next morning, at Whitehall, a rumor was
industriously spread that the lord keeper had been riding on the
rhinoceros, "and soon after dinner some lords and others came to his
lordship to know the truth from himself; for the setters of the lie
affirmed it positively, as of their own knowledge. That did not give his
lordship much disturbance, for he expected no better from his adversaries.
But that his friends, intelligent persons, who must know him to be far
from guilty of any childish levity, should believe it, was what _roiled_
him extremely, and much more when they had the face to come to him to know
if it were true. So it passed; and the Earl of Sunderland, with Jeffreys
and others of that crew, never blushed at the lie of their own making, but
valued themselves upon it as a very good jest."
To try how far his compliance with the humors of the court would go, they
next persuaded his own brother-in-law (that he might not suspect the hoax)
to wait upon him, and in strict confidence, and with great seriousness, to
advise him to keep a mistress, "otherwise he would lose all his interest
with the king; for it was well understood that he was ill looked upon for
want of doing so, because he seemed continually to reprehend them by not
falling in with the general custom; and the messenger added, that if his
lordship pleased he would help him to one." He declined the offer--with
much politeness, however, lest he should give offence. But with his
familiar friends "he made wonderfully merry with this state policy,
especially the procuring part, and said, that if he were to entertain a
madam, it would be one of his own choosing, and not one of their stale
trumpery."
Although he never aimed at oratory, it is said that he meditated a
"history of his own times." He might have transmitted to us many curious
anecdotes, but the performance must have been without literary merit; for
some of his notes which he had written as materials are in the most
wretched style, and show that he was unacquainted with the first
principles of English composition, and even with the common rules of
grammar. He did publish two or three short tracts "on music" and other
subjects, which were soon forgotten. He was well versed in music,
conversed with Sir Peter Lely about painting, speculated with natural
philosophers on the use of the bladder of fishes, and learned several of
the continental languages; but he seems never to have looked into a
classical writer after he left college, and to have had the same taste for
the _belles lettres_ as his brother Roger, who, placing them all in the
same category, talks with equal contempt of "departed quacks, _poets_, and
almanack makers." Although his two immediate predecessors were libelled
and lauded by popular verses in the mouths of every one, I can find no
allusion in any fine writer either of the court or country party to North;
and it may be doubtful whether he knew anything of the works of Butler, of
Dryden, of Waller, or of Cowley, beyond the snatches of them he may have
heard repeated in the merry circle at Whitehall.
He lived very hospitably, receiving those who retailed the gossip of the
day in his house in Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, then the
fashionable quarter of the town for the great nobility as well as for
eminent lawyers. The nobility and chief gentry coming to London frequently
dined with him. The dinner was at a very early hour, and did not last
long. "After a solemn service of tea in a withdrawing room, the company
usually left him." He had a court room fitted up on the ground floor,
which he then entered, and there he continued hearing causes and
exceptions, sometimes to what was considered a late hour. About eight
o'clock came supper, which he took with a few private friends, and
relished as the most agreeable and refreshing meal of the day.
In the vacations, when he could be spared from London, he retired to his
seat at Wroxton. For some years he likewise rented a villa at Hammersmith,
but this he gave up soon after his wife's death. He had the misfortune to
lose her after they had been married only a few years. She seems to have
been a very amiable person. She found out when her husband had any trouble
upon his spirits, and she would say, "Come, Sir Francis, (as she always
styled him,) you shall not think; we must talk and be merry, and you shall
not look on the fire as you do. I know something troubles you; and I will
not have it so." He would never marry again, which in his last illness he
repented, for "he fancied that in the night human heat was friendly."
He was extremely amiable in all the relations of domestic life. Nothing
can be more touching than the account we have of the warm and steady
affection subsisting between him and his brother, who survived to be his
biographer.
The lord keeper was a little but handsome man, and is said to have had "an
ingenuous aspect."
He left behind him Francis, his son and heir, the second Baron Guilford,
father of Francis, the third Baron Guilford, on whom descended the barony
of North, by failure of the elder branch of the family, and who, in 1752,
was created Earl of Guilford, and was the father of Lord North, the prime
minister, so celebrated for his polished oratory, his refined wit, and
amiable manners.[109]
When we estimate what the lord keeper achieved, we should bear in mind
that he died at _forty-eight_, an age considerably more advanced than that
reached by his immediate successor; yet under that at which other lord
chancellors and lord keepers began to look for promotion. He was in truth
solicitor general at _thirty-four_, attorney general at _thirty-seven_,
chief justice of the Common Pleas at _thirty-eight_, and lord keeper and a
peer at _forty-five_. It is probably well for his memory that his career
was not prolonged. He might have made a respectable judge when the
constitution was settled; but he was wholly unfit for the times in which
he lived.
I ought not to conclude this memoir without acknowledging my obligations
to "Roger North's Life of the Lord Keeper;" which, like "Boswell's Life of
Johnson," interests us highly, without giving us a very exalted notion of
the author. Notwithstanding its extravagant praise of the hero of the
tale, its inaccuracies, and its want of method, it is a most valuable
piece of biography, and with Roger's lives of his brothers "Dudley and
John," and his "Examen," ought to be studied by every one who wishes to
understand the history and the manners of the reign of Charles II.