PART IX. AT HOME: IN COURT: AND IN SOCIETY.

XLV. LAWYERS AT THEIR OWN TABLES 402

XLVI. WINE 413

XLVII. LAW AND LITERATURE 423

PART I.

HOUSES AND HOUSEHOLDERS.

CHAPTER I.

LADIES IN LAW COLLEGES.

A law-student of the present day finds it difficult to realize the

brightness and domestic decency which characterized the Inns of Court in

the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Under existing

circumstances, women of character and social position avoid the gardens

and terraces of Gray's Inn and the Temple.

Attended by men, or protected by circumstances that guard them from

impertinence and scandal, gentlewomen can without discomfort pass and

repass the walls of our legal colleges; but in most cases a lady enters

them under conditions that announce even to casual passers the object of

her visit. In her carriage, during the later hours of the day, a

barrister's wife may drive down the Middle Temple Lane, or through the

gate of Lincoln's Inn, and wait in King's Bench Walk or New Square,

until her husband, putting aside clients and papers, joins her for the

homeward drive. But even thus placed, sitting in her carriage and

guarded by servants, she usually prefers to fence off inquisitive eyes

by a bonnet-veil, or the blinds of her carriage-windows. On Sunday, the

wives and daughters of gentle families brighten the dingy passages of

the Temple, and the sombre courts of Lincoln's Inn: for the musical

services of the grand church and little chapel, are amongst the

religious entertainments of the town. To those choral celebrations

ladies go, just as they are accustomed to enter any metropolitan church;

and after service they can take a turn in the gardens of either Society,

without drawing upon themselves unpleasant attention. So also,

unattended by men, ladies are permitted to inspect the floral

exhibitions with which Mr. Broome, the Temple gardener, annually

entertains London sightseers.

But, save on these and a few similar occasions and conditions,

gentlewomen avoid an Inn of Court as they would a barrack-yard, unless

they have secured the special attendance of at least one member of the

society. The escort of a barrister or student, alters the case. What

barrister, young or old, cannot recall mirthful eyes that, with quick

shyness, have turned away from his momentary notice, as in answer to the

rustling of silk, or stirred by sympathetic consciousness of women's

noiseless presence, he has raised his face from a volume of reports, and

seen two or three timorous girls peering through the golden haze of a

London morning, into the library of his Inn? What man, thus drawn away

for thirty seconds from prosaic toil, has not in that half minute

remembered the faces of happy rural homes,--has not recalled old days

when his young pulses beat cordial welcome to similar intruders upon the

stillness of the Bodleian, or the tranquil seclusion of Trinity library?

What occupant of dreary chambers in the Temple, reading this page,

cannot look back to a bright day, when young, beautiful, and pure as

sanctity, Lilian, or Kate, or Olive, entered his room radiant with

smiles, delicate in attire, and musical with gleesome gossip about

country neighbors, and the life of a joyous home?

Seldom does a Templar of the present generation receive so fair and

innocent a visitor. To him the presence of a gentlewoman in his court,

is an occasion for ingenious conjecture; encountered on his staircase

she is a cause of lively astonishment. His guests are men, more or less

addicted to tobacco; his business callers are solicitors and their

clerks; in his vestibule the masculine emissaries of tradesmen may

sometimes be found--head-waiters from neighboring taverns, pot-boys from

the 'Cock' and the 'Rainbow.' A printer's devil may from time to time

knock at his door. But of women--such women as he would care to mention

to his mother and sisters--he sees literally nothing in his dusty,

ill-ordered, but not comfortless rooms. He has a laundress, one of a

class on whom contemporary satire has been rather too severe.

Feminine life of another sort lurks in the hidden places of the law

colleges, shunning the gaze of strangers by daylight; and even when it

creeps about under cover of night, trembling with a sense of its own

incurable shame. But of this sad life, the bare thought of which sends a

shivering through the frame of every man whom God has blessed with a

peaceful home and wholesome associations, nothing shall be said in this

page.

In past time the life of law-colleges was very different in this

respect. When they ceased to be ecclesiastics, and fixed themselves in

the hospices which soon after the reception of the gowned tenants, were

styled Inns of Courts; our lawyers took unto themselves wives, who were

both fair and discreet. And having so made women flesh of their flesh

and bone of their bone, they brought them to homes within the immediate

vicinity of their collegiate walls, and sometimes within the walls

themselves. Those who would appreciate the life of the Inns in past

centuries, and indeed in times within the memory of living men, should

bear this in mind. When he was not on circuit, many a counsellor learned

in the law, found the pleasures not less than the business of his

existence within the bounds of his 'honorable society.' In the fullest

sense of the words, he took his ease in his Inn; besides being his

workshop, where clients flocked to him for advice, it was his club, his

place of pastime, and the shrine of his domestic affections. In this

generation a successful Chancery barrister, or Equity draftsman, looks

upon Lincoln's Inn merely as a place of business, where at a prodigious

rent he holds a set of rooms in which he labors over cases, and

satisfies the demands of clients and pupils. A century or two centuries

since the case was often widely different. The rising barrister brought

his bride in triumph to his 'chambers,' and in them she received the

friends who hurried to congratulate her on her new honors. In those

rooms she dispensed graceful hospitality, and watched her husband's

toils. The elder of her children first saw the light in those narrow

quarters; and frequently the lawyer, over his papers, was disturbed by

the uproar of his heir in an adjoining room.

Young wives, the mistresses of roomy houses in the western quarters of

town, shudder as they imagine the discomforts which these young wives of

other days must have endured. "What! live in chambers?" they exclaim

with astonishment and horror, recalling the smallness and cheerless

aspect of their husbands' business chambers. But past usages must not be

hastily condemned,--allowance must be made for the fact that our

ancestors set no very high price on the luxuries of elbow-room and

breathing-room. Families in opulent circumstances were wont to dwell

happily, and receive whole regiments of jovial visitors in little houses

nigh the Strand and Fleet Street, Ludgate Hill and Cheapside;--houses

hidden in narrow passages and sombre courts--houses, compared with

which the lowliest residences in a "genteel suburb" of our own time

would appear capacious mansions. Moreover, it must be borne in mind that

the married barrister, living a century since with his wife in

chambers--either within or hard-by an Inn or Court--was, at a

comparatively low rent, the occupant of far more ample quarters than

those for which a working barrister now-a-days pays a preposterous sum.

Such a man was tenant of a 'set of rooms' (several rooms, although

called 'a chamber') which, under the present system, accommodates a

small colony of industrious 'juniors' with one office and a clerk's room

attached. Married ladies, who have lived in Paris or Vienna, in the 'old

town' of Edinburgh, or Victoria Street, Westminster, need no assurance

that life 'on a flat' is not an altogether deplorable state of

existence. The young couple in chambers had six rooms at their

disposal,--a chamber for business, a parlor, not unfrequently a

drawing-room, and a trim, compact little kitchen. Sometimes they had two

'sets of rooms,' one above another; in which case the young wife could

have her bridesmaids to stay with her, or could offer a bed to a friend

from the country. Occasionally during the last fifty years of the last

century, they were so fortunate as to get possession of a small detached

house, originally built by a nervous bencher, who disliked the sound of

footsteps on the stairs outside his door. Time was when the Inns

comprised numerous detached houses, some of them snug dwellings, and

others imposing mansions, wherein great dignitaries lived with proper

ostentation. Most of them have bean pulled down, and their sites covered

with collegiate 'buildings;' but a few of them still remain, the grand

piles having long since been partitioned off into chambers, and the

little houses striking the eye as quaint, misplaced, insignificant

blocks of human habitation. Under the trees of Gray's Inn gardens may

be seen two modest tenements, each of them comprising some six or eight

rooms and a vestibule. At the present time they are occupied as offices

by legal practitioners, and many a day has passed since womanly taste

decorated their windows with flowers and muslin curtains; but a certain

venerable gentleman, to whom the writer of this page is indebted for

much information about the lawyers of the last century, can remember

when each of those cottages was inhabited by a barrister, his young

wife, and three or four lovely children. Into some such a house near

Lincoln's Inn, a young lawyer who was destined to hold the seals for

many years, and be also the father of a Lord Chancellor, married in the

year of our Lord, 1718. His name was Philip Yorke: and though he was of

humble birth, he had made such a figure in his profession that great

men's doors, were open to him. He was asked to dinner by learned judges,

and invited to balls by their ladies. In Chancery Lane, at the house of

Sir Joseph Jekyll, Master of the Rolls, he met Mrs. Lygon, a beauteous

and wealthy widow, whose father was a country squire, and whose mother

was the sister of the great Lord Somers. In fact, she was a lady of such

birth, position, and jointure, that the young lawyer--rising man though

he was--seemed a poor match for her. The lady's family thought so; and

if Sir Joseph Jekyll had not cordially supported the suitor with a

letter of recommendation, her father would have rejected him as a man

too humble in rank and fortune. Having won the lady and married her, Mr.

Philip Yorke brought her home to a 'very small house' near Lincoln's

Inn; and in that lowly dwelling, the ground-floor of which was the

barrister's office, they spent the first years of their wedded life.

What would be said of the rising barrister who, now-a-days, on his

marriage with a rich squire's rich daughter and a peer's niece, should

propose to set up his household gods in a tiny crip just outside

Lincoln's Inn gate, and to use the parlor of the 'very small house' for

professional purposes? Far from being guilty of unseemly parsimony in

this arrangement, Philip Yorke paid proper consideration to his wife's

social advantages, in taking her to a separate house. His contemporaries

amongst the junior bar would have felt no astonishment if he had fitted

up a set of chambers for his wealthy and well-descended bride. Not

merely in his day, but for long years afterward, lawyers of gentle birth

and comfortable means, who married women scarcely if at all inferior to

Mrs. Yorke in social condition, lived upon the flats of Lincoln's Inn

and the Temple.

CHAPTER II.

THE LAST OF THE LADIES.

Whatever its drawbacks, the system which encouraged the young barrister

to marry on a modest income, and make his wife 'happy in chambers,' must

have had special advantages. In their Inn the husband was near every

source of diversion for which he greatly cared, and the wife was

surrounded by the friends of either sex in whose society she took most

pleasure--friends who, like herself, 'lived in the Inn,' or in one of

the immediately adjacent streets. In 'hall' he dined and drank wine with

his professional compeers and the wits of the bar: the 'library'

supplied him not only with law books, but with poems and dramas, with

merry trifles written for the stage, and satires fresh from the Row;

'the chapel'--or if he were a Templer, 'the church'--was his habitual

place of worship, where there were sittings for his wife and children

as well as for himself; on the walks and under the shady trees of 'the

garden' he sauntered with his own, or, better still, a friend's wife,

criticising the passers, describing the new comedy, or talking over the

last ball given by a judge's lady. At times those gardens were pervaded

by the calm of collegiate seclusion, but on 'open days' they were brisk

with life. The women and children of the legal colony walked in them

daily; the ladies attired in their newest fashions, and the children

running with musical riot over lawns and paths. Nor were the grounds

mere places of resort for lawyers and their families. Taking rank

amongst the pleasant places of the metropolis, they attracted, on 'open

days,' crowds from every quarter of the town--ladies and gallants from

Soho Square and St. James's Street, from Whitehall and Westminster;

sightseers from the country and gorgeous alderwomic dowagers from

Cheapside. From the days of Elizabeth till the middle, indeed till the

close, of the eighteenth century the ornamental grounds of the four

great Inns were places of fashionable promenade, where the rank and

talent and beauty of the town assembled for display and exercise, even

as in our own time they assemble (less universally) in Hyde Park and

Kensington Gardens.

When ladies and children had withdrawn, the quietude of the gardens

lured from their chambers scholars and poets, who under murmuring

branches pondered the results of past study, or planned new works. Ben

Jonson was accustomed to saunter beneath the elms of Lincoln's Inn; and

Steele--alike on 'open' and 'close' days--used to frequent the gardens

of the same society. "I went," he writes in May, 1809, "into Lincoln's

Inn Walks, and having taking a round or two, I sat down, according to

the allowed familiarity of these places, on a bench." In the following

November he alludes to the privilege that he enjoyed of walking there

as "a favor that is indulged me by several of the benchers, who are very

intimate friends, and grown in the neighborhood."

But though on certain days, and under fixed regulations, the outside

public were admitted to the college gardens, the assemblages were always

pervaded by the tone and humor of the law. The courtiers and grand

ladies from 'the west' felt themselves the guests of the lawyers; and

the humbler folk, who by special grant had acquired the privilege of

entry, or whose decent attire and aspect satisfied the janitors of their

respectability, moved about with watchfulness and gravity, surveying the

counsellors and their ladies with admiring eyes, and extolling the

benchers whose benevolence permitted simple tradespeople to take the air

side by side with 'the quality.' In 1736, James Ralph, in his 'New

Critical Review of the Publick Buildings,' wrote about the square and

gardens of Lincoln's Inn in a manner which testifies to the respectful

gratitude of the public for the liberality which permitted all outwardly

decent persons to walk in the grounds. "I may safely add," he says,

"that no area anywhere is kept in better order, either for cleanliness

and beauty by day, or illumination by night; the fountain in the middle

is a very pretty decoration, and if it was still kept playing, as it was

some years ago, 'twould preserve its name with more propriety." In his

remarks on the chapel the guide observes, "The raising this chapel on

pillars affords a pleasing, melancholy walk underneath, and by night,

particularly, when illuminated by the lamps, it has an effect that may

be felt, but not described." Of the gardens Mr. Ralph could not speak in

high praise, for they were ill-arranged and not so carefully kept as the

square; but he observes, "they are convenient; and considering their

situation cannot be esteemed to much. There is something hospitable in

laying them open to public use; and while we share in their pleasures,

we have no title to arraign their taste."

The chief attraction of Lincoln's Inn gardens, apart from its beautiful

trees, was for many years the terrace overlooking 'the Fields,' which

was made _temp._ Car. II. at the cost of nearly L1000. Dugdale, speaking

of the recent improvements of the Inn, says, "And the last was the

enlargement of their garden, beautifying with a large tarras walk on the

west side thereof, and raising the wall higher towards Lincoln's Inne

Fields, which was done in An. 1663 (15 Car. II.), the charge thereof

amounting to a little less than a thousand pounds, by reason that the

levelling of most part of the ground, and raising the tarras, required

such great labor." A portion of this terrace, and some of the old trees,

were destroyed to make room for the new dining-hall.

The old system supplied the barrister with other sources of recreation.

Within a stone's throw of his residence was the hotel where his club had

its weekly meeting. Either in hall, or with his family, or at a tavern

near 'the courts,' it was his use, until a comparatively recent date, to

dine in the middle of the day, and work again after the meal. Courts sat

after dinner as well as before; and it was observable that counsellors

spoke far better when they were full of wine and venison than when they

stated the case in the earlier part of the day. But in the evening the

system told especially in the barrister's favor. All his many friends

lying within a small circle, he had an abundance of congenial society.

Brother-circuiteers came to his wife's drawing-room for tea and chat,

coffee and cards. There was a substantial supper at half-past eight or

nine for such guests (supper cooked in my lady's little kitchen, or

supplied by the 'Society's cook'); and the smoking dishes were

accompanied by foaming tankards of ale or porter, and followed by

superb and richly aromatic bowls of punch. On occasions when the learned

man worked hard and shut out visitors by sporting his oak, he enjoyed

privacy as unbroken and complete as that of any library in Kensington or

Tyburnia. If friends stayed away, and he wished for diversion, he could

run into the chambers of old college-chums, or with his wife's gracious

permission could spend an hour at Chatelin's or Nando's, or any other

coffeehouse in vogue with members of his profession. During festive

seasons, when the judges' and leaders' ladies gave their grand balls,

the young couple needed no carriage for visiting purposes. From Gray's

Inn to the Temple they walked--if the weather was fine. When it rained

they hailed a hackney-coach, or my lady was popped into a sedan and

carried by running bearers to the frolic of the hour.

Of course the notes of the preceding paragraphs of this chapter are but

suggestions as to the mode in which the artistic reader must call up the

life of the old lawyers. Encouraging him to realize the manners and

usages of several centuries, not of a single generation, they do not

attempt to entertain the student with details. It is needless to say

that the young couple did not use hackney-coaches in times prior to the

introduction of those serviceable vehicles, and that until sedans were

invented my lady never used them.

It is possible, indeed it is certain, that married ladies living in

chambers occasionally had for neighbors on the same staircase women whom

they regarded with abhorrence. Sometimes it happened that a dissolute

barrister introduced to his rooms a woman more beautiful than virtuous,

whom he had not married, though he called her his wife. People can no

more choose their neighbors in a house broken up into sets of chambers,

than they can choose them in the street. But the cases where ladies

were daily liable to meet an offensive neighbor on their common

staircase were comparatively rare; and when the annoyance actually

occurred, the discipline of the Inn afforded a remedy.

Uncleanness too often lurked within the camp, but it veiled its face;

and though in rare cases the error and sin of a powerful lawyer may have

been notorious, the preccant man was careful to surround himself with

such an appearance of respectability that society should easily feign

ignorance of his offence. An Elizabethan distich--familiar to all

barristers, but too rudely worded for insertion in this page--informs us

that in the sixteenth century Gray's Inn had an unenviable notoriety

amongst legal hospices for the shamelessness of its female inmates. But

the pungent lines must be regarded as a satire aimed at certain

exceptional members, rather than as a vivacious picture of the general

tone of morals in the society. Anyhow the fact that Gray's Inn[1] was

alone designated as a home for infamy--whilst the Inner Temple was

pointed to as the hospice most popular with rich men, the Middle Temple

as the society frequented by Templars of narrow means, and Lincoln's Inn

as the abode of gentlemen--is, of itself, a proof that the pervading

manners of the last three institutions were outwardly decorous. Under

the least favorable circumstances, a barrister's wife living in

chambers, within or near Lincoln's Inn, or the Temple, during Charles

II.'s reign, fared as well in this respect as she would have done had

Fortune made her a lady-in-waiting at Whitehall.

A good story is told of certain visits paid to William Murray's chambers

at No. 5, King's Bench Walk Temple, in the year 1738. Born in 1705,

Murray was still a young man when in 1738 he made his brilliant speech

in behalf of Colonel Sloper, against whom Colley Cibber's rascally son

had brought an action for _crim. con._ with his wife--the lovely actress

who was the rival of Mrs. Clive. Amongst the many clients who were drawn

to Murray by that speech, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, was neither the

least powerful nor the least distinguished. Her grace began by sending

the rising advocate a general retainer, with a fee of a thousand

guineas; of which sum he accepted only the two-hundredth part,

explaining to the astonished duchess that "the professional fee, with a

general retainer, could neither be less nor more than five guineas." If

Murray had accepted the whole sum he would not have been overpaid for

his trouble; for her grace persecuted him with calls at most

unseasonable hours. On one occasion, returning to his chambers after

"drinking champagne with the wits," he found the duchess's carriage and

attendants on King's Bench Walk. A numerous crowd of footmen and

link-bearers surrounded the coach; and when the barrister entered his

chambers he encountered the mistress of that army of lackeys. "Young

man," exclaimed the grand lady, eying the future Lord Mansfield with a

look of warm displeasure, "if you mean to rise in the world, you must

not sup out." On a subsequent night Sarah of Marlborough called without

appointment at the same chambers, and waited till past midnight in the

hope that she would see the lawyer ere she went to bed. But Murray being

at an unusually late supper-party, did not return till her grace had

departed in an over-powering rage. "I could not make out, sir, who she

was," said Murray's clerk, describing her grace's appearance and manner,

"for she would not tell me her name; _but she swore so dreadfully that I

am sure she must be a lady of quality_."

Perhaps the Inns of Court may still shelter a few married ladies, who

either from love of old-world ways, or from stern necessity, consent to

dwell in their husbands' chambers. If such ladies can at the present

time be found, the writer of this page would look for them in Gray's

Inn--that straggling caravansary for the reception of money-lenders,

Bohemians, and eccentric gentlemen--rather than in the other three Inns

of Court, which have undoubtedly quite lost their old population of

lady-residents. But from those three hospices the last of the ladies

must have retreated at a comparatively recent date. Fifteen years since,

when the writer of this book was a beardless undergraduate, he had the

honor of knowing some married ladies, of good family and unblemished

repute, who lived with their husbands in the Middle Temple. One of those

ladies--the daughter of a country magistrate, the sister of a

distinguished classic scholar--was the wife of a common law barrister

who now holds a judicial appointment in one of our colonies. The women

of her old home circle occasionally called on this young wife: but as

they could not reach her quarters in Sycamore Court without attracting

much unpleasant observation, their visits were not frequent. Living in a

barrack of unwed men, that charming girl was surrounded by honest

fellows who would have resented as an insult to themselves an

impertinence offered to her. Still her life was abnormal, unnatural,

deleterious; it was felt by all who cared for her that she ought not to

be where she was; and when an appointment with a good income in a

healthy and thriving colony was offered to her husband, all who knew

her, and many who had never spoken to her, rejoiced at the intelligence.

At the present time, in the far distant country which looks up to her

as a personage of importance, this lady--not less exemplary as wife and

mother than brilliant as a woman of society--takes pleasure in recalling

the days when she was a prisoner in the Temple.

One of the last cases of married life in the Temple, that came before

the public notice, was that of a barrister and his wife who incurred

obloquy and punishment for their brutal conduct to a poor servant girl.

No one would thank the writer for re-publishing the details of that

nauseous illustration of the degradation to which it is possible for a

gentleman and scholar to sink. But, however revolting, the case is not

without interest for the reader who is curious about the social life of

the Temple.

The portion of the Temple in which the old-world family life of the Inns

held out the longest, is a clump of commodious houses lying between the

Middle Temple Garden and Essex Street, Strand. Having their

entrance-doors in Essex Street, these houses are, in fact, as private as

the residences of any London quarter. The noise of the Strand reaches

them, but their occupants are as secure from the impertinent gaze or

unwelcome familiarities of law-students and barristers' clerks, as they

would be if they lived at St. John's Wood. In Essex Street, on the

eastern side, the legal families maintained their ground almost till

yesterday. Fifteen years since the writer of this page used to be

invited to dinners and dances in that street--dinners and dances which

were attended by prosperous gentlefolk from the West End of the town. At

that time he often waltzed in a drawing-room, the windows of which

looked upon the spray of the fountain--at which Ruth Pinch loved to gaze

when its jet resembled a wagoner's whip. How all old and precious things

pass away! The dear old 'wagoner's whip' has been replaced by a pert,

perky squirt that will never stir the heart or brain of a future Ruth.

[1] The scandalous state of Gray's Inn at this period is shown by the

following passage in Dugdale's 'Origines:'--"In 23 Eliz. (30 Jan.) there

was an order made that no laundress, nor women called victuallers,

should thenceforth come into the gentlemen's chambers of this society,

until they were full forty years of age, and not send their

maid-servants, of what age soever, in the said gentlemen's chambers,

upon penalty, for the first offence of him that should admit of any

such, to be put out of Commons: and for the second, to be expelled the

House." The stringency and severity of this order show a determination

on the part of the authorities to cure the evil.

Chapter III.

YORK HOUSE AND POWIS HOUSE.

Whilst the great body of lawyers dwelt in or hard by the Inns, the

dignitaries of the judicial bench, and the more eminent members of the

bar, had suitable palaces or mansions at greater or less distances from

the legal hostelries. The ecclesiastical Chancellors usually enjoyed

episcopal or archiepiscopal rank, and lived in the London palaces

attached to their sees or provinces. During his tenure of the seals,

Morton, Bishop of Ely, years before he succeeded to the archbishopric of

Canterbury, and received the honors of the Cardinalate, grew

strawberries in his garden on Holborn Hill, and lived in the palace

surrounded by that garden. As Archbishop of Canterbury, Chancellor

Warham maintained at Lambeth Palace the imposing state commemorated by

Erasmus.

When Wolsey made his first progress to the Court of Chancery in

Westminster Hall, a progress already alluded to in these pages, he

started from the archiepiscopal palace, York House or Place--an official

residence sold by the cardinal to Henry VIII. some years later; and when

the same superb ecclesiastic, towards the close of his career, went on

the memorable embassy to France, he set out from his palace at

Westminster, "passing through all London over London Bridge, having

before him of gentlemen a great number, three in rank in black velvet

livery coats, and the most of them with great chains of gold about their

necks."

At later dates Gardyner, whilst he held the seals, kept his numerous

household at Winchester House in Southwark; and Williams, the last

clerical Lord Keeper, lived at the Deanery, Westminster.

The lay Chancellors also maintained costly and pompous establishments,

apart from the Inns of Court. Sir Thomas More's house stood in the

country, flanked by a garden and farm, in the cultivation of which

ground the Chancellor found one of his chief sources of amusement. In

Aldgate, Lord Chancellor Audley built his town mansion, on the site of

the Priory of the Canons of the Holy Trinity of Christ Church.

Wriothesley dwelt in Holborn at the height of his unsteady fortunes, and

at the time of his death. The infamous but singularly lucky Rich lived

in Great St. Bartholomew's, and from his mansion there wrote to the Duke

of Northumberland, imploring that messengers might be sent to him to

relieve him of the perilous trust of the Great Seal. Christopher Hatton

wrested from the see of Ely the site of Holborn, whereon he built his

magnificent palace. The reluctance with which the Bishop of Ely

surrendered the ground, and the imperious letter by which Elizabeth

compelled the prelate to comply with the wish of her favorite courtier,

form one of the humorous episodes of that queen's reign. Hatton House

rose over the soil which had yielded strawberries to Morton; and of that

house--where the dancing Chancellor received Elizabeth as a visitor, and

in which he died of "diabetes _and_ grief of mind"--the memory is

preserved by Hatton Garden, the name of the street where some of our

wealthiest jewelers and gold assayers have places of business.

Public convenience had long suggested the expediency of establishing a

permanent residence for the Chancellors of England, when either by

successive expressions of the royal will, or by the individual choice of

several successive holders of the _Clavis Regni_, a noble palace on the

northern bank of the Thames came to be regarded as the proper domicile

for the Great Seal. York House, memorable as the birthplace of Francis

Bacon, and the scene of his brightest social splendor, demands a brief

notice. Wolsey's 'York House' or Whitehall having passed from the

province of York to the crown, Nicholas Heath, Archbishop of York,

established himself in another York House on a site lying between the

Strand and the river. In this palace (formerly leased to the see of

Norwich as a bishop's Inn, and subsequently conferred on Charles Brandon

by Henry VIII.) Heath resided during his Chancellorship; and when, in

consequence of his refusal to take the oath of supremacy, Elizabeth

deprived him of his archbishopric, York House passed into the hands of

her new Lord Keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon. On succeeding to the honors of

the Marble Chair, Hatton did not move from Holborn to the Strand; but

otherwise all the holders of the Great Seal, from Heath to Francis Bacon

inclusive, seem to have occupied York House; Heath, of course, using it

by right as Archbishop of York, and the others holding it under leases

granted by successive archbishops of the northern province. So little is

known of Bromley, apart from the course which he took towards Mary of

Scotland, that the memory of old York House gains nothing of interest

from him. Indeed it has been questioned whether he was one of its

tenants. Puckering, Egerton, and Francis Bacon certainly inhabited it in

succession. On Bacon's fall it was granted to Buckingham, whose desire

to possess the picturesque palace was one of the motives which impelled

him to blacken the great lawyer's reputation. Seized by the Long

Parliament, it was granted to Lord Fairfax. In the following generation

it passed into the hands of the second Duke of Buckingham, who sold

house and precinct for building-ground. The bad memory of the man who

thus for gold surrendered a spot of earth sacred to every scholarly

Englishman is preserved in the names of _George_ Street, _Duke_ Street,

_Villiers_ Street, _Buckingham_ Street.

The engravings commonly sold as pictures of the York House, in which

Lord Bacon kept the seals, are likenesses of the building after it was

pulled about, diminished, and modernized, and in no way whatever

represent the architecture of the original edifice. Amongst the

art-treasures of the University of Oxford, Mr. Hepworth Dixon

fortunately found a rough sketch of the real house, from which sketch

Mr. E.M. Ward drew the vignette that embellishes the title-page of 'The

Story of Lord Bacon's Life.'

After the expulsion of the Great Seal from old York House, it wandered

from house to house, manifesting, however, in its selections of London

quarters, a preference for the grand line of thoroughfare between

Charing Cross and the foot of Ludgate Hill. Escaping from the

Westminster Deanery, where Williams kept it in a box, the _Clavis Regni_

inhabited Durham House, Strand, whilst under Lord Keeper Coventry's

care. Lord Keeper Littleton, until he made his famous ride from London

to York, lived in Exeter House. Clarendon resided in Dorset House,

Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, and subsequently in Worcester House,

Strand, before he removed to the magnificent palace which aroused the

indignation of the public in St. James's Street. The greater and happier

part of his official life was passed in Worcester House. There he held

councils in his bedroom when he was laid up with gout; there King

Charles visited him familiarly, even condescending to be present to the

bedside councils; and there he was established when the Great Fire of

London caused him, in a panic, to send his most valuable furniture to

his Villa at Twickenham. Thanet House, Aldersgate Street, is the

residence with which Shaftesbury, the politician, is most generally

associated; but whilst he was Lord Chancellor he occupied Exeter House,

Strand, formerly the abode of Keeper Littleton. Lord Nottingham slept

with the seals under his pillow in Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn

Fields, the same street in which his successor, Lord Guildford, had the

establishment so racily described by his brother, Roger North. And Lord

Jeffreys moving westward, gave noisy dinners in Duke Street,

Westminster, where he opened a court-house that was afterwards

consecrated as a place of worship, and is still known as the Duke Street

Chapel. Says Pennant, describing the Chancellor's residence, "It is

easily known by a large flight of stone steps, which his royal master

permitted to be made into the park adjacent for the accommodation of his

lordship. These steps terminate above in a small court, on three sides

of which stands the house." The steps still remain, but their history is

unknown to many of the habitual frequenters of the chapel. After

Jefferys' fall the spacious and imposing mansion, where the

_bon-vivants_ of the bar used to drink inordinately with the wits and

buffoons of the London theatres, was occupied by Government; and there

the Lords of the Admiralty had their offices until they moved to their

quarters opposite Scotland Yard. Narcissus Luttrell's Diary contains the

following entry:--"April 23, 1690. The late Lord Chancellor's house at

Westminster is taken for the Lords of the Admiralty to keep the

Admiralty Office at."

William III., wishing to fix the holders of the Great Seal in a

permanent official home, selected Powis House (more generally known by

the name of Newcastle House), in Lincoln's Inn Fields, as a residence

for Somers and future Chancellors. The Treasury minute books preserve an

entry of September 11, 1696, directing a Privy Seal to "discharge the

process for the apprised value of the house, and to declare the king's

pleasure that the Lord Keeper or Lord Chancellor for the time being

should have and enjoy it for the accommodation of their offices." Soon

after his appointment to the seals, Somers took possession of this

mansion at the north-west corner of the Fields; and after him Lord

Keeper Sir Nathan Wright, Lord Chancellor Cowper, and Lord Chancellor

Harcourt used it as an official residence. But the arrangement was not

acceptable to the legal dignitaries. They preferred to dwell in their

private houses, from which they were not liable to be driven by a change

of ministry or a grist of popular disfavor. In the year 1711 the mansion

was therefore sold to John Holles, Duke of Newcastle, to whom it is

indebted for the name which it still bears. This large, unsightly

mansion is known to every one who lives in London, and has any knowledge

of the political and social life of the earlier Georgian courtiers and

statesmen.

CHAPTER IV.

LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS.

The annals of the legal profession show that the neighborhood of

Guildhall was a favorite place of residence with the ancient lawyers,

who either held judicial offices within the circle of the Lord Mayor's

jurisdiction, or whose practice lay chiefly in the civic courts. In the

fifteenth and sixteenth centuries there was quite a colony of jurists

hard by the temple of Gogmagog and Cosineus--or Gog and Magog, as the

grotesque giants are designated by the unlearned, who know not the

history of the two famous effigies, which originally figured in an

Elizabethan pageant, stirring the wonder of the illiterate, and

reminding scholars of two mythical heroes about whom the curious reader

of this paragraph may learn further particulars by referring to Michael

Drayton's 'Polyolbion.'

In Milk Street, Cheapside, lived Sir John More, judge in the Court of

King's Bench; and in Milk street, A.D. 1480, was born Sir John's famous

son Thomas, the Chancellor, who was at the same time learned and simple,

witty and pious, notable for gentle meekness and firm resolve, abounding

with tenderness and hot with courage. Richard Rich--who beyond Scroggs

or Jeffreys deserves to be remembered as the arch-scoundrel of the legal

profession--was one of Thomas More's playmates and boon companions for

several years of their boyhood and youth. Richard's father was an

opulent mercer, and one of Sir John's near neighbors; so the youngsters

were intimate until Master Dick, exhibiting at an early age his vicious

propensities, came to be "esteemed very light of his tongue, a great

dicer and gamester, and not of any commendable fame."

On marrying his first wife Sir Thomas More settled in a house in

Bucklersbury, the City being the proper quarter for his residence, as he

was an under-sheriff of the city of London, in which character he both

sat in the Court of the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs, and presided over a

separate court on the Thursday of each week. Whilst living in

Bucklersbury he had chambers in Lincoln's Inn. On leaving Bucklersbury

he took a house in Crosby Place, from which he moved, in 1523, to

Chelsea, in which parish he built the house that was eventually pulled

down by Sir Hans Sloane in the year 1740.

A generation later, Sir Nicholas Bacon was living in Noble Street,

Foster Lane, where he had built the mansion known as Bacon House, in

which he resided till, as Lord Keeper, he took possession of York House.

Chief Justice Bramston lived, at different parts of his career, in

Whitechapel; in Philip Lane, Aldermanbury; and (after his removal from

Bosworth Court) in Warwick Lane, Sir John Bramston (the autobiographer)

married into a house in Charterhouse Yard, where his father, the Chief

Justice, resided with him for a short time.

But from an early date, and especially during the seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries, the more prosperous of the working lawyers either

lived within the walls of the Inns, or in houses lying near the law

colleges. Fleet Street, the Strand, Holborn, Chancery Lane, and the good

streets leading into those thoroughfares, contained a numerous legal

population in the times between Elizabeth's death and George III.'s

first illness. Rich benchers and Judges wishing for more commodious

quarters than they could obtain at any cost within college-walls,

erected mansions in the immediate vicinity of their Inns; and their

example was followed by less exalted and less opulent members of the bar

and judicial bench. The great Lord Strafford first saw the light in

Chancery Lane, in the house of his maternal grandfather, who was a

bencher of Lincoln's Inn. Lincoln's Inn Fields was principally built for

the accommodation of wealthy lawyers; and in Charles II.'s reign Queen

Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields was in high repute with legal magnates. Sir

Edward Coke lived alternately in chambers, and in Hatton House, Holborn,

the palace that came to him by his second marriage. John Kelyng's house

stood in Hatton Garden, and there he died in 1671. In his mansion in

Lincoln's Inn Fields, Sir Harbottle Grimston, on June 25, 1660 (shortly

before his appointment to the Mastership of the Rolls, for which place

he is said to have given Clarendon L8000), entertained Charles II. and a

grand gathering of noble company. After his marriage Francis North took

his high-born bride into chambers, which they inhabited for a short time

until a house in Chancery Lane, near Serjeants' Inn, was ready for

their use. On Nov. 15, 1666,--the year of the fire of London, in which

year Hyde had his town house in the Strand--Glyn died in his house, in

Portugal Row, Lincoln's Inn Fields. On June 15, 1691, Henry Pollexfen,

Chief Justice of Common Pleas, expired in his mansion in Lincoln's Inn

Fields. These addresses--taken from a list of legal addresses lying

before the writer--indicate with sufficient clearness the quarter of the

town in which Charles II.'s lawyers mostly resided.

Under Charles II. the population of the Inns was such that barristers

wishing to marry could not easily obtain commodious quarters within

College-walls. Dugdale observes "that all but the benchers go two to a

chamber: a bencher hath only the privilege of a chamber to himself." He

adds--"if there be any one chamber consisting of two parts, and the one

part exceeds the other in value, and he who hath the best part sells the

same, yet the purchaser shall enter into the worst part; for it is a

certain rule that the auntient in the chamber--_viz._, he who was

therein first admitted, without respect to their antiquity in the house,

hath his choice of either part." This custom of sharing chambers gave

rise to the word 'chumming,' an abbreviation of 'chambering.' Barristers

in the present time often share a chamber--_i.e._, set of rooms. In the

seventeenth century an utter-barrister found the half of a set of rooms

inconveniently narrow quarters for himself and wife. By arranging

privately with a non-resident brother of the long robe, he sometimes

obtained an entire "chamber," and had the space allotted to a bencher.

When he could not make such an arrangement, he usually moved to a house

outside the gate, but in the immediate vicinity of his inn, as soon as

his lady presented him with children, if not sooner.

Of course working, as well as idle, members of the profession were found

in other quarters. Some still lived in the City; others preferred more

fashionable districts. Roger North, brother of the Lord Keeper and son

of a peer, lived in the Piazza of Covent Garden, in the house formerly

occupied Lely the painter. To this house Sir Dudley North moved from his

costly and dark mansion in the City, and in it he shortly afterwards

died, under the hands of Dr. Radcliffe and the prosperous apothecary,

Mr. St. Amand. "He had removed," writes Roger, "from his great house in

the City, and came to that in the Piazza which Sir Peter Lely formerly

used, and I had lived in alone for divers years. We were so much

together, and my incumbrances so small, that so large a house might hold

us both." Roger was a practicing barrister and Recorder of Bristol.

During his latter years Sir John Bramston (the autobiographer) kept

house in Greek Street, Soho.

In the time of Charles II. the wealthy lawyers often maintained suburban

villas, where they enjoyed the air and pastimes of the country. When his

wife's health failed, Francis North took a villa for her at Hammersmith,

"for the advantage of better air, which he thought beneficial for her;"

and whilst his household tarried there, he never slept at his chambers

in town, "but always went home to his family, and was seldom an evening

without company agreeable to him." In his latter years, Chief Justice

Pemberton had a rural mansion in Highgate, where his death occurred on

June 10, 1699, in the 74th year of his age. A pleasant chapter might be

written on the suburban seats of our great lawyers from the Restoration

down to the present time. Lord Mansfield's 'Kenwood' is dear to all who

are curious in legal _ana_. Charles Yorke had a villa at Highgate, where

he entertained his political and personal friends. Holland, the

architect, built a villa at Dulwich for Lord Thurlow; and in consequence

of a quarrel between the Chancellor and the builder, the former took

such a dislike to the house, that after its completion he never slept a

night in it, though he often passed his holidays in a small lodge

standing in the grounds of the villa. "Lord Thurlow," asked a lady of

him, as he was leaving the Queen's Drawing-room, "when are you going

into your new house?" "Madam," answered the surly Chancellor, incensed

by her curiosity, "the Queen has asked me that impudent question, and I

would not answer her; I will not tell you." For years Loughborough and

Erskine had houses in Hampstead. "In Lord Mansfield's time," Erskine

once said to Lord Campbell, "although the King's Bench monopolized all

the common-law business, the court often rose at one or two o'clock--the

papers, special, crown, and peremptory, being cleared; and then I

refreshed myself by a drive to my villa at Hampstead." It was on

Hampstead Heath that Loughborough, meeting Erskine in the dusk, said,

"Erskine, you must not take Paine's brief;" and received the prompt

reply, "But I have been retained, and I will take it, by G-d!" Much of

that which is most pleasant in Erskine's career occurred at his

Hampstead villa. Of Lord Kenyon's weekly trips from his mansion in

Lincoln's Inn Fields to his farm-house at Richmond notice has been taken

in a previous chapter. The memory of Charles Abbott's Hendon villa is

preserved in the name, style, and title of Lord Tenterden, of Hendon, in

the county of Middlesex. Indeed, lawyers have for many generations

manifested much fondness for fresh air; the impure atmosphere of their

courts in past time apparently whetting their appetites for wholesome

breezes.

Throughout the eighteenth century Lincoln's Inn Fields, an open though

disorderly spot, was a great place for the residence of legal magnates.

Somers, Nathan Wright, Cowper, Harcourt, successively inhabited Powis

House. Chief Justice Parker (subsequently Lord Chancellor Macclesfield)

lived there when he engaged Philip Yorke (then an attorney's articled

clerk, but afterwards Lord Chancellor of England) to be his son's law

tutor. On the south side of the square, Lord Chancellor Henley kept high

state in the family mansion that descended to him on the death of his

elder brother, and subsequently passed into the hands of the Surgeons,

whose modest but convenient college stands upon its site. Wedderburn and

Erskine had their mansions in Lincoln's Inn Fields, as well as their

suburban villas. And between the lawyers of the Restoration and the

judges of George III.'s reign, a large proportion of our most eminent

jurists and advocates lived in that square and the adjoining streets;

such as Queen Street on the west, Serle Street, Carey Street, Portugal

Street, Chancery Lane, on the south and south-east. The reader, let it

be observed, may not infer that this quarter was confined to legal

residents. The lawyers were the most conspicuous and influential

occupants; but they had for neighbors people of higher quality, who,

attracted to the square by its openness, or the convenience of its site,

or the proximity of the law colleges, made it their place of abode in

London. Such names as those of the Earl of Lindsey and the Earl of

Sandwich in the seventeenth, and of the Duke of Ancaster and the Duke of

Newcastle in the eighteenth century, establish the patrician character

of the quarter for many years. Moreover, from the books of popular

antiquaries, a long list might be made of wits, men of science, and

minor celebrities, who, though in no way personally connected with the

law, lived during the same period under the shadow of Lincoln's Inn.

Whilst Lincoln's Inn Fields took rank amongst the most aristocratic

quarters of the town, it was as disorderly a square as could be found in

all London. Royal suggestions, the labors of a learned committee

especially appointed by James I. to decide on a proper system of

architecture, and Inigo Jones's magnificent but abortive scheme had but

a poor result. In Queen Anne's reign, and for twenty years later, the

open space of the fields was daily crowded with beggars, mountebanks,

and noisy rabble; and it was the scene of constant uproar and frequent

riots. As soon as a nobleman's coach drew up before one of the

surrounding mansions, a mob of half-naked rascals swarmed about the

equipage, asking for alms in alternate tones of entreaty and menace.

Pugilistic encounters, and fights resembling the faction fights of an

Irish row, were of daily occurrence there; and when the rabble decided

on torturing a bull with dogs, the wretched beast was tied to a stake in

the centre of the wide area, and there baited in the presence of a

ferocious multitude, and to the diversion of fashionable ladies, who

watched the scene from their drawing-room windows. The Sacheverell

outrage was wildest in this chosen quarter of noblemen and blackguards;

and in George II.'s reign, when Sir Joseph Jekyll, the Master of the

Rolls, made himself odious to the lowest class by his Act for laying an

excise upon gin, a mob assailed him in the middle of the fields, threw

him to the ground, kicked him over and over, and savagely trampled upon

him. It was a marvel that he escaped with his life; but with

characteristic good humor, he soon made a joke of his ill-usage, saying

that until the mob made him their football he had never been master of

_all_ the _rolls_. Soon after this outbreak of popular violence, the

inhabitants enclosed the middle of the area with palisades, and turned

the enclosure into an ornamental garden. Describing the Fields in 1736,

the year in which the obnoxious Act concerning gin became law, James

Ralph says, "Several of the original houses still remain, to be a

reproach to the rest; and I wish the disadvantageous comparison had

been a warning to others to have avoided a like mistake.... But this is

not the only quarrel I have to Lincoln's Inn Fields. The area is capable

of the highest improvement, might be made a credit to the whole city,

and do honor to those who live round it; whereas at present no place can

be more contemptible or forbidding; in short, it serves only as a

nursery for beggars and thieves, and is a daily reflection on those who

suffer it to be in its abandoned condition."

During the eighteenth century, a tendency to establish themselves in the

western portion of the town was discernible amongst the great law lords.

For instance, Lord Cowper, who during his tenure of the seals resided in

Powis House, during his latter years occupied a mansion in Great George

Street, Westminster--once a most fashionable locality, but now a street

almost entirely given up to civil engineers, who have offices there, but

usually live elsewhere. In like manner, Lord Harcourt, moving westwards

from Lincoln's Inn Fields, established himself in Cavendish Square. Lord

Henley, on retiring from the family mansion in Lincoln's Inn Fields,

settled in Grosvenor Square. Lord Camden lived in Hill Street, Berkeley

Square. On being entrusted with the sole custody of the seals, Lord

Apsley (better known as Lord Chancellor Bathurst) made his first

state-progress to Westminster Hall from his house in Dean Street, Soho;

but afterwards moving farther west, he built Apsley House (familiar to

every Englishman as the late Duke of Wellington's town mansion) upon the

site of Squire Western's favorite inn--the 'Hercules' Pillars.'

CHAPTER V.

THE OLD LAW QUARTER.

Fifteen years since the writer of this page used to dine with a

conveyancer--a lawyer of an old and almost obsolete school--who had a

numerous household, and kept a hospitable table in Lincoln's Inn Fields;

but the conveyancer was almost the last of his species. The householding

legal _resident_ of the Fields, like the domestic resident of the

Temple, has become a feature of the past. Among the ordinary nocturnal

population of the square called Lincoln's Inn Fields, may be found a few

solicitors who sleep by night where they work by day, and a sprinkling

of young barristers and law students who have residential chambers in

grand houses that less than a century since were tenanted by members of

a proud and splendid aristocracy; but the gentle families have by this

time altogether disappeared from the mansions.

But long before this aristocratic secession, the lawyers took possession

of a new quarter. The great charm of Lincoln's Inn Fields had been the

freshness of the air which played over the open space. So also the

recommendation of Great Queen Street had been the purity of its rural

atmosphere. Built between 1630 and 1730, that thoroughfare--at present

hemmed in by fetid courts and narrow passages--caught the keen breezes

of Hampstead, and long maintained a character for salubrity as well as

fashion. Of those fine squares and imposing streets which lie between

High Holborn and Hampstead, not a stone had been laid when the ground

covered by the present Freemason's Tavern was one of the most desirable

sites of the metropolis. Indeed, the houses between Holborn and Great

Queen Street were not erected till the mansions on the south side of

the latter thoroughfare--built long before the northern side--had for

years commanded an unbroken view of Holborn Fields. Notwithstanding many

gloomy predictions of the evils that would necessarily follow from

over-building, London steadily increased, and enterprising architects

deprived Lincoln's Inn Fields and Great Queen Street of their rural

qualities. Crossing Holborn, the lawyers settled on a virgin plain

beyond the ugly houses which had sprung up on the north of Great Queen

Street, and on the country side of Holborn. Speedily a new quarter

arose, extending from Gray's Inn on the east to Southampton Row on the

West, and lying between Holborn and the line of Ormond Street, Red Lion

Street, Bedford Row, Great Ormond Street, Little Ormond Street, Great

James Street, and Little James Street were amongst its best

thoroughfares; in its centre was Red Lion Square, and in its

northwestern corner lay Queen's Square. Steadily enlarging its

boundaries, it comprised at later dates Guildford Street, John's Street,

Doughty Street, Mecklenburgh Square, Brunswick Square, Bloomsbury

Square, Russell Square, Bedford Square--indeed, all the region lying

between Gray's Inn Lane (on the east), Tottenham Court Road (on the

west), Holborn (on the south), and a line running along the north of the

Foundling Hospital and 'the squares.' Of course this large residential

district was more than the lawyers required for themselves. It became

and long remained a favorite quarter with merchants, physicians,[2] and

surgeons; and until a recent date it comprised the mansions of many

leading members of the aristocracy. But from its first commencement it

was so intimately associated with the legal profession that it was often

called the 'law quarter;' and the writer of this page has often heard

elderly ladies and gentlemen speak of it as the 'old law quarter.'

Although lawyers were the earliest householders in this new quarter, its

chief architect encountered at first strong opposition from a section of

the legal profession. Anxious to preserve the rural character of their

neighborhood, the gentlemen of Gray's Inn were greatly displeased with

the proposal to lay out Holborn Fields in streets and squares. Under

date June 10, 1684, Narcissus Luttrell wrote in his diary--"Dr.

Barebone, the great builder, having some time since bought the Red Lyon

Fields, near Graie's Inn walks, to build on, and having for that purpose

employed severall workmen to goe on with the same, the gentlemen of

Graie's Inn took notice of it, and, thinking it an injury to them, went

with a considerable body of 100 persons; upon which the workmen

assaulted the gentlemen, and flung bricks at them, and the gentlemen at

them again. So a sharp engagement ensued, but the gentlemen routed them

at last, and brought away one or two of the workmen to Graie's Inn; in

this skirmish one or two of the gentlemen and servants of the house were

hurt, and severall of the workmen."

James Ralph's remarks on the principal localities of this district are

interesting. "Bedford Row," he says, "is one of the most noble streets

that London has to boast of, and yet there is not one house in it which

deserves the least attention." He tells us that "Ormond Street is

another place of pleasure, and that side of it next the Fields is,

beyond question, one of the most charming situations about town." This

'place of pleasure' is now given up for the most part to hospitals and

other charitable institutions, and to lodging-houses of an inferior

sort. Passing on to Bloomsbury Square, and speaking of the Duke of

Bedford's residence, which stood on the North side of the square, he

says, "Then behind it has the advantage of most agreeable gardens, and a

view of the country, which would make a retreat from the town almost

unnecessary, besides the opportunity of exhibiting another prospect of

the building, which would enrich the landscape and challenge new

approbation." This was written in 1736. At that time the years of two

generations were appointed to pass away ere the removal of Bedford House

should make way for Lower Bedford Place, leading into Russell Square.

So late as the opening years of George III.'s reign, Queen's Square

enjoyed an unbroken prospect in the direction of Highgate and Hampstead.

'The Foreigner's Guide: or a Necessary and Instructive Companion both to

the Foreigner and Native, in their Tours through the Cities of London

and Westminster' (1763), contains the following passage:--"Queen's

Square, which is pleasantly situated at the extreme part of the town,

has a fine open view of the country, and is handsomely built, as are

likewise the neighboring streets--viz., Southampton Row, Ormond Street,

&c. In this last is Powis House, so named from the Marquis of Powis, who

built the present stately structure in the year 1713. It is now the town

residence of the Earl of Hardwicke, late Lord Chancellor. The

apartments are noble, and the whole edifice is commendable for its

situation, and the fine prospect of the country. Not far from thence is

Bloomsbury Square. This square is commendable for its situation and

largeness. On the North side is the house of the Duke of Bedford. This

building was erected from a design of Inigo Jones, and is very elegant

and spacious." From the duke's house in Bloomsbury Square and his

surrounding property, the political party, of which he was the Chief,

obtained the nickname of the Bloomsbury Gang.

Chief Justice Holt died March 5, 1710, at his house[3] in Bedford Row.

In Red Lion Square Chief Justice Raymond had the town mansion wherein he

died on April 15, 1733; twelve years after Sir John Pratt, Lord Camden's

father, died at his house in Ormond Street. On December 15, 1761, Chief

Justice Willes died at his house in Bloomsbury Square. Chagrin at

missing the seals through his own arrogance, when they had been actually

offered to him, was supposed to be a principal cause of the Chief

Justice's death. His friends represented that he died of a broken heart;

to which assertion flippant enemies responded that no man ever had a

heart after living seventy-four years. Murray for many years inhabited a

handsome house in Lincoln's Inn Fields; but his name is more generally

associated with Bloomsbury Square, where stood the house which was

sacked and burnt by the Gordon rioters. In Bloomsbury Square our

grandfathers used to lounge, watching the house of Edward Law,

subsequently Lord Ellenborough, in the hope of seeing Mrs. Law, as she

watered the flowers of her balcony. Mrs. Law's maiden name was Towry,

and, as a beauty, she remained for years the rage of London. Even at

this date there remain a few aged gentlemen whose eyes sparkle and whose

checks flush when they recall the charms of the lovely creature who

became the wife of ungainly Edward Law, after refusing him on three

separate occasions.

On becoming Lord Ellenborough and Chief Justice, Edward Law moved to a

great mansion in St. James's Square, the size of which he described to a

friend by saying: "Sir, if you let off a piece of ordnance in the hall,

the report is not heard in the bedrooms." In this house the Chief

Justice expired, on December 13, 1818. Speaking of Lord Ellenborough's

residence in St. James's Square, Lord Campbell says: "This was the first

instance of a common law judge moving to the 'West End.' Hitherto all

the common law judges had lived within a radius of half a mile from

Lincoln's Inn; but they are now spread over the Regent's Park, Hyde Park

Gardens, and Kensington Gore."

Lord Harwicke and Lord Thurlow have been more than once mentioned as

inhabitants of Ormond Street.

Eldon's residences may be noticed with advantage in this place. On

leaving Oxford and settling in London, he took a small house for himself

and Mrs. Scott in Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane. About this dwelling he

wrote to his brother Henry:--"I have got a house barely sufficient to

hold my small family, which (so great is the demand for them here) will,

in rent and taxes, cost me annually six pounds." To this house he used

to point in the days of his prosperity, and, in allusion to the poverty

which he never experienced, he would add, "There was my first perch.

Many a time have I run down from Cursitor Street to Fleet Market and

bought sixpenn'orth of sprats for our supper." After leaving Cursitor

Street, he lived in Carey Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, where also, in

his later years, he believed himself to have endured such want of money

that he and his wife were glad to fill themselves with sprats. When he

fixed this anecdote upon Carey Street, the old Chancellor used to

represent himself as buying the sprats in Clare Market instead of Fleet

Market. After some successful years he moved his household from the

vicinity of Lincoln's Inn, and took a house in the law quarter,

selecting one of the roomy houses (No. 42) of Gower Street, where he

lived when as Attorney General he conducted the futile prosecutions of

Hardy, Horne Tooke, and Thelwall, in 1794.

On quitting Gower Street, Eldon took the house in Bedford Square, which

witnessed so many strange scenes during his tenure of the seals, and

also during his brief exclusion from office. In Bedford Square he played

the part of chivalric protector to the Princess of Wales, and chuckled

over the proof-sheets of that mysterious 'book' by the publication of

which the injured wife and the lawyer hoped to take vengeance on their

common enemy. There the Chancellor, feeling it well to protract his

flirtation with the Princess of Wales, entertained her in the June of

1808, with a grand banquet, from which Lady Eldon was compelled by

indisposition to be absent. And there, four years later, when he was

satisfied that her Royal Highness's good opinion could be of no service

to him, the crafty, self-seeking minister gave a still more splendid

dinner to the husband whose vices he had professed to abhor, whose

meanness of spirit he had declared the object of his contempt.

"However," writes Lord Campbell, with much satiric humor, describing

this alliance between the selfish voluptuary and the equally selfish

lawyer, "he was much comforted by having the honor, at the prorogation,

of entertaining at dinner his Royal Highness the Regent, with whom he

was now a special favorite, and who, enjoying the splendid hospitality

of Bedford Square, forgot that the Princess of Wales had sat in the same

room; at the same table; on the same chair; had drunk of the same wine;

out of the same cup; while the conversation had turned on her barbarous

usage, and the best means of publishing to the world _her_ wrongs and

_his_ misconduct."

Another of the Prince Regent's visits to Bedford Square is surrounded

with comic circumstances and associations. In the April of 1815, a

mastership of chancery became vacant by the death of Mr. Morris; and

forthwith the Chancellor was assailed with entreaties from every

direction for the vacant post. For two months Eldon, pursuing that

policy of which he was a consummate master, delayed to appoint; but

on June 23, he disgusted the bar and shocked the more intelligent

section of London society, by conferring the post on Jekyll, the

courtly _bon vivant_ and witty descendant of Sir Joseph Jekyll, Master

of the Rolls. Amiable, popular, and brilliant, Jekyll received the

congratulations of his numerous personal friends; but beyond the

circle of his private acquaintance the appointment created lively

dissatisfaction--dissatisfaction which was heightened rather than

diminished by the knowledge that the placeman's good fortune was

entirely due to the personal importunity of the Prince Regent, who

called at the Chancellor's house, and having forced his way into the

bedroom, to which Eldon was confined by an attack of gout, refused

to take his departure without a promise that his friend should have

the vacant place. How this royal influence was applied to the

Chancellor, is told in the 'Anecdote Book.'

Fortunately Jekyll was less incompetent for the post than his enemies

had declared, and his friends admitted. He proved a respectable master,

and held his post until age and sickness compelled him to resign it;

and then, sustained in spirits by the usual retiring pension, he

sauntered on right mirthfully into the valley of the shadow of death. On

the day after his retirement, the jocose veteran, meeting Eldon in the

street, observed:--"Yesterday, Lord Chancellor, I was your master;

to-day I am my own."

From Bedford Square, Lord Eldon, for once following the fashion, moved

to Hamilton Place, Piccadilly. With the purpose of annoying him the

'Queen's friends,' during the height of the 'Queen Caroline agitation,'

proposed to buy the house adjoining the Chancellor's residence in

Hamilton Place, and to fit it up for the habitation of that not

altogether meritorious lady. Such an arrangement would have been an

humiliating as well as exasperating insult to a lawyer who, as long as

the excitement about the poor woman lasted, would have been liable to

affront whenever he left his house or looked through the windows facing

Hamilton Place. The same mob that delighted in hallooing round whatever

house the Queen honored with her presence, would have varied their

'hurrahs' for the lady with groans for the lawyer who, after making her

wrongs the stalking-horse of his ambition, had become one of her chief

oppressors. Eldon determined to leave Hamilton Place on the day which

should see the Queen enter it; and hearing that the Lords of the

Treasury were about to assist her with money for the purchase of the

house, he wrote to Lord Liverpool, protesting against an arrangement

which would subject him to annoyance at home and to ridicule out of

doors. "I should," he wrote, "be very unwilling to state anything

offensively, but I cannot but express my confidence that Government will

not aid a project which must remove the Chancellor from his house the

next hour that it takes effect, and from his office at the same time."

This decided attitude caused the Government to withdraw their

countenance from the project; whereupon a public subscription was opened

for its accomplishment. Sufficient funds were immediately proffered; and

the owner of the mansion had verbally made terms with the patriots, when

the Chancellor, outbidding them, bought the house himself. "I had no

other means," he wrote to his daughter, "of preventing the destruction

of my present house as a place in which I could live, or which anybody

else would take. The purchase-money is large, but I have already had

such offers, that I shall not, I think, lose by it."

Russell Square--where Lord Loughborough (who knows aught of the Earl of

Rosslyn?) had his town house, after leaving Lincoln's Inn Fields, and

where Charles Abbott (Lord Tenterden) established himself on leaving the

house in Queen Square, into which he married during the summer of

1795--maintained a quasi-fashionable repute much later than the older

and therefore more interesting parts of the 'old law quarter.' Theodore

Hook's disdain for Bloomsbury is not rightly appreciated by those who

fail to bear in mind that the Russell Square of Hook's time was tenanted

by people who--though they were unknown to 'fashion,' in the sense given

to the word by men of Brummel's habit and tone--had undeniable status

amongst the aristocracy and gentry of England. With some justice the

witty writer has been charged with snobbish vulgarity because he

ridiculed humble Bloomsbury for being humble. His best defence is found

in the fact that his extravagant scorn was not directed at helpless and

altogether obscure persons so much as at an educated and well-born class

who laughed at his caricatures, and gave dinners at which he was proud

to be present. Though it fails to clear the novelist of the special

charge, this apology has a certain amount of truth; and in so far as it

palliates some of his offences against good taste and gentle feeling, by

all means let him have the full benefit of it. Criticism can afford to

be charitable to the clever, worthless man, now that no one admires or

tries to respect him. Again, it may be advanced, in Hook's behalf, that

political animosity--a less despicable, though not less hurtful passion

than love of gentility--contributed to Hook's dislike of the quarter on

the north side of Holborn. As a humorist he ridiculed, as a panderer to

fashionable prejudices he sneered at, Bloomsbury; but as a tory he

cherished a genuine antagonism to the district of town that was

associated in the public mind with the wealth and ascendency of the

house of Bedford. Anyhow, the Russell Square neighborhood--although it

was no longer fashionable, as Belgravia and Mayfair are fashionable at

the present day--remained the locality of many important families, at

the time when Mr. Theodore Hook was pleased to assume that no one above

the condition of a rich tradesman or second-rate attorney lived in it.

Of the lawyers whose names are mournfully associated with the square

itself are Sir Samuel Romilly and Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd. In 1818, the

year of his destruction by his own hand, Sir Samuel Romilly lived there;

and Talfourd had a house on the east side of the square up to the time

of his lamented death in 1854.

That Theodore Hook's ridicule of Bloomsbury greatly lessened for a time

the value of its houses there is abundant evidence. When he deluged the

district with scornful satire, his voice was a social power, to which a

considerable number of honest people paid servile respect. His clever

words were repeated; and Bloomsbury having become a popular by-word for

contempt, aristocratic families ceased to live, and were reluctant to

invest money, in its well-built mansions. But Hook only accelerated a

movement which had for years been steadily though silently making

progress. Erskine knew Red Lion Square when every house was occupied by

a lawyer of wealth and eminence, if not of titular rank; but before he

quitted the stage, barristers had relinquished the ground in favor of

opulent shopkeepers. When an ironmonger became the occupant of a house

in Red Lion Square on the removal of a distinguished counsel, Erskine

wrote the epigram--

"This house, where once a lawyer dwelt,

Is now a smith's,--alas!

How rapidly the iron age

Succeeds the age of brass."

These lines point to a minor change in the social arrangements of

London, which began with the century, and was still in progress when

Erskine had for years been mouldering in his grave. In 1823, the year of

Erskine's death, Chief Baron Richards expired in his town house, in

Great Ormond Street. In the July of the following year Baron

Wood--_i.e._, George Wood, the famous special pleader--died at his house

in Bedford Square, about seventeen months after his resignation of his

seat in the Court of Exchequer to John Hullock.

At the present time the legal fraternity has deserted Bloomsbury. The

last of the Judges to depart was Chief Baron Pollock, who sold his great

house in Queen Square at a quite recent date. With the disappearance of

this venerable and universally respected judge, the legal history of the

neighborhood may be said to have closed. Some wealthy solicitors still

live in Russell Square and the adjoining streets; a few old-fashioned

barristers still linger in Upper Bedford Place and Lower Bedford Place.

Guilford Street and Doughty Street, and the adjacent thoroughfares of

the same class, still number a sprinkling of rising juniors, literary

barristers, and fairly prosperous attorneys. Perhaps the ancient aroma

of the 'old law quarter'--Mesopotamia, us it is now disrespectfully

termed--is still strong and pleasant enough to attract a few lawyers who

cherish a sentimental fondness for the past. A survey of the Post Office

Directory creates an impression that, compared with other neighborhoods,

the district north and northeast of Bloomsbury Square still possesses

more than an average number of legal residents; but it no longer remains

the quarter of the lawyers.

There still resides in Mecklenburgh Square a learned Queen's Counsel,

for whose preservation the prayers of the neighborhood constantly

ascend. To his more scholarly and polite neighbors this gentleman is an

object of intellectual interest and anxious affection. As the last of an

extinct species, as a still animate Dodo, as a lordly Mohican who has

outlived his tribe, this isolated counselor of her Gracious Majesty is

watched by heedful eyes whenever he crosses his threshold. In the

morning, as he paces from his dwelling to chambers, his way down Doughty

Street and John Street, and through Gray's Inn Gardens, is guarded by

men anxious for his safety. Shreds of orange-peel are whisked from the

pavement on which he is about to tread; and when he crosses Holborn he

walks between those who would imperil their lives to rescue him from

danger. The gatekeeper in Doughty Street daily makes him low obeisance,

knowing the historic value and interest of his courtly presence.

Occasionally the inhabitants of Mecklenburgh Square whisper a fear that

some sad morning their Q.C. may flit away without giving them a warning.

Long may it be before the residents of the 'Old Law Quarter' shall wail

over the fulfillment of this dismal anticipation!

[2] Dr. Clench lived in Brownlow Street, Holborn; and until his death,

in 1831, John Abernethy occupied in Bedford Row the house which is still

inhabited by an eminent surgeon, who was Abernethy's favorite pupil. Of

Dr. Clench's death in January, 1691-2, Narcissus Luttrell gives the

following account: "The 5th, last night, Dr. Clench, the physician, was

strangled in a coach; two persons came to his house in Brownlow Street,

Holborn, in a coach, and pretended to carry him to a patient's in the

City; they drove backward and forward, and after some time stopt by

Leadenhall, and sent the coachman to buy a couple of fowls for supper,

who went accordingly; and in the meantime they slipt away, and the

coachman when he returned found Dr. Clench with a handkerchief tyed

about his neck, with a hard sea-coal twisted in it, and clapt against

his windpipe; he had spirits applied to him and other means, but too

late, he having been dead some time." Dr. Clench's murderer, one Mr.

Harrison, a man of gentle condition, was apprehended, tried, found

guilty, and hung in chains.

[3] Holt's country seat was Redgrave Hall, formerly the home of the

Bacons. It was on his manor of Redgrave, that Sir Nicholas Bacon

entertained Queen Elizabeth, when she remarked that her Lord Keeper's

house was too small for him, and he answered--"Your Majesty has made me

too great for my house."

PART II.

LOVES OF THE LAWYERS.

CHAPTER VI.

A LOTTERY.

"I would compare the multitude of women which are to be chosen for wives

unto a bag full of snakes, having among them a single eel; now if a man

should put his hand into this bag, he may chance to light on the eel;

but it is an hundred to one he shall be stung by a snake."

These words were often heard from the lips of that honest judge, Sir

John More, whose son Thomas stirred from brain to foot by the bright

eyes, and snowy neck, and flowing locks of _cara Elizabetha_ (the _cara

Elizabetha_ of a more recent Tom More was 'Bessie, my darling')--penned

those warm and sweetly-flowing verses which delight scholars of the

present generation, and of which the following lines are neither the

least musical nor the least characteristic:--

"Jam subit illa dies quae ludentem obtulit olim

Inter virgineos te mibi prima choros.

Lactea cum flavi decuerunt colla capilli,

Cum gena par nivibus visa, labella rosis:

Cum tua perstringunt oculos duo sydera nostros

Perque oculos intrant in mea corda meos."

The goddess of love played the poet more than one droll trick. Having

approached her with musical flattery, he fled from her with fear and

abhorrence. For a time the highest and holiest of human affections was

to his darkened mind no more than a carnal appetite; and he strove to

conquer the emotions which he feared would rouse within him a riot of

impious passions. With fasting and cruel discipline he would fain have

killed the devil that agitated him, whenever he passed a pretty girl in

the street. As a lay Carthusian he wore a hair-shirt next his skin,

disciplined his bare back with scourges, slept on the cold ground or a

hard bench, and by a score other strong measures sought to preserve his

spiritual by ruining his bodily health. But nature was too powerful for

unwholesome doctrine and usage, and before he rashly took a celibatic

vow, he knelt to fair Jane Colt--and rising, kissed her on the lips.

When spiritual counsel had removed his conscientious objections to

matrimony, he could not condescend to marry for love, but must,

forsooth, choose his wife in obedience to considerations of compassion

and mercy. Loving her younger sister, he paid his addresses to Jane,

because he shrunk from the injustice of putting the junior above the

older of the two girls. "Sir Thomas having determined, by the advice and

direction of his ghostly father, to be a married man, there was at that

time a pleasant conceited gentleman of an ancient family in Essex, one

Mr. John Colt, of New Hall, that invited him into his house, being much

delighted in his company, proffering unto him the choice of any of his

daughters, who were young gentlewomen of very good carriage, good

complexions, and very religiously inclined; whose honest and sweet

conversation and virtuous education enticed Sir Thomas not a little; and

although his affection most served him to the second, for that he

thought her the fairest and best favored, yet when he thought within

himself that it would be a grief and some blemish to the eldest to have

the younger sister preferred before her, he, out of a kind of

compassion, settled his fancy upon the eldest, and soon after married

her with all his friends' good liking."

The marriage was a fair happy union, but its duration was short. After

giving birth to four children Jane died, leaving the young husband, who

had instructed her sedulously, to mourn her sincerely. That his sorrow

was poignant may be easily believed; for her death deprived him of a

docile pupil, as well as a dutiful wife.

"Virginem duxit admodum puellam," Erasmus says of his friend, "claro

genere natam, rudem adhuc utpote ruri inter parentes ac sorores semper

habitam, quo magis illi liceret illam ad suos mores fingere. Hanc et

literis instruendam curavit, et omni musices genere doctam reddidit."

Here is another insight into the considerations which brought about the

marriage. When he set out in search of a wife, he wished to capture a

simple, unsophisticated, untaught country girl, whose ignorance of the

world should incline her to rely on his superior knowledge, and the

deficiencies of whose intellectual training should leave him an ample

field for educational experiments. Seeking this he naturally turned his

steps toward the eastern countries; and in Essex he found the young

lady, who to the last learnt with intelligence and zeal the lessons

which he set her.

More's second choice of a wife was less fortunate than his first.

Wanting a woman to take care of his children and preside over his rather

numerous establishment, he made an offer to a widow, named Alice

Middleton. Plain and homely in appearance and taste, Mistress Alice

would have been invaluable to Sir Thomas as a superior domestic servant,

but his good judgment and taste deserted him when he decided to make

her a closer companion. Bustling, keen, loquacious, tart, the good dame

scolded servants and petty tradesmen with admirable effect; but even at

this distance of time the sensitive ear is pained by her sharp,

garrulous tongue, when its acerbity and virulence are turned against her

pacific and scholarly husband. A smile follows the recollection that he

endeavored to soften her manners and elevate her nature by a system of

culture similar to that by which Jane Colt, 'admodum puella,' had been

formed and raised into a polished gentlewoman. Past forty years of age,

Mistress Alice was required to educate herself anew. Erasmus assures his

readers that "though verging on old age, and not of a yielding temper,"

she was prevailed upon "to take lessons on the lute, the cithara, the

viol, the monochord, and the flute, which she daily practised to him."

It has been the fashion with biographers to speak bitterly of this poor

woman, and to pity More for his cruel fate in being united to a

termagant. No one has any compassion for her. Sir Thomas is the victim;

Mistress Alice the shrill virago. In those days, when every historic

reprobate finds an apologist, is there no one to say a word in behalf of

the Widow Middleton, whose lot in life and death seems to this writer

very pitiable? She was quick in temper, slow in brain, domineering,

awkward. To rouse sympathy for such a woman is no easy task; but if

wretchedness is a title to compassion, Mistress Alice has a right to

charity and gentle usage. It _was not_ her fault that she could not

sympathize with her grand husband, in his studies and tastes, his lofty

life and voluntary death; it _was_ her misfortune that his steps

traversed plains high above her own moral and intellectual level. By

social theory they were intimate companions; in reality, no man and

woman in all England were wider apart. From his elevation he looked

down on her with commiseration that was heightened by curiosity and

amazement; and she daily writhed under his gracious condescension and

passionless urbanity; under her own consciousness of inferiority and

consequent self-scorn. He could no more sympathize with her petty aims,

than she with the high views and ambitions; and conjugal sympathy was

far more necessary to her than to him. His studious friends and clever

children afforded him an abundance of human fellowship; his public cares

and intellectual pursuits gave him constant diversion. He stood in such

small need of her, that if some benevolent fairy had suddenly endowed

her with grace, wisdom, and understanding, the sum of his satisfaction

would not have been perceptibly altered. But apart from him she had no

sufficient enjoyments. His genuine companionship was requisite for her

happiness; but for this society nature had endowed her with no fitness.

In the case of an unhappy marriage, where the unhappiness is not caused

by actual misconduct, but is solely due to incongruity of tastes and

capacities, it is cruel to assume that the superior person of the

ill-assorted couple has the stronger claim to sympathy.

Finding his wife less tractable than he wished, More withheld his

confidence from her, taking the most important steps of his life,

without either asking for her advice, or even announcing the course

which he was about to take. His resignation of the seals was announced

to her on the day _after_ his retirement from office, and in a manner

which, notwithstanding its drollery, would greatly pain any woman of

ordinary sensibility. The day following the date of his resignation was

a holiday; and in accordance with his usage the ex-Chancellor, together

with his household, attended service in Chelsea Church. On her way to

church, Lady More returned the greetings of her friends with a

stateliness not unseemly at that ceremonious time in one who was the

lady of the Lord High Chancellor. At the conclusion of service, ere she

left her pew, the intelligence was broken to her in a jest that she had

lost her cherished dignity. "And whereas upon the holidays during his

High Chancellorship one of his gentlemen, when the service of the church

was done, ordinarily used to come to my lady his wife's pew-door, and

say unto her '_Madam, my lord is gone_,' he came into my lady his wife's

pew himself, and making a low courtesy, said unto her, 'Madam, my lord

is gone,' which she, imagining to be but one of his jests, as he used

many unto her, he sadly affirmed unto her that it was true. This was the

way he thought fittest to break the matter unto his wife, who was full

of sorrow to hear it."

Equally humorous and pathetic was that memorable interview between More

and his wife in the Tower, when she, regarding his position by the

lights with which nature had endowed her, counseled him to yield even at

that late moment to the king. "What the goodyear, Mr. More!" she cried,

bustling up to the tranquil and courageous man. "I marvel that you, who

have been hitherto always taken for a wise man, will now so play the

fool as to lie here in this close, filthy prison, and be content to be

shut up thus with mice and rats, when you might be abroad at your

liberty, with the favor and good-will both of the king and his council,

if you would but do as the bishops and best learned of his realm have

done; and, seeing you have at Chelsea a right fair house, your library,

your books, your gallery, and all other necessaries so handsome about

you, where you might, in company with me, your wife, your children, and

household, be merry, I muse what, in God's name, you mean, here thus

fondly to tarry." Having heard her out--preserving his good-humor, he

said to her, with a cheerful countenance, "I pray thee, good Mrs.

Alice, tell me one thing!" "What is it?" saith she, "Is not this house

as near heaven as my own?"

Sir Thomas More was looking towards heaven.

Mistress Alice had her eye upon the 'right fair house' at Chelsea.

CHAPTER VII.

GOOD QUEEN BESS.

Amongst the eminent men who are frequently mentioned as notorious

suitors for the personal affection of Queen Elizabeth, a conspicuous

place is awarded to Hatton, by the scandalous memoirs of his time and

the romantic traditions of later ages. Historians of the present

generation have accepted without suspicion the story that Hatton was

Elizabeth's amorous courtier, that the fanciful letters of 'Lydds' were

fervent solicitations for response to his passion; that he won her favor

and his successive promotions by timely exhibition of personal grace and

steady perseverance in flattery. Campbell speaks of the queen and her

chancellor as 'lovers;' and the view of the historian has been upheld by

novelists and dramatic writers.

The writer of this page ventures to reject a story which is not

consistent with truth, and casts a dark suspicion on her who was not

more powerful as a queen than virtuous as a woman.

For illustrations of lovers' pranks amongst the Elizabethan lawyers, the

reader must pass to two great judges, the inferior of whom was a far

greater man than Christopher Hatton. Rivals in law and politics, Bacon

and Coke were also rivals in love. Having wooed the same proud, lovely,

capricious, violent woman, the one was blessed with failure, and the

other was cursed with success.

Until a revolution in the popular estimate of Bacon was effected by Mr.

Hepworth Dixon's vindication of that great man, it was generally

believed that love was no appreciable element in his nature. Delight in

vain display occupied in his affections the place which should have been

held by devotion to womanly beauty and goodness; he had sneered at love

in an essay, and his cold heart never rebelled against the doctrine of

his clever brain; he wooed his notorious cousin for the sake of power,

and then married Alice Barnham for money. Such was the theory, the most

solid foundation of which was a humorous treatise,[4] misread and

misapplied.

The lady's wealth, rank, and personal attractions were in truth the only

facts countenancing the suggestion that Francis Bacon proffered suit to

his fair cousin from interested motives. Notwithstanding her defects of

temper, no one denies that she was a woman qualified by nature to rouse

the passion of man. A wit and beauty, she was mistress of the arts which

heighten the powers of feminine tact and loveliness. The daughter of Sir

Thomas Cecil, the grandchild of Lord Burleigh, she was Francis Bacon's

near relation; and though the Cecils were not inclined to help him to

fortune, he was nevertheless one of their connection, and consequently

often found himself in familiar conversation with the bright and

fascinating woman. Doubtless she played with him, persuading herself

that she merely treated him with cousinly cordiality, when she was

designedly making him her lover. The marvel was that she did not give

him her hand; that he sought it is no occasion for surprise--or for

insinuations that he coveted her wealth. Biography is by turns

mischievously communicative and vexatiously silent. That Bacon loved Sir

William Hatton's widow, and induced Essex to support his suit, and that

rejecting him she gave herself to his enemy, we know; but history tells

us nothing of the secret struggle which preceded the lady's resolution

to become the wife of an unalluring, ungracious, peevish, middle-aged

widower. She must have felt some tenderness for her cousin, whose

comeliness spoke to every eye, whose wit was extolled by every lip.

Perhaps she, like many others, had misread the essay 'Of Love,' and felt

herself bound in honor to bring the philosopher to his knees at her

feet. It is credible that from the outset of their sentimental

intercourse, she intended to win and then to flout him. But coquetry

cannot conquer the first laws of human feeling. To be a good flirt, a

woman must have nerve and a sympathetic nature; and doubtless the flirt

in this instance paid for her triumph with the smart of a lasting wound.

Is it fanciful to argue that her subsequent violence and misconduct, her

impatience of control and scandalous disrespect for her aged husband,

may have been in some part due to the sacrifice of personal inclination

which she made in accepting Coke at the entreaty of prudent and selfish

relations--and to the contrast, perpetually haunting her, between what

she was as Sir Edward's termagant partner, and what she might have been

as Francis Bacon's wife?

She consented to a marriage with Edward Coke, but was so ashamed of her

choice, that she insisted on a private celebration of their union,

although Archbishop Whitgift had recently raised his voice against the

scandal of clandestine weddings, and had actually forbidden them. In the

face of the primate's edict the ill-assorted couple were united in

wedlock, without license or publication of banns, by a country parson,

who braved the displeasure of Whitgift, in order that he might secure

the favor of a secular patron. The wedding-day was November 24, 1598,

the bridegroom's first wife having been buried on the 24th of the

previous July.[5] On learning the violation of his orders, the

archbishop was so incensed that he resolved to excommunicate the

offenders, and actually instituted for that purpose legal proceedings,

which were not dropped until bride and bridegroom humbly sued for

pardon, pleading ignorance of law in excuse of their misbehavior.

The scandalous consequences of that marriage are known to every reader

who has laughed over the more pungent and comic scenes of English

history. Whilst Lady Hatton gave masques and balls in the superb palace

which came into her possession through marriage with Sir Christopher

Hatton's nephew, Coke lived in his chambers, working at cases and

writing the books which are still carefully studied by every young man

who wishes to make himself a master of our law. In private they had

perpetual squabbles, and they quarrelled with equal virulence and

indecency before the world. The matrimonial settlement of their only and

ill-starred daughter was the occasion of an outbreak on the part of

husband and wife, that not only furnished diversion for courtiers but

agitated the council table. Of all the comic scenes connected with that

unseemly _fracas_, not the least laughable and characteristic was the

grand festival of reconciliation at Hatton House, when Lady Hatton

received the king and queen in Holborn, and expressly forbade her

husband to presume to show himself among her guests. "The expectancy of

Sir Edward's rising," says a writer of the period,[6] "is much abated by

reason of his lady's liberty,[7] who was brought in great honor to

Exeter House by my Lord of Buckingham from Sir William Craven's, whither

she had been remanded, presented by his lordship to the king, received

gracious usage, reconciled to her daughter by his Majesty, and her house

in Holborn enlightened by his presence at a dinner, where there was a

royal feast; and to make it more absolutely her own, express

commandment given by her ladyship, that neither Sir Edward Coke nor any

of his servants should be admitted."

If tradition may be credited, the law is greatly indebted to the class

of women whom it was our forefathers' barbarous wont to punish with the

ducking-stool. Had Coke been happy in his second marriage, it is assumed

that he would have spent more time in pleasure and fewer hours at his

desk, that the suitors in his court would have had less careful

decisions, and that posterity would have been favored with fewer

reports. If the inference is just, society may point to the commentary

on Littleton, and be thankful for the lady's unhappy temper and sharp

tongue. In like manner the wits of the following century maintained that

Holt's steady application to business was a consequence of domestic

misery. The lady who ruled his house in Bedford Row, is said to have

been such a virago, that the Chief Justice frequently retired to his

chambers, in order that he might place himself beyond reach of her

voice. Amongst the good stories told of Radcliffe, the Tory physician,

is the tradition of his boast, that he kept Lady Holt alive out of pure

political animosity to the Whig Chief Justice. Another eminent lawyer,

over whose troubles people have made merry in the same fashion, was

Jeffrey Gilbert, Baron of the Exchequer. At his death, October 14, 1726,

this learned judge left behind him that mass of reports, histories, and

treatises by which he is known as one of the most luminous, as well as

voluminous of legal writers. None of his works passed through the press

during his life, and when their number and value were discovered after

his departure to another world, it was whispered that they had been

composed in hours of banishment from a hearth where a _scolding wife_

made misery for all who came within the range of her querulous notes.

Disappointed in his suit to his beautiful and domineering cousin, Bacon

let some five or six years pass before he allowed his thoughts again to

turn to love, and then he wooed and waited for nearly three years more,

ere, on a bright May day, he met Alice Barnham in Marylebone Chapel, and

made her his wife in the presence of a courtly company. In the July of

1603, he wrote to Cecil:--"For this divulged and almost prostituted

title of knighthood, I could, without charge by your honor's mean, be

content to have it, both because of this late disgrace, and because I

have three new knights in my mess in Gray's Inn Commons, and because I

have found out an alderman's daughter, a handsome maiden, to my liking.

So as if your honor will find the time, I will come to the court from

Gorhambury upon any warning." This expression, 'an alderman's daughter,'

contributed greatly, if it did not give rise to, the misapprehension

that Bacon's marriage was a mercenary arrangement. In these later times

the social status of an alderman is so much beneath the rank of a

distinguished member of the bar, that a successful queen's counsel, who

should make an offer to the daughter of a City magistrate, would be

regarded as bent upon a decidedly unambitious match; and if in a

significant tone he spoke of the lady as 'an alderman's daughter' his

words might be reasonably construed as a hint that her fortune atoned

for her want of rank. But it never occurred to Bacon's contemporaries to

put such a construction on the announcement. Far from using the words in

an apologetic manner, the lover meant them to express concisely that

Alice Barnham was a lady of suitable condition to bear a title as well

as to become his bride. Cecil regarded them merely as an assurance that

his relative meditated a suitable and even advantageous alliance, just

as any statesman of the present day would read an announcement that a

kinsman, making his way in the law-courts, intended to marry 'an

admiral's daughter' or a 'bishop's daughter.' That it was the reverse of

a mercenary marriage, Mr. Hepworth Dixon has indisputably proved in his

eighth chapter of 'The Story of Lord Bacon's Life,' where he contrasts

Lady Bacon's modest fortune with her husband's personal acquisitions and

prospects.

[4] To readers who have no sense of humor and irony, the essay 'Of Love'

unquestionably gives countenance to the theory that Francis Bacon was

cold and passionless in all that concerned woman. Of the many strange

constructions put upon this essay, not the least amusing and perverse is

that which would make it a piece of adroit flattery to Elizabeth, who

never permitted love "to check with business," though she is represented

to have used it as a diversion in idle moments. If Sir Thomas More's

'Utopia' had been published a quarter of a century after 1518 (the date

of its appearance), a similar construction would have been put on the

passage, which urges that lovers should not be bound by an indissoluble

tie of wedlock, until mutual inspection has satisfied each of the

contracting parties that the other does not labor under any grave

personal defect. If it were possible to regard the passage containing

this proposal as an interpolation in the original romance, it might then

be regarded as an attempt to palliate Henry VIII.'s conduct to Anne of

Cleves.

[5] When due allowance has been made for the difference between the

usages of the sixteenth century and the present time, decency was

signally violated by this marriage, which followed so soon upon Mrs.

Coke's death, and still sooner upon the death of Lady Hatton's famous

grandfather, at whose funeral the lawyer made the first overtures for

her hand. Mrs. Coke died June 27, 1598, and was buried at Huntingfield,

co. Suffolk, July 24, 1598. Lord Burleigh expired on August 4, of the

same year. Coke's first marriage was not unhappy; and on the death of

his wife by that union, he wrote in his note-book:--"Most beloved and

most excellent wife, she well and happily lived, and, as a true handmaid

of the Lord, fell asleep in the Lord, and now lives and reigns in

heaven." In after years he often wished most cordially that he could say

_as much_ for his second wife.

[6] Strafford's Letters and Despatches, I. 5.

[7] Lady Hatton never used her second husband's name either before or

after his knighthood. A good case, touching the customary right of a

married lady to bear the name, and take her title from the rank of a

former husband, is that of Sir Dudley North, Charles II.'s notorious

sheriff of London. The son of an English peer, he married Lady Gunning,

the widow of a wealthy civic knight, and daughter of Sir Robert Cann, "a

morose old merchant of Bristol"--the same magistrate whom Judge

Jeffreys, in terms not less just than emphatic, upbraided for his

connection with, or to speak moderately, his connivance at, the Bristol

kidnappers. It might be thought that the merchant's daughter, on her

marriage with a peer's son, would be well content to relinquish the

title of Lady Gunning; but Roger North tells us that his brother Dudley

accepted knighthood, in order that he might avoid giving offence to the

city, and also, in order that his wife might be called Lady North, and

not Lady Gunning.--_Vide Life of the Hon. Sir Dudley North._ After Sir

Thomas Wilde (subsequently Lord Truro), married Augusta Emma d'Este, the

daughter of the duke of Sussex and Lady Augusta Murray, that lady, of

whose legitimacy Sir Thomas had vainly endeavored to convince the House

of Lords, retained her maiden surname. In society she was generally

known as the Princess d'Este, and the bilious satirists of the Inns of

Court used to speak of Sir Thomas as 'the Prince.' It was said that one

of Wilde's familiar associates, soon after the lawyer's marriage, called

at his house and asked if the Princess d'Este was at home. "No, sir,"

replied the servant, "the Princess d'Este is not at home, but the Prince

is!" That this malicious story obtained a wide currency is not

wonderful; that it is a truthful anecdote the writer of this book would

not like to pledge his credit. The case of Sir John Campbell and Lady

Strathedon, was a notable instance of a lawyer and his wife bearing

different names. Raised to the peerage, with the title of Baroness

Stratheden, the first Lord Abinger's eldest daughter was indebted to her

husband for an honor that made him her social inferior. Many readers

will remember a droll story of a misapprehension caused by her

ladyship's title. During an official journey, Sir John Campbell and

Baroness Stratheden slept at lodgings which he had frequently occupied

as a circuiteer. On the morning after his arrival, the landlady obtained

a special interview with Campbell, and in the baroness's absence thus

addressed him, with mingled indignation and respectfulness:--"Sir John

Campbell, I am a lone widow, and live by my good name. It is not in my

humble place to be too curious about the ladies brought to my lodgings

by counsellors and judges. It is not in me to make remarks if a

counsellor's lady changes the color of her eyes, and her complexion

every assizes. But, Sir John, a gentleman ought not to bring a lady to a

lone widow's lodgings, unless so long as he 'okkipies' the apartments he

makes all honorable professions that the lady is his wife, and as such

gives her the use of his name."

CHAPTER VIII.

REJECTED ADDRESSES.

No lawyer of the Second Charles's time surpassed Francis North in love

of money, or was more firmly resolved not to marry, without due and

substantial consideration.

His first proposal was for the daughter of a Gray's Inn money-lender.

Usury was not a less contemptible vocation in the seventeenth century

than it is at the present time; and most young barristers of gentle

descent and fair prospects would have preferred any lot to the

degradation of marriage with the child of the most fortunate usurer in

Charles II.'s London. But the Hon. Francis North was placed comfortably

_beneath_ the prejudices of his order and time of life. He was of noble

birth, but quite ready to marry into a plebeian family; he was young,

but loved money more than aught else. So his hearing was quickened and

his blood beat merrily when, one fine morning, "there came to him a

recommendation of a lady, who was an only daughter of an old usurer in

Gray's Inn, supposed to be a good fortune in present, for her father was

rich; but, after his death, to become worth, nobody could tell what."

One would like to know how that 'recommendation of a lady' reached the

lawyer's chambers; above all, who sent it?

"His lordship," continues Roger North, "got a sight of the lady, and did

not dislike her; thereupon he made the old man a visit, and a proposal

of himself to marry his daughter." By all means let this ingenuous,

high-spirited Templar have a fair judgment. He would not have sold

himself to just any woman. He required a _maximum_ of wealth with a

_minimum_ of personal repulsiveness. He therefore 'took a sight of the

lady' (it does not appear that he talked with her) before he committed

himself irrevocably by a proposal. The _sight_ having been taken, as he

did not dislike her (mind, he did not positively like her) he made the

old man a visit. Loving money, and believing in it, this 'old man'

wished to secure as much of it as possible for his only child; and

therefore looking keenly at the youthful admirer of a usurer's heiress,

"asked him what estate his father intended to settle upon him for

present maintenance, jointure, and provision for children." Mildly and

not unjustly Roger calls this "an inauspicious question." It was so

inauspicious that Mr. Francis North abruptly terminated the discussion

by wishing the usurer good-morning. So ended Love Affair No. 1.

Having lost his dear companion, Mr. Edward Palmer, son of the powerful

Sir Geoffry Palmer, Mr. Francis North soon regarded his friend's wife

with tender longing. It was only natural that he should desire to

mitigate his sorrow for the dead by possession of the woman who was

"left a flourishing widow, and very rich." But the lady knew her worth,

as well she might, for "never was lady more closely besieged with

wooers: she had no less than five younger sons sat down before her at

one time, and she kept them well in hand, as they say, giving no

definite answers to any of one of them." Small respect did Mistress

Edward Palmer show her late husband's most intimate friend. For weeks

she tortured the wretched, knavish fellow with coquettish tricks, and

having rendered him miserable in many ways, made him ludicrous by

jilting him. "He was held at the long saw above a month, doing his duty

as well as he might, and that was but clumsily; for he neither dressed

nor danced, when his rivals were adroit at both, and the lady used to

shuffle her favors amongst them affectedly, and on purpose to mortify

his lordship, and at the same time be as civil to him, with like purpose

to mortify them." Poor Mr. Francis! Well may his brother write

indignantly, "It was very grievous to him--that had his thoughts upon

his clients' concerns, which came in thick upon him--to be held in a

course of bo-peep play with a crafty widow." At length, "after a

clancular proceeding," this crafty widow, by marrying "a jolly knight of

a good estate," set her victims free; and Mr. Francis was at liberty to

look elsewhere for a lapful of money.

Roger North tells the story of the third affair so concisely and pithily

that his exact words must be put before the reader:--"Another

proposition came to his lordship," writes the fraternal biographer,

giving Francis North credit for the title he subsequently won, although

at the time under consideration he was plain _Mister_ North, on the keen

look-out for the place of Solicitor General, "by a city broker, from Sir

John Lawrence, who had many daughters, and those reputed beauties; and

the fortune was to be L6000. His lordship went and dined with the

alderman, and liked the lady, who (as the way is) was dressed out for a

muster. And coming to treat, the portion shrank to L5000, and upon that

his lordship parted, and was not gone far before Mr. Broker (following)

came to him, and said Sir John would give L500 more at the birth of the

first child; but that would not do, for his lordship hated such

screwing. Not long after this dispute, his lordship was made the King's

Solicitor General, and then the broker came again, with news that Sir

John would give L10,000. 'No,' his lordship said, 'after such usage he

would not proceed if he might have L20,000.'" The intervention of the

broker in this negotiation is delightfully suggestive. More should have

been said about him--his name, address, and terms for doing business.

Was he paid for his services on all that he could save from a certain

sum beyond which his employer would not advance a single gold-piece for

the disposal of his child? Were there, in olden time, men who avowed

themselves 'Heart and Jointure Brokers, Agents for Lovers of both Sexes,

Contractors of Mutual Attachments, Wholesale and Retail Dealers in

Reciprocal Affection, and General Referees, Respondents, and Insurers in

all Sentimental Affairs, Clandestine or otherwise?'

After these mischances Francis North made an eligible match under

somewhat singular circumstances. As co-heiresses of Thomas, Earl of

Down, three sisters, the Ladies Pope, claimed under certain settlements

large estates of inheritance, to which Lady Elizabeth Lee set up a

counter claim. North, acting as Lady Elizabeth Lee's counsel, effected a

compromise which secured half the property in dispute to his client, and

diminished by one-half the fortunes to which each of the three suitors

on the other side had maintained their right. Having thus reduced the

estate of Lady Frances Pope to a fortune estimated at about L14,000, the

lawyer proposed for her hand, and was accepted. After his marriage,

alluding to his exertions in behalf of Lady Elizabeth Lee's very

disputable claim, he used to say that "he had been counsel against

himself;" but Roger North frankly admits that "if this question had not

come to such a composition, which diminished the ladies' fortunes, his

brother had never compassed his match."

It was not without reluctance that the Countess of Downs consented to

the union of her daughter with the lawyer who had half ruined her, and

who (though he was Solicitor General and in fine practice) could settle

only L5000 upon the lady. "I well remember," observes Roger, "the good

countess had some qualms, and complained that she knew not how she could

justify what she had done (meaning the marrying her daughters with no

better settlement)." To these qualms Francis North, with lawyer-like

coolness, answered--"Madam, if you meet with any question about that,

_say_ that your daughter has L1000 per annum jointure."

The marriage was celebrated in Wroxton Church; and after bountiful

rejoicings with certain loyalist families of Oxfordshire, the happy

couple went up to London and lived in chambers until they moved into a

house in Chancery Lane.