Ashby-de-la-Zouch.
Minor Queries.
_The Judge alluded to by South._--South, in a note in his first Sermon
on Covetousness (vol. iv. p. 448., 4th edition, 1727), tells us of a
lawyer, "a confident of the rebels," who recommended that the Duke of
Gloucester, the youngest son of Charles I., should be bound "to some
good trade, that so he might eat his bread honestly." He then expresses
wonder that Charles II. made this lawyer a judge; a practice, he adds,
and doubtless with a meaning, "not unusual in the courts of some
princes, to encourage and prefer their mortal enemies, before their
truest friends."
Can any of your correspondents tell us more on the subject, and the name
of the judge?
The recommendation was probably given at the time when the Duke and the
Princess Elizabeth were removed from Penshurst to Carisbrooke, where,
according to instructions, they were not to be treated as royal
children.
I may refer your readers to Lord Clarendon's _Hist._ (vii. 84.), and to
a letter and interesting note in Sir H. Ellis's _Collection of Letters_,
iii. 329. Evelyn describes the Duke as "a prince of extraordinary
hopes."
Did South, in his reflection on princes, refer to himself? Wood, his
bitter foe, tells us that "he could never be enough loaded with
preferment; while others, who had been reduced to a bit of bread for his
Majesty's cause, could get nothing." In 1660 he "tugged hard," adds
Wood, to be Can of Ch. Ch., but failed: in ten years afterwards he
succeeded.