THE LORD CHANCELLOR
From the days of Sir Thomas More to the present time the Woolsack has
continuously enriched the annals of English history with famous and
distinguished names. The well-known biographies of Lord Campbell,
whose habit of writing the lives of the deceased as soon as the breath
was out of their bodies added, as Brougham declared, a new terror to
death, supply abundant evidence of the statesmanlike qualities that
attach to the holders of the office. The most eminent men of their day
have held the Chancellorship, proving the truth of Burke's well-known
assertion that of all human studies the law is the most efficacious in
forming great men, and that to be well versed in the laws of England
is to be imbued in the sublimest principles of human wisdom.
The office of Chancellor is of very ancient origin.[153] It existed in
England in the days of the Anglo-Saxon kings, when the official who
acted as judicial secretary or clerk to the sovereign is supposed to
have derived his title from the _cancelli_ or screens behind which he
carried on his clerical duties.
[153] Lord Ellesmere observes that in the 8th Chapter of Samuel,
Jehoshaphat the son of Abilud, the Chancellor among the Hebrews, was
called "Mazur," which, translated into English, becomes "Sopher," or
Recorder. "Whether the Lord Chancellor of _England_ as now he is, may
be properly termed _Sopher_ or Mazur, it may receive some needlesse
question, howbeit it cannot be doubted but his office doth participate
of both their Functions."--"Observations concerning the Office of Lord
Chancellor," p. 2.
After their conversion to Christianity, the kings employed the
services of a priest as chaplain or confessor, and in the person of
the Chancellor the posts of "Keeper of the King's Conscience" and
secretary were thus naturally combined. In King Ethelred's time the
Chancellorship was divided between the Abbots of Ely, Canterbury and
Glastonbury, who exercised it in turn, each for four months.
The appointment continued for several centuries to be held by a
cleric. In the early days of Parliament, indeed, the Chancellor
received his writ of summons as a Bishop and not as Chancellor, and,
though he attended in the latter capacity in any case, no summons was
sent to him if he did not happen to be a bishop. Ecclesiastics were
appointed to the Chancellorship, without exception, until the time of
Sir Robert Bourchier in 1340, and it was not for a long time after
this that spiritual statesmen wholly gave place to lawyers. Thomas à
Beckett, William of Wykeham and Cardinal Wolsey, figure prominently
among the clerical Chancellors of early times, and it was not until
the beginning of the seventeenth century that laymen succeeded in
establishing themselves firmly upon the Woolsack. Since that time no
cleric, with the single exception of Bishop Williams, in 1621, has
been entrusted with the Chancellorship or the custody of the Great
Seal.
One of the chief duties of the Chancellor in early times consisted in
affixing the royal Seal with which from time immemorial the will of
the sovereign has been expressed. At the present day Royal grants and
warrants, Letters-Patent of Peerage or for inventions, Commissions of
the Peace, etc., are issued under what Coke calls the _Clavis Regni_.
When the sovereign is absent it acts as his representative, and
Parliament itself is opened by a Commission under the Great Seal. This
emblem of sovereignty may therefore be considered one of the most
important instruments of the Constitution, and, as its loss would
entail endless inconvenience, it is given into the custody of the Lord
Keeper or Lord Chancellor.[154] As secretary to the King the
Chancellor would seem to have been its natural custodian, but when he
fell sick or died, or went abroad, it was occasionally placed in other
hands. Later on it became the custom to make the Keepership of the
Great Seal a regular appointment, separate and distinct from the Lord
Chancellorship.
[154] The Seal was stolen from Lord Thurlow by burglars in 1784, and
the offer of a reward of £200 failed to retrieve it. When Lord
Chancellor Eldon's house at Encombe caught fire in 1812, he buried the
Seal for safety's sake in the garden, and then forgot where he had
buried it. His family spent most of the next day digging for it before
it was finally recovered. Eldon seems to have taken the fire very
easily. "It really was a very pretty sight," he wrote, "for all the
maids turned out of their beds, and formed a line from the water to
the fire-engine, handing the buckets; they looked very pretty, _all in
their shifts_." Campbell's "Lives of the Chancellors," vol. vii. p.
300.
The post of Lord Keeper has been held by statesmen, courtiers, and
divines, and the duties of the office have even been undertaken on two
occasions by women. Queen Eleanor, the first Lady Keeper, was also the
most unpopular. While her husband was abroad in 1253, and the Great
Seal was in her custody, she made use of her delegated power to lay a
heavy tax on all vessels bearing cargo to London, and showered gifts
of English land and places upon her foreign relatives. She thus
succeeded in arousing the hatred of the London mob, who expressed
their dislike in a material fashion by pelting her with mud. To avoid
the fury of the populace Queen Eleanor fled abroad, and only returned
to England to take refuge in a convent.[155] The other Lady Keeper,
Queen Isabella, who held the Great Seal in 1321, had no actual
commission, and was not entrusted with any judicial power. But she
kept the Seal in a casket, and delivered it each day as it was
required to the Master of the Rolls, and may therefore claim to be
included in the list of Keepers.
[155] Queen Eleanor was a remarkable woman. At the age of thirteen she
was the author of a heroic poem, and in the following year became a
wife. Piers of Langtoft describes her as
"The fayrest Maye in lyfe,
Her name Elinore of gentle nurture,
Beyond the sea there was no such creature."
The post of Lord Keeper and Lord Chancellor first became identical in
Queen Elizabeth's time, when the Great Seal was entrusted to Sir
Nicholas Bacon, who, with his son Sir Francis and the great Lord
Burghley, may be considered the most eminent of Elizabethan
Chancellors. Sir Nicholas has been called an "archpiece of wit and
wisdom",[156] and was also well suited physically to combine the two
important offices. By nature a man of gigantic size, he grew more
bulky with advancing years, and though his dignity was thus increased,
the progress of Chancery business suffered in proportion. When he took
his seat on the bench, after walking from the Court of Chancery to the
Star Chamber, Sir Nicholas always spent some considerable time in
recovering his breath. The proceedings were accordingly delayed until
he had struck the ground three times with his stick as a signal that
he was in a condition to resume work. As was fitting in a man of his
position, Lord Keeper Bacon inspired intense awe amongst his
subordinates. Indeed, the reverence with which he was universally
regarded eventually proved the indirect cause of his death. One day,
while he was having his hair cut, he fell into a profound slumber,
from which no one had the courage to rouse him. "I durst not disturb
you," said the barber, when Sir Nicholas at last awoke, chilled to the
bone. "By your civility I lose my life," was the Lord Keeper's reply;
and in a few days his prophecy was fulfilled. Though, with Sir
Nicholas Bacon, the two posts of Keeper and Chancellor became united,
it was not until the time of George III. that the modern system
originated of conferring the Great Seal and the title of Lord
Chancellor simultaneously.
[156] Naunton's "Fragmenta Regalia," p. 38.
In mediæval days the Chancellorship and the Lord Keepership were often
held in conjunction with other offices. Stratford was Archbishop of
Canterbury as well as Lord Chancellor in 1334, and, though his
ecclesiastical duties were too onerous to permit of his discharging
the functions of the Lord Keepership, they did not prevent him from
retaining to himself the fees of that office. In 1532, Thomas Audley,
the Speaker of the House of Commons, was appointed Lord Keeper in
succession to Sir Thomas More, and held both appointments
simultaneously until he was made Lord Chancellor. And as recently as
the reign of Charles II., a Prime Minister, the Earl of Clarendon,
combined the posts of Premier and Chancellor.
The office of Lord Chancellor developed into one of primary importance
in the time of Edward I., when, from being but a member of the _Aula
Regis_, he became the president of a separate court, a Court of
Equity. Law and Equity have, to a certain extent, been antagonistic
ever since the days when kings were advised by clerics and opposed by
lawyers. In the eyes of the latter Equity was often, as Selden says,
"a roguish thing," untrustworthy, and largely dependent upon the
conscience of individual Chancellors, "and as that is larger or
narrower, so is Equity." But however exaggerated the claim of Equity
to be the "law of God," "the law of nature," or "law of reason,"[157]
it has at least vindicated its position in the statutory enactment
that, where there is a conflict, its rules are to prevail over those
of the Common Law.[158]
[157] "The Fyrste Dyaloge in Englys, between a Doctoure of Dyvynyte
and a Student in the Lawes of England" (1539).
[158] Judicature Act of 1873, section 24.
The conscience of some, at least, of England's early Lord Chancellors
possessed peculiarly plastic qualities. They themselves were not
infrequently ignorant of the principles of law. Occasionally, too,
their conduct and character were such that it is hard to imagine them
as the fount of Equity or justice. Lord Wriothesley, Chancellor in
1544, combined legal incompetence with the most intense religious
bigotry.[159] Chancellor Sir Francis Bacon, philosopher, writer, and
lawyer, whose name is one of the most famous in English history, was
forced to plead guilty to a charge of "corruption and neglect," for
which offence he was deprived of the Great Seal, fined a sum of
£40,000, and imprisoned in the Tower. A hundred years later Lord
Chancellor Macclesfield was impeached and fined for corrupt practices
with regard to the sale of Masterships in Chancery; while the brutal
Jeffreys, stained with the blood of hundreds of innocent and
defenceless persons, was another Lord Chancellor whose presence added
nothing to the prestige of the Woolsack.[160]
[159] His barbarous treatment of the wretched Anne Askew is notorious.
For denying that the sacramental blood and wine lost their material
elements after consecration, Anne was condemned to be tortured, and
the Lord Chancellor with his own hands stretched the rack on which the
unfortunate woman was bound, in the hope of extracting a confession.
It must, however, be admitted that Wriothesley's heart was not
entirely impervious to emotion, for when, as Lord Chancellor, he
announced the death of Henry VIII. in the House of Lords, he could not
refrain from bursting into tears.
[160] He was, however, an able lawyer, and reserved his orgies for
private life. "If my Lord Jefferies exceeded the bounds of temperance
now and then in an evening, it does not follow that he was drunk on
the bench or in council." (Campbell's "Lives," vol. iii. p. 595
_note_.)
Many centuries elapsed before the standard of judicial morality in
England attained its present high level, but even in the earliest days
of the Chancellorship we find occupants of the Woolsack combining
legal wisdom with particularly blameless lives. The great Sir Thomas
More, statesman and author, was as famous for the extreme simplicity
of his habits as for the ability with which he despatched Chancery
business. The former virtue he almost carried to excess, and his
practice of singing in the choir of the parish church at Chelsea,
dressed in a surplice, surprised and even shocked his contemporaries.
"God's body!" once exclaimed the Duke of Norfolk, seeing More thus
attired and singing lustily; "My Lord Chancellor a parish clerk! You
dishonour the King and his office." "Nay," replied More, "Your Grace
may not think that the King, your master and mine, will be offended
with me for serving _his_ Master, or thereby account his office
dishonoured," and he resumed his interrupted hymn.
Jeffreys' predecessor, Lord Guilford, who, as Campbell tells us, "had
as much law as he could contain," was another Chancellor of blameless
morals. In an age when the possession of a few redeeming vices was
considered the mark of a gentleman, the purity of his conduct caused
him some natural unpopularity. Indeed, his friends strongly advised
him to take a mistress, if he did not wish to lose all interest at
Court, saying that people naturally looked suspiciously at a man who
declined to follow the general practice and seemed to be continually
reprehending them by his superior moral tone. Lord Guilford's enemies
even sought to revenge themselves upon him by spreading reports
calculated to make him look ridiculous, and once, when the Lord Keeper
had gone to the city to see a rhinoceros which was on view there,
circulated a story to the effect that he had insisted upon riding this
animal down the street. Poor Lord Guilford was much annoyed; he was
blessed with a most exiguous sense of humour, and could see nothing
amusing in so preposterous a suggestion. "That his friends,
intelligent persons, who must know him to be far from guilty of any
childish levity, should believe it, was what _roiled_ him
extremely,"[161] he declared.
[161] Roger North's "Life of Lord Guilford," vol. ii. p. 167. (The
word _roiled_, so we are informed, was an import from the American
plantations.)
The duties of the Lord Chancellor are manifold and of supreme
importance. Lord Lyndhurst, who himself held the Seal three times, and
is famous not only as an orator but also as the originator of the
policy of what is known as the Two Power Standard,[162] once said that
the Chancellor's work might be divided into three classes: "first, the
business that is worth the labour done; second, that which does
itself; and third, that which is not done at all."[163]
[162] "If we wish to be in a state of security," he said, in 1859, "if
we wish to maintain our great interests, if we wish to maintain our
honour, it is necessary that we should have a power measured by that
of any two possible adversaries."
[163] H. Crabb Robinson's "Diary," vol. iii. p. 453.
In his Court of Chancery the Lord Chancellor formerly exercised a vast
jurisdiction. At one time all writs were issued from this Court, and
he was not only considered the guardian of all "children, idiots, and
lunatics," but, as Blackstone says, "had the general superintendance
of all charitable uses in the Kingdom," and was the visitor of all
hospitals of royal foundation.[164] His former duties in these
respects have to some extent been delegated to other judges and
officers, acting in his name; the issuing of writs, though also in his
name, has been transferred to the Central Office, and the jurisdiction
of the Court of Chancery removed to the Chancery Division of the High
Court of Justice.
[164] "Commentaries," vol. iii. p. 47.
His judicial position, however, is probably greater than ever. He is
head of the Law and of the Judges--a vast though still, perhaps,
inadequate number--President of the High Court of Justice and of the
Court of Appeal, and, above all, of the highest and final Court of the
realm, the House of Lords. Here he sits continuously, with occasional
excursions to preside over the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council
to which come all appeals from India and the Colonies. As the only
legal member of the Cabinet, he is virtually chief law officer of the
Crown, and questions of domestic or international law are submitted
for his advice by his colleagues, the heads of the other Departments
of the Government. In his capacity of Keeper of the Great Seal he may
never leave the Kingdom, and is _ex officio_ Speaker of the House of
Lords, and must attend all its sittings. The Chancellor does not,
however, enjoy rights similar to those of the Commons' Speaker; he is
not addressed in debate; he does not call upon peers to speak, and has
no authority to settle questions of order.
As the Woolsack is not considered to be within the limits of the House
of Lords, the fact of a Chancellor being a Commoner does not prevent
him from sitting there and discharging the duties of Speaker; but he
may not take any other part in the proceedings unless he be himself a
peer. Only in recent times has the Chancellor been necessarily made a
peer, and there exists no statutory restriction incapacitating any
man, unless he be a Roman Catholic, from holding the office of Lord
Chancellor.[165]
[165] Sir Robert Harley, Chancellor in 1757, was not made a peer until
1764. In 1830, Brougham took his seat on the Woolsack as a Commoner,
and at least one other Chancellor has since followed his example.
The limitation of his powers as Speaker of the Lords owes its origin
to the fact that, unlike the Chairman of the Commons, the Chancellor
is always a partisan appointed by a particular Government, and retires
when that Government goes out of office. As such, he takes an active
part in debate, and, though much respect would be paid to his advice
on points of order, it need never be followed, and he has no power to
decide questions of procedure or to control the conduct of his fellow
peers.
The first Chancellor of an actively partisan character was Lord
Thurlow--
"The rugged Thurlow who with sullen scowl,
In surly mood, at friend or foe will growl"--
whose well-known asperity had earned for him the title of "the Tiger."
It was said of him that in the Cabinet he "opposed everything,
proposed nothing, and was ready to support anything." He was supposed
to have derived his descent from Thurloe, Cromwell's secretary. "There
are two Thurlows in my county," he remarked, when questioned upon the
subject, "Thurloe the secretary and Thurlow the carrier. I am
descended from the carrier."[166] His bad manners on the bench were
proverbial, but not apparently incorrigible. Once at the commencement
of the Long Vacation, when he was quitting the court without taking
the usual leave of the Bar, a young barrister whispered to a
companion, "He might at least have said 'D---- you!'" Thurlow
overheard the remark, returned to his place, and politely made his
bow.[167] Eldon said of Thurlow that he was a sturdy oak at
Westminster, but a willow at St James's, where he long figured as the
intimate and grateful confidant of George III.[168]
"Oft may the statesman in St Stephen's wave,
Sink in St. James's to an abject slave,"
but Thurlow's attitude towards his royal master does not appear to
have been marked by extreme servility. Once, indeed, when the
Chancellor had taken some Acts to receive the royal assent, he read
one or two of them through to the King and then stopped. "It's all
d----d nonsense trying to make you understand this," said Thurlow,
with brutal frankness, "so you had better consent to them at once!"
And if he adopted this tone to his King, it may be certain that his
attitude towards his equals or inferiors was no less overbearing.
[166] Roscoe's "Eminent British Lawyers," p. 258. Other Chancellors
were sprung from equally humble origin. Edward Sugden, afterwards Lord
St. Leonards, was the son of a barber. To him is attributed a repartee
similar to that made many years earlier by Colonel Birch, M.P., who
was taunted with having in his youth been a carrier. "It is true, as
the gentleman says, I once was a carrier," replied Birch. "But let me
tell the gentleman that it is very fortunate for him that he never was
a carrier; for, if he had been, he would be a carrier still." See
Burnet's "History of His Own Time," p. 259.
[167] Hawkins's "Memoirs," vol. ii. p. 312.
[168] He declared, on a famous occasion, that his debt of gratitude to
His Majesty was ample, for the many favours he had graciously
conferred upon him, which, when he forgot, might his God forget him!
Wilkes, who was present, muttered, "God forget you! He will see you
d----d first!" while Burke remarked that to escape the memory of the
Almighty would be the very best thing Thurlow could hope for.
Thurlow's character has been cruelly portrayed in the _Rolliad_ under
the heading:
"HOW TO MAKE A CHANCELLOR."
"Take a man of great abilities, with a heart as black as his
countenance. Let him possess a rough inflexibility, without the least
tincture of generosity or affection, and be as manly as oaths and
ill-manners can make him. He should be a man who should act
politically with all parties--hating and deriding every one of the
individuals who compose them."[169]
[169] Page 430.
If the Speaker of the Lords had been expected to conduct himself in a
fashion similar to that of the Speaker of the Commons, Thurlow's
behaviour on the Woolsack would certainly have given rise to adverse
criticism. He was a frank and bitter partisan, and when some opponent
had spoken, would step forward on to the floor of the House and, as he
himself described it, give his adversary "such a thump in the
bread-basket" that he did not easily recover from this verbal
onslaught.[170] Thurlow's pet aversion was Lord Loughborough, his
successor on the Woolsack. When Loughborough spoke effectively upon
some subject opposed by Thurlow, who had not however taken the trouble
to study it, the latter could be heard muttering fiercely to himself.
"If I was not as lazy as a toad at the bottom of a well," he would
say, "I could kick that fellow Loughborough heels over head, any day
of the week." And he was probably right, for Lord Loughborough was a
notoriously bad lawyer,[171] whereas his rival's sagacity almost
refuted Fox's celebrated saying that "Nobody could be as wise as
Thurlow _looked_."
[170] Twiss's "Life of Eldon," vol. i. p. 214.
[171] Lord Ellenborough was once asked by his hostess after dinner to
cease conversing with his host--a judge--and to give the ladies some
conversation, as he had been talking law long enough. "Madam," he
replied, "I beg your pardon; we have not been talking law, or anything
like law. We have been talking of one of the decisions of Lord
Loughborough."--Campbell's "Lives," vol. vi. p. 251.
The amount of work accomplished by a Lord Chancellor depends very
largely upon the man himself, as we may see by comparing the two most
distinguished Chancellors of their day--Lord Eldon and Lord Brougham.
Eldon had worked his way laboriously from the very foot to the topmost
rung of the legal ladder. It was his own early experiences that
inspired him to say that nothing did a young lawyer so much good as to
be half-starved. And in action as well as in word he always maintained
that the only road to success at the Bar was "to live like a hermit,
and work like a horse."
He was in many ways an original character. He always wore his
Chancellor's wig in society, and was otherwise unconventional. One
day, after reading much of "Paradise Lost," he was asked what he
thought of Milton's "Satan." "A d----d fine fellow," he replied; "I
hope he may win." In spite of this view, however, he was an extremely
religious man, though he did not attend divine service regularly.
Indeed, when some one referred to him as a "pillar of the church," he
demurred, saying that he might justly be called a _buttress_ but not
a pillar of the church, since he was never to be found inside it. He
is probably the most typical Tory of the old school that can be found
in political history. His conservatism was of an almost incredibly
standstill and reactionary character. As Walter Bagehot said of him in
a famous passage, he believed in everything which it is impossible to
believe in--"in the danger of Parliamentary Reform, the danger of
Catholic Emancipation, the danger of altering the Court of Chancery,
the danger of altering the Courts of Law, the danger of abolishing
capital punishment for trivial thefts, the danger of making landowners
pay their debts, the danger of making anything more, the danger of
making anything less."[172]
[172] Bagehot's "Literary Studies," vol. i. p. 150.
Though on political questions Eldon could make up his mind quickly
enough, on the bench the extreme deliberation with which he gave
judicial decisions was the subject of endless complaints. He agreed
with Lord Bacon that "whosoever is not wiser upon advice than upon the
sudden, the same man is not wiser at fifty than he was at
thirty."[173] His perpetual hesitation in Court, the outcome of an
intense desire to be scrupulously just, gave rise to attacks both in
Parliament and the press.[174]
[173] Like Lord Bacon, too, he compiled an indifferent "Anecdote
Book." Bacon's "Collection of Apothegms," was supposed to have been
taken down from his dictation all on "one rainy day," but neither the
brevity of the time nor the inclemency of the weather is a sufficient
excuse for so poor a production.
[174] These occasionally took the form of lampoons in verse, such as
the following:--
THE DERIVATION OF CHANCELLOR
"The Chancellor, so says Lord Coke,
His _title_ from Cancello took;
And ev'ry cause before him tried
It was his duty to _decide_.
Lord Eldon, hesitating ever,
Takes it from Chanceler, to _waver_,
And thinks, as this may bear him out,
His bounden duty is to _doubt_."
Pryme's "Recollections," p. 111.
[Illustration: LORD ELDON
FROM THE PAINTING BY SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE, P.R.A., IN THE NATIONAL
PORTRAIT GALLERY]
A Commission was eventually appointed, ostensibly to inquire into the
means by which time and expense might be saved to suitors in
Chancery--where, as Sydney Smith said, Lord Eldon "sat heavy on
mankind"--but really to expose the dilatory methods of the Chancellor.
Eldon came well out of the inquiry, however, and it was proved that in
the twenty-four years during which he had held the Great Seal, but few
of his decisions had been appealed against, and still fewer reversed.
If some fault could be found with Lord Eldon for being a slow if
steady worker, no such complaint could be levelled at the head of Lord
Brougham. The latter, indeed, erred on the side of extreme haste, and
was as restless on the bench as Eldon was composed, and as ignorant
and careless of his duties as his predecessor was learned and
scrupulous. Brougham's cleverness, was, however, amazing. If he had
known a little law, as Lord St. Leonards dryly observed, he would have
known a little of everything. He has been called "the most misinformed
man in Europe," and in early life, when he was one of the original
founders of the _Edinburgh Review_, is said to have written a whole
number himself, including articles upon lithotomy and Chinese music.
His ability and brilliance were unsurpassed, and his oratory was
superb. His famous speech (as her Attorney-General) in defence of
Queen Caroline was one of the finest forensic efforts ever heard in
the House of Lords.[175] His many talents have been epitomised in a
famous saying of Rogers: "This morning Solon, Lycurgus, Demosthenes,
Archimedes, Sir Isaac Newton, Lord Chesterfield, and a great many
more, went away in one post-chaise." Yet he was eminently unsuccessful
as Chancellor, and his domineering fashion of treating his colleagues
made him extremely unpopular. Brougham's loquacity was intolerable,
and his conceit immense. "The Whigs are all cyphers," he once
declared, "and I am the only unit in the Cabinet that gives a value to
them." It must, however, be admitted that he was a great statesman if
not a great Chancellor, and that to his unique intellectual talents we
owe in great measure the emancipation of the negro slave and the
passing of the Reform Bill.
[175] "There never was anything like the admiration excited by
Brougham's speech. Lord Harrowby, G. Somerset, Mr. Montagu, and
Granville told me it was in eloquence, ability, and judicious
management beyond almost anything they ever heard."--Lady Granville's
"Letters" (to Lady G. Morpeth, 5 October, 1820), vol. i. p. 181.
In his lifetime, Brougham was almost universally disliked and feared.
"A 'B' outside and a wasp within," said some wag, pointing to the
simple initial on the panel of that carriage which Brougham invented,
and which still bears his name.[176] And this was the popular view of
that Chancellor whom Sheil called "a bully and a buffoon." Even his
friends distrusted him, and in 1835, when Lord Melbourne returned to
power, the Great Seal, which Brougham had held but a year before, was
not returned to him, but was put into Commission. No reasons were
assigned for this step, but they were sufficiently obvious. "My
Lords," said Melbourne in the Upper House, when Brougham subsequently
attacked him with intense bitterness, "you have heard the eloquent
speech of the noble and learned Lord--one of the most eloquent he ever
delivered in this House--and I leave your Lordships to consider what
_must be_ the nature and strength of the objections which prevent my
Government from availing themselves of the services of such a
man!"[177] Perhaps one of the strongest objections was the intense
dislike with which the ex-Chancellor was regarded by the King. This
was not lessened by the cavalier fashion in which Brougham treated his
sovereign. When he was forced to return the Great Seal into the Royal
hands in 1834, he did not deliver it in person, as was proper, but
sent it in a bag by a messenger, "as a fishmonger," says Lord
Campbell, "might have sent a salmon for the King's dinner!"
[176] The Duke of Wellington once chaffed Brougham, saying that he
would only be known hereafter as the inventor of a carriage. The
Chancellor retorted by remarking that the Duke would only be
remembered as the inventor of a pair of boots. "D---- the boots!" said
Wellington. "I had quite forgotten them; you have the best of it!"
[177] Russell's "Recollections," p. 138.
A Privy Councillor, by virtue of his office, and "Prolocutor of the
House of Lords by prescription,"[178] the Lord High Chancellor of
Great Britain occupies to-day the "oldest and most dignified of the
lay offices of the Crown." By ancient statute, to kill him is a
treasonable offence, and his post as Lord Keeper is not determined by
the demise of the Crown. He enjoys precedence after the Royal Family
and the Archbishop of Canterbury, holds one of the most prominent
places in the Cabinet, and is the highest paid servant of the Crown.
[178] Blackstone's "Commentaries," vol. iii. p. 47.
In Henry I.'s time the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal was paid 5_s._ a
day, and received a "livery" of provisions, a pint and a half of
claret, one "gross wax-light" and forty candle-ends. The Chancellor's
perquisites used always to include a liberal supply of wine from the
King's vineyards in Gascony. At the beginning of the nineteenth
century, he received a salary of £19,000; but Lord Eldon, in 1813,
gave up £5000 of this to the Vice-Chancellor, and for a long time the
Woolsack was worth £14,000 a year. A modern Chancellor's salary is
£10,000--£5000 as Lord Chancellor, and £5000 as Speaker of the House
of Lords--and he is further entitled to a pension of half that amount
on retirement.
The extensive patronage that attaches to the office adds much to its
importance. The Chancellor recommends the appointment of all judges of
the High Court and Court of Appeal, and is empowered to appoint or
remove County Court judges and Justices of the Peace. He also has the
gift of all Crown livings of £20 or under, according to the valuation
made in Henry VIII.'s reign, and of many other places.[179] One of
his perquisites is the Great Seal, which, when "broken up," becomes
the property of the reigning Chancellor. The breaking up of the Great
Seal is a simple ceremony which inflicts no actual damage upon the
article itself. Whenever a new Great Seal is adopted, at the beginning
of a new reign, on a change of the royal arms, or when the old Seal is
worn out, the sovereign gives the latter a playful tap with a hammer,
and it is then considered to be useless, and becomes the property of
the Lord Chancellor. On the accession of William IV. a dispute arose
between Lord Lyndhurst and Lord Brougham as to who should possess the
old Seal. The former had been Chancellor when the order was made for
the engraving of the new Seal; the latter had occupied the Woolsack
when the new Seal was finished and ordered to be put into use. The
King, to whom the question was referred, decided, with truly
Solomonian sagacity, that the Seal should be divided between the two
Chancellors.[180]
[179] Lord Eldon, who dearly loved a joke, wrote as follows to his
friend, Dr. Fisher, of the Charter House, who had applied to him for a
piece of preferment then vacant--
"DEAR FISHER,
"I cannot, to-day, give you the preferment for which you ask.
"I remain, your sincere friend,
"ELDON.
"_Turn over._"
(On the other side of the page he added)
"I gave it to you yesterday."
"Life of Eldon," vol. ii. p. 612.
[180] The same difficulty arose in 1878, when Queen Victoria solved it
by following the precedent set in 1831, and divided the Seal between
Lord Cairns and his predecessor.
The people of England, as Disraeli said some seventy years ago, have
been accustomed to recognize in the Lord Chancellor a man of singular
acuteness, of profound learning, and vast experience, who has won his
way to a great position by the exercise of great qualities, by patient
study, and unwearied industry. They expect to find in him a man who
has obtained the confidence of his profession before he challenges the
confidence of his country, who has secured eminence in the House of
Commons before he has aspired to superiority in the House of Lords; a
man who has expanded from a great lawyer into a great statesman, and
who "brings to the Woolsack the commanding reputation which has been
gained in the long and laborious years of an admired career."[181]
Seldom, indeed, are the people of England disappointed.
[181] "The Runnymede Letters," p. 230.