■tf 
 
 y& 
 
 HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, 
 
 THE CONVENTION PARLIAMENT OF 1688-9 
 
 PASSING OF THE REFORM BILL, 
 in 1832. 
 
 W. CHARLES TOWNSEND, Esq., A.M., 
 
 RECORDER OF MACCLESFIELD. 
 
 VOLUME I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 HENRY COLBURN, PUBLISHER, 
 
 GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 
 1843.
 
 london : harrison and co., printers, 
 st. martins' lane.
 
 j 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 A popular History of the House of Commons, fur- 
 m nishing biographical notices of those members who have 
 - been most distinguished in its annals, and describing 
 | the changes in its internal economy, powers, and privi- 
 -' leges, appears to be still wanting in our literature. In 
 vain we look for many a likeness in the national por- 
 trait-gallery of senators who have achieved greatness 
 within the walls of St. Stephen's Chapel; — the long 
 • array of Speakers, lawyers, country gentlemen, and 
 men of the sword, marshalled in the procession of 
 England's worthies, seems far from complete. How 
 little is comparatively known of those who claimed 
 5 precedence as first commoners in the land ! The name 
 2 of Powle, to whom belonged the peculiar honour of 
 £! presiding over the Convention, sounds almost strangely 
 oin our ears; Sir John Trevor is chiefly remembered by 
 the erroneous statement of Granger, that he put the 
 question to the vote on his own expulsion; of the 
 virulent declaimer Foley, the scheming Lyttleton, the 
 " one Smith," who occupied the chair of the first Par- 
 liament of Great Britain, — scarcely more than a few 
 | empty titles and barren dates are recorded! 
 
 Nor have the great lawyers, who informed the 
 debates with their constitutional knowledge, and whose 
 
 a 2 

 
 IV PREFACE. 
 
 merits are deeply graven in the statute-bonk, been 
 more fortunate in obtaining an " honest chronicler." 
 The venerable trimmer, Serjeant Maynard, exhibiting, 
 in his eighty-eighth year, the very impersonation of 
 Chaucer's portraiture of 
 
 A Serjeant-at-law wary and wise, 
 That oft had been at the pervise, 
 There was also ; full of rich excellence, 
 Discreet he was, and of great reverence; 
 
 the " gentle Somers," who redeemed his learned bro- 
 thers from the charge, too common in that age, of 
 universal corruption; the tainted learning of Sawyer 
 and Williams; the stout-hearted Price, who rescued by 
 his eloquence so fair a portion of the principality from 
 the prodigal gifts of King William; the black-letter 
 Jacobite Sir Bartholomew Shower; the impetuous 
 Lechmere, who harangued the House immediately on 
 taking the oaths, and was facetiously objected to by a 
 country gentleman, as not having a right to speak, not 
 being at the time a sitting member; the much-quizzed 
 Sir Joseph Jokyll, " that good old neutral member," — 
 
 Who never changed his politics or wig, — 
 
 deserve to be better known. Even the most exalted 
 in professional rank, Cowper, Ilarcourt, King, Parker, 
 have been consigned to the tender mercies of genea- 
 logists, and compilers of peerages, instead of having 
 their names written in characters that may be read in 
 the Fasti of their country. 
 
 Tin- history of the House itself is not less con- 
 cealed from the popular gaze, locked up, as it were, in 
 its voluminous Journals, State Trials, Parliamentary 
 Debates, and Precedents of Ilatsell. Yet even by a
 
 PREFACE. V 
 
 lover of light reading how much interest and amuse- 
 ment may be found in a review of its former privileges; 
 some obsolete, or retrenched, and some forgotten; of 
 those hard-won rights to personal and deliberative 
 freedom, which the progress of constitutional principles 
 has sanctioned and matured; of its large powers both 
 to reward and to punish ; of its power of impeachments, 
 that ponderous instrument of the vengeance of the 
 Commons, blunted by frequent and injudicious use; of 
 its former vindictive expulsion of members, and tyranni- 
 cal sentences on offenders kneeling at the bar! 
 
 What singular changes have been wrought by 
 Time, the great innovator, in the internal economy of 
 the House — in the hours of meeting — in the frequency 
 of attendance — in the length and importance of de- 
 bates — in the number of members who take part in 
 discussions — in the age of entering Parliament, in 
 the increased intelligence of our legislators — in the 
 order and decorum of proceedings — in the temper and 
 tone of oratory — in its electrical power upon public 
 opinion — in the crowded strangers' gallery — in the 
 extent and variety of petitions ! 
 
 The improved good sense of the grand inquest of 
 the nation as a corporate body must be admitted by 
 those who contrast the present wonders of reporting 
 with the debates within closed doors, when all publica- 
 tion of what passed was strictly forbidden, and Somers 
 jotted down in pencil the heads of discourse upon the 
 vote of abdication; or who compare the modern pub- 
 licity of the short-hand writer with the stealthy notes 
 taken by Cave and "Woodfall behind the gallery clock, 
 and published, after an interval of six months, under
 
 Vi PREFACE. 
 
 the disguise of Roman names. The well-regulated 
 communication between the king and parliament — the 
 subsidence of disputes and jealousies between the two 
 branches of the legislature, once oscillating against 
 each other — the reforms in our civil code — those 
 anecdotes of legislation which illustrate manners — the 
 course of criminal jurisprudence widening and deepen- 
 ing, and becoming ensanguined in its hue, till arrested 
 by a wise humanity — the decided improvement as a 
 class in the representatives of the people, and their 
 title to rank as the first assembly of gentlemen in 
 Europe, — can scarcely fail to interest all who delight 
 in literature, unless, indeed, the historian be unworthy 
 of his theme. 
 
 To fuse together these rich materials into one 
 complete memorial, and present a graphic History of 
 the Commons' House of Parliament is the design of 
 the present work. It would have been too discursive, 
 and occupied an inconvenient space, had it recounted 
 at length the first struggles of " Goodman Burgess" 
 with the Tudors, and his bold defiance of the Stuarts. 
 A more recent period has therefore been selected? 
 commencing with the Convention Parliament of 1688, 
 and ending with the second parliament of King 
 William IV., which suffered a total change in its 
 constitutional character and constituency, when the 
 royal assent was given to the Reform Bill. 
 
 Within these two strongly-marked metes and 
 bounds, the noble introduction and eventful close 
 to modern parliamentary records, there is compre- 
 hended a space of 144 years, which may be again 
 subdivided into three distinguishing ceras. The first
 
 PREFACE. Vil 
 
 includes a space of 39 years, from the abdication of 
 James to the death of George I. in 1727, charac- 
 terized by master spirits, critical events, and stirring 
 debate. The second sera, a sort of mezzo-termino, 
 comprehends the reign of George II., when men in 
 office were corrupt, and public morals low, and the 
 general topics of discourse resembled parish vestry 
 discussions, but still a prosperous reign, the sound 
 common sense of Walpole promoting, even by inglo- 
 rious arts, the national welfare, and Chatham's genius 
 rescuing the age from mediocrity. 
 
 The regular publication of the debates, and 
 troubles in America, usher in the last and most 
 glorious epoch, the days of North and Burke — of 
 Pitt and Fox — of Windham and Canning — of Tier- 
 ney, and Brougham, and Peel, illustrated by oratory 
 enduring as the language, and with memories of 
 statesmen that can never die. 
 
 This volume is dedicated to the first of these 
 periods; a model of the House of Commons, as it 
 was at the close of the seventeenth century — a monu- 
 ment, however imperfect, to the sayings and deeds 
 of those patriotic legislators, who framed the Bill of 
 Rights, conquered France in her height of pride, 
 established the Union with Scotland, secured the 
 Protestant faith by the Act of Settlement, and with 
 the Septennial Act confirmed the independence of 
 the representatives of the people. 
 
 Ergo ipsos quamvis angusti terminus sevi 
 Excipiat neque enira plus septuma ducitur aetas 
 At genus immortale manet, multosque per annos 
 Stat Fortuna domus et avi numerantur avorum.
 
 Vll] PREFACE. 
 
 A few sentences as to the execution of the first 
 volume. The lives of all the speakers and lawyers 
 have been recomposed, and in the decided majority 
 of instances are new, a circumstance which may 
 atone for some omissions and mistakes. It is hoped 
 that the memoirs of Harley and Somers will not be 
 considered even relatively too long by those who bear 
 in mind how completely the one swayed the parlia- 
 ments of King William, and the other those of Queen 
 Anne. As we approach more closely to our own 
 times, the characters of eminent statesmen are too 
 well known and too ably recorded to require or justify 
 similar diffuseness. The author has searched in vain no 
 less for a complete history of the obsolete privileges of 
 the House, than for a narrative, illustrated by examples, 
 of the manner in which freedom of person and of 
 speech has been impugned, advanced, and confirmed. 
 He is far from flattering himself that he has supplied the 
 deficiency, but for the attempt solicits indulgence. 
 
 W. C. T. 
 
 Toriungton Square, 
 February, 1843.
 
 CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Tago 
 
 A Retrospective History of the Speakers of the House of 
 Commons who preceded the Revolution — Sir Thomas 
 Hungerford — The first Parlour — Notices of Sir Peter de 
 la Mare, Thorpe, and Sir John Tiptoft — Names not his- 
 torical till the reign of Henry VII. — The chair then 
 usurped hy lawyers — Dudley — Sir Thomas More — Sir 
 Edward Coke — Formal excuses introduced under Henry 
 V. — Ceremonial speeches marked by Eastern adulation and 
 abject insincerity — Specimens of orations, pedantic and 
 hollow, in Sir Richard Onslow and Serjeant Yelverton — 
 Character of Lenthall — Slight respect paid to the Speaker 
 under the military regime — Notices of Sir Harbottle 
 Grimston, Sir Edward Turner, Sir Edward Seymour — 
 Rank and emoluments of the Speaker — Increase of con- 
 sideration . . . . . .1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Life of the first Speaker in the reign of William and Mary, Mr. 
 Henry Powle; a leader of the country party in the Par- 
 liaments of Charles II. — Specimens of his eloquence — 
 One of the few Commoners in the king's first Privy Council 
 — A manager of Lord Strafford's impeachment — Pensioner 
 of Louis XIV. — Member of the Royal Society — At the 
 Revolution unanimously chosen Speaker — Retirement to 
 the Rolls and Death — Life of Sir John Trevor — Anecdotes 
 of this servile and corrupt courtier — Justly expelled the 
 House— Continued judge notwithstanding, till his death — 
 A very good lawyer — Life of Mr. Paul Foley — Elected 
 Speaker by a lucky accident — An artificer of grievances 
 and bold declaimer — Life of Sir Thomas Littleton — 
 Brought up to trade — One of the good old jobbing whigs 
 — A complacent treasurer of the navy, and excellent man 
 of business . . . . , .33
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Tage 
 
 Life of Robert Harley Earl of Oxford and Mortimer — Of a 
 good family, inclined to Presbyterianism — Entered tbe 
 House as an independent Member — An excellent Financier, 
 the Speaker of three Parliaments, Secretary of State — 
 Intrigued against and cashiered by his Colleagues — Dexte- 
 rously supplanted them — Stabbed into favour — Earl and 
 Treasurer the same week — Within three years the most 
 popular and most unpopular man in England — Unduly 
 extolled in his life-time — Unjustly disparaged since — Had 
 great faults as a Minister of State, dilatory, the constant 
 dupe of the morrow — Fond of finesse and insincere — A 
 trimmer and trickster by policy — Hated by the Duke of 
 Marlborough and by Lord Bolingbroke — Responsible for 
 a portion of this hatred — Too eager for, and too retentive 
 of power. . . . . . .87 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Life of Speaker Harley, continued — The favourable features of 
 his public and private character delineated — Magnanimous 
 in disgrace — Of unshaken constancy in the tower — No 
 Jacobite — Frugal of the public money — Incorrupt — 
 Tolerant — Moral — Domestic — Devoted to literature, and 
 the friend of literary men — A firm ally of the Church of 
 England — An excellent companion — Patron of Defoe, 
 Parnell, Congreve, and Steele — The playful associate of 
 Sir Christopher Wren, Prior, Pope, Arbuthnot, and Swift 
 — Founder of a noble library — Patriots may find much to 
 blame in Lord Oxford, but scholars must revere the 
 collector of the I Iarleian Manuscripts. . . .121 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Life of the Speaker described by Evelyn as " one Mr. John 
 Smith" — A staunch whig — The whipper-in of his party — 
 Presided over the first Parliament of Great Britain — 
 Instances of his sophistry — Life of Sir Richard Onslow — 
 Succeeded Mr. Smith at his request — Sir Richard a sorry 
 rhetorician — His family have returned three Speakers to 
 the House — Anecdotes of his grandfather, Speaker and 
 Solicitor-General to the Queen — Nick-named " stiff Dick"
 
 CONTENTS. XI 
 
 Tage 
 
 by the tories — A great stickler for minute forms — Anec- 
 dote of his contest with the black rod — Laden with honours 
 at the succession of George I. — Ennobled repartee of his 
 son — Life of Mr. William Bromley, twenty-six years M.P. 
 for the University of Oxford — Wrote remarks on the 
 Grande Tour of France and Italy — Extracts from the 
 book — Maliciously criticised by the whigs — Favourably 
 contrasted with Addison's tour — Mr. Bromley factious 
 against Marlborough — Eager against the dissenters — The 
 champion of high church commits a sad blunder as 
 Speaker — Letters to Sir Thomas Hanmer — His pet name 
 " the squire" — An excellent specimen of the English 
 country gentleman . . . . .160 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Life of Sir Thomas Hanmer — The model of Sir Charles 
 Grandison — Marries the Duchess of Grafton — Anecdotes 
 of that lady — Sir Thomas author of the bill for qualifying 
 members by estate — Complimented by Steele on his election 
 to the chair — Correspondence with Steele on his expulsion 
 — Rhymed against for his independence — Prior's letter to 
 the ex-Speaker— His unhappy second marriage — Recrea- 
 tions in gardening and literature — Letters on subjects of 
 science — Edits Shakespeare — Niched into the Dunciad — 
 Assailed by Johnson, and Warburton, and Hervey — Han- 
 mer's rejoinder — Death and superb epitaph — Spencer 
 Compton the first Speaker who held his post for one entire 
 reign — A formal and solemn Speaker — A good balancer 
 of periods — Defective disciplinarian — Chosen premier by 
 George II., but resigned from incompetency — Raised to 
 the peerage three steps atonce — Earl of Wilmington fawned 
 upon by Bubb Doddington — On Walpole's resignation 
 First Lord of the Treasury — Satirized in verse and prose 
 by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams — A frigid patron of 
 Young and Thomson — Termed by Walpole after his death 
 " an arrant nobody" . . . • .196 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The obsolete and extinct privileges of members reviewed — The 
 wages formerly given to knights and burgesses — Curious
 
 Xii CONTENTS. 
 
 Tago 
 
 anomalies in the writs de expends — Origin of the custom 
 of wages — Abuse — Pensioner Parliament ashamed of their 
 hire — Andrew Marvell the last recipient — Impolicy of 
 reviving salaries to senators — Abuse of written protections 
 designed originally for menial servants, granted to friends 
 and needy retainers — Anecdotes from the journals of the 
 extent to which these unreasonable protections were 
 carried — Complaints of members for breaches of privilege 
 in the persons of their servants — End of these sins and 
 follies — Inconvenience and injustice of the privileges 
 claimed by members on their own behalf of exemption from 
 all actions and suits — Instances of the wrongs inflicted in 
 consequence — The personalty of members formerly privi- 
 leged even against the crown — Members of Parliament 
 real gainers by divesting themselves of these vexatious 
 immunities ..... 240 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Freedom of speech the quintessence of the four essences, accord- 
 ing to Coke, how battled for under the Plantagenets, and 
 impugned by the Tudors and Stewarts — Fierce conflict of 
 its champions with Queen Elizabeth, James I., and Charles 
 I. — Sir John Eliot and the other "vipers" illegally 
 punished for alleged seditious speeches in the House, and 
 fearfully avenged — The Long Parliament inimical to free 
 discussion — Attacked after the Restoration by personal 
 violence — Debate on the mutilation of Sir John Coventry 
 for a sharp jest — License still indulged at the expense of 
 Charles II. — Abjectly abandoned by the Parliament of 
 James II. — Freedom of speech an article of the Bill of 
 Rights — Excessive liberties taken with the name and 
 person of King William- — Taunting reflections of Sir 
 Charles Sedlcy, Sir William L. Gower, John How, Gran- 
 ville, and Sir John Knight — The Commons indulged an 
 equal latitude of remark at the expense of the Upper 
 House and individual peers, but would not allow a murmur 
 against the sweet voices of the majority — Offensive phrases 
 arbitrarily noticed and punished — Examples in Manlcy, 
 Caesar, Windham, and Shippcn — The House at length 
 ashamed of its capricious tyranny — The privilege has been 
 long well understood and acted upon . . . 268
 
 CONTENTS. xiii 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Page 
 
 Petition for privilege from arrest first included in the prayer of 
 Sir John Cheney — Importance to electors of this freedom 
 from personal restraint — Its gradual extension to all civil 
 process — Case of Ferrers — Of Sir Thomas Shirley and 
 Asgill — The advantages and attendant inconveniences of 
 this protection discussed — Mr. Baring's bill to take away 
 exemption from arrest for judgment debts of doubtful ex- 
 pediency — An independent House of Commons must be 
 free in every particular — The privilege of franking letters 
 traced to an ignoble origin — Anecdotes of its convenience 
 and abuse — Attempts of Lord North and Mr. Pitt to 
 abate it — This last feather in the plume of privilege at 
 length torn away. . . . . .315 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Lawyers the most early and resolute champions of privilege — 
 Sir Edward Coke, Selden, and Hyde — The fears of usurp- 
 ing Kings the best homage to their merits — Excluded 
 from the "lack-learning Parliament" — Objects of jealousy 
 to the Crown, to churchmen, country gentlemen, and 
 courtiers — Causes of this general unpopularity — Lawyers 
 in the House not numerically formidable — Their import- 
 ance and deserts — The chief artificers of the happy revolu- 
 tion — Memoirs of the most eminent lawyers in the House 
 during the reigns of William, Anne, and George I., com- 
 mencing with Serjeant Maynard, the Father of the Bar 
 for forty-eight years, a member, and first Commissioner 
 of the Great Seal at eighty-seven — Anecdotes of his 
 shrewdness and appetency of gain — A manager of the im- 
 peachment of Strafford and Laud — Impeached himself — 
 Pleaded for the life of Charles I. — Afterwards the Pro- 
 tector's Serjeant — Pleaded against Cavaliers to the death 
 — Swore fealty to Richard Cromwell — Welcomed the 
 abjured Stuart on his restoration — Refused a judgeship as 
 interfering with his gains — Anecdotes of his craft, parsi- 
 mony, and adroit trimming — Excellent at repartee — A 
 clever but prejudiced debater — Quoted Syriac in the 
 House — Conducted the conference with the Lords at the 
 Revolution, and drew strange analogies from the Old
 
 Xiv CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 Bailey — The ruling passion strong in death — Too astute 
 to be venerable — too learned for a pettifogger . • 332 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Life of the "gentle Somers" — A "weakly boy" — Anecdotes of 
 his youth — Friend of the young Duke of Shrewsbury — 
 Among the mob of gentlemen who translated Plutarch — 
 Junior counsel to the Bishops at thirty-seven, then compa- 
 ratively unknown — Returned to the Convention for Wor- 
 cester — Specimens of his eloquence in the House — Solici- 
 tor and Attorney-General — Lord Keeper in 1693 — His 
 celebrated judgment in the Bankers' case — Too pliant a 
 courtier — Injudiciously yielded to his Sovereign's wishes in 
 the first Partition Treaty — Impeached for granting powers 
 under the Great Seal, leaving blanks for names — Made 
 a vigorous defence at the bar of the House — The King 
 compelled to sacrifice the keeper of his conscience — Com- 
 posed the last and memorable royal speech of William — 
 Obnoxious to the Prince of Denmark — Dismissed from 
 the Privy Council — President of the Royal Society — 
 Reconciled to Queen Anne on the death of her husband — 
 Bland and conciliating in his manners — Hated by the 
 Duchess and disliked by the Duke of Marlborough — Com- 
 manded to resign his staff of office, 1710 — Bowed down by 
 sickness, but, even when imbecile, the oracle of the Whigs 
 — Anecdotes of his old age — The blemishes in his moral 
 character — Noted libertinism — Love of money and insin- 
 cerity — The tributes of the wise and good, both in prose 
 and verse, to his excellence, of Swift and Addison, of 
 Mackintosh and Lord J. Russell, of Garth and Warton — 
 The name of Somers an heir-loom to his country . 362 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Lives of two other great lawyers in the Convention Parlia- 
 ment, but wanting moral worth, Sir Robert Sawyer and 
 Sir William Williams — Mr. Sawyer " a great practiscr in 
 the Exchequer" — Speaker of the House in 1678 — Attor- 
 ney-General from 1681 to 1687, six years stained with 
 blood — History of his hunting to the death, College, 
 Lord William Russell, Algernon Dudley, and Sir Tho-
 
 CONTENTS. XV 
 
 Tage 
 
 mas Armstrong- — Dismissed from office by James II. for 
 his attachment to the Church of England — Leading 
 counsel for the seven bishops — Specimen of his jejune 
 oratory in their defence — Returned to the Convention for 
 the University of Cambridge — Expelled for his participa- 
 tion in the judicial murder of Armstrong — Died in 1692 
 — Anecdotes of the youth of his rival, Sir Wm. Williams 
 — A railing and homely Speaker of the House of Commons 
 — Specimens of his vituperative eloquence to Sir Francis 
 Wythens and Sir Robert Peyton — Fined £10,000 for 
 publishing, as Speaker, Dangerfield's narrative, implicating 
 the Duke of York — This illegal fine never repaid to Wil- 
 liams — Defended with vigour and ability many state pri- 
 soners in Charles II.'s reign — Suddenly apostatized to the 
 court of James II. — His petulant prosecution of the 
 bishops — Anecdotes of his demeanour at the trial — Instant 
 to abandon his abdicated Sovereign — A ready debater in 
 the Parliament of William III. — Close of his versatile and 
 turbulent life — Happy in one circumstance, the being 
 founder of an illustrious race . . . .397 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Life of the exemplary Tory lawyer Robert Price — Anecdotes 
 of his youth and travels — His opposition to the grant of 
 several lordships in the principality to the Earl of Portland 
 — Specimens of his speech, published under the title of 
 " Gloria Cambriae" — Appointed a Baron of the Exchequer 
 on the accession of Queen Anne — Instance of his incorrupt 
 opposition as Judge to the personal wishes of George I. — 
 Curious history of his eldest son, the member for Weobly 
 — Life of the fiery Jacobite Sir Bartholomew Shower, un- 
 noticed in Biographical Dictionaries — Extracts from his 
 common-place book — Devoted champion of high church — 
 Wrote virulent pamphlets against King William — Specimens 
 of his writings and speeches in defence of prisoners for 
 high treason — Intrepid counsel for Lord Banbury and Sir 
 John Fenwick — Carried otf by fever in 1700 — Life of an 
 equally impetuous Whig lawyer, Lord Lechmere — His 
 exploits as barrister, and on taking his seat — Leader of the 
 House and Attorney-General at the accession — His me-
 
 XVI CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 movable prosecution of Matthews, for printing' a treason- 
 able libel — Accused of corruption by the Solicitor-General, 
 Sir William Thompson — History of that singular charge — 
 His triumphant acquittal — Quarrels with Walpole — Anec- 
 dotes of his dissensions, restiveness, and precipitancy — 
 Called up to the House of Lords — Amusing interview 
 with George II. — Died of apoplexy in June, 1727 . 428 
 
 Illustration. 
 Interior of the House of Commons in 1690 . . Frontispiece.
 
 HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The first speakers of the House of Commons were 
 chosen from belted knights and commoners of distinc- 
 tion, the choice being made by the House, but in 
 accordance with the previous nomination of the king. 
 Sir Thomas Hungerford, 51 Henry III., in the year 
 1376, is the first named as speaker in the parliament 
 roll, and termed parlour, or mouth of the House. 
 But, as the ancient parliament-rolls recorded only the 
 acts that passed between both Houses, and the laws 
 that were made, omitting all matters of form and 
 ceremony, it may be conjectured that the antiquity of 
 the office is coeval with the sitting of the Commons 
 apart from the Lords. In the 44th year of Henry 
 Ill's, reign, their refusal to suffer the recall of Adomar, 
 the Bishop of Winchester elect, from banishment, is 
 signed by Petrus de Mounteforti, vice communitatis. 
 
 The head of these ambulatory parliaments, meeting 
 one year at Winchester, another at Rutland, now sum- 
 moned to Kenilworth, and anon to St. Edmondsbury, 
 for the mere purpose of granting supplies, and re- 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 2 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 stricted to two or three weeks, as the commonalty 
 kept a sharp reckoning of the wages due to " Good- 
 man Burgess V could not but share in their original 
 insignificance. His person was not always sacred 
 from violence, nor his authority from contempt. Sir 
 Peter de la Mare was committed close prisoner to 
 Nottingham Castle for having spoken too freely of 
 the royal favourite, Alice Pierce\ When Sir John 
 Pickering declared, in the name of the Commons, 
 that the late King Edward III. had promised to dis- 
 charge them of all tallages for a long time, the steward 
 of the household, Sir Richard-le-Scroop, replied that, 
 " saving the honour and reverence due to the king 
 and Lords, what the Commons said was not true." 
 The floor of the House of Lords would have been 
 covered with gauntlets, had the audacious steward 
 ventured such an aspersion on their veracity, but the 
 Nether House (as they were termed, nor was the term 
 misapplied) heard in silence, and made no sign of 
 anger, or remonstrance. 
 
 Further humiliation was heaped upon the speaker 
 in the reign of this petulant monarch, Richard II. A 
 member having ventured to bring in a bill for avoiding 
 the extravagant expenses of the king's household, he 
 commanded the Duke of Lancaster to charge Sir John 
 Bussey, the speaker, on his allegiance, to acquaint 
 him who it was that brought such an impudent pro- 
 posal before parliament. With an abject humility, 
 characteristic of the times, and of the slight estimation 
 in which both the office of speaker and the privileges 
 of the House were then held, Sir John Bussey gave 
 up the bill and the name of the person who had intro- 
 
 ■ Elsynge's Mode of Holding Parliaments. 
 b Parliamentary History, vol. i.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 6 
 
 duced it, Thomas Haxey, clerk. The poor clerk was 
 condemned to die the death of a traitor, for having 
 taken such an unwarrantable license, but was after- 
 wards pardoned, and his attainder in the next reign 
 reversed. 
 
 The succeeding speaker, Thomas Thorpe, whose 
 name has acquired great celebrity from the privileges 
 of the House being broken in his person, met with a 
 more tragical fate. During his speakership, we are 
 told by D'Ewes c , " there were repeated prorogations 
 and adjournments of parliament. Richard, Duke of 
 York, having gained the ascendant of the king, pre- 
 pared habiliments of war in the palace of the Bishop 
 of Durham. Thorpe, being speaker, by command of 
 the king, seized the arms, whereupon the duke 
 brought his action of trespass in the Exchequer 
 against Thorpe, and upon trial that term recovered 
 1,000/. damages, and thereupon Thorpe was com- 
 mitted to the prison of the Fleet in execution." In 
 vain the whole House petitioned to have their speaker 
 restored, urging his privilege, " by common custom, 
 time out of memory of man, and ever afore these 
 times, used in every of the parliaments of the king's 
 noble progenitors." Their just petition was unheeded. 
 The Duke of York stood up in his place in the Lords' 
 House, and declared that Thorpe, having been cast in 
 an action of trespass, for carrying away his goods, lay 
 now in prison in execution, where he (the duke) 
 prayed that he might remain. His prayer was in the 
 nature of a command, for we find in six weeks the 
 duke installed Protector. 
 
 The peers of parliament accordingly resolved that 
 the speaker should remain in execution, notwith- 
 standing his privilege, and required the Commons to 
 
 c Sir Symonds D'Ewes' Journal. 
 
 B 2
 
 4 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 elect a new speaker, which they did as directed. The 
 unhappy Thorpe, being compelled to pay these exor- 
 bitant damages, fled to the king, was taken prisoner 
 at Nottingham field, and sent to Newgate, thence 
 committed to the Marshalsea, and at last beheaded at 
 Haringay Park, in Middlesex. The change of dynasty 
 was fortunate, however, for the privileges of the Com- 
 mons, whose rising spirit and increased importance 
 appear to have been engrafted on the usurpations of 
 the government. 
 
 The first speaker in the parliament of Henry IV., 
 Sir John Tiptoft, though he excused himself on account 
 of bis youth and want of discretion, and expressed sur- 
 prise at his excuse not being received, told the monarch 
 plainly, in open parliament, that his house was far 
 more chargeable, yet less honourable, than that of any 
 of his progenitors' 1 . Other remarkable instances of 
 this juvenile speaker's audacity are recorded. He 
 required that the castle of Manlion, the key of the 
 three kingdoms, which was kept by a foreigner, should 
 be kept in future by Englishmen only, and assured 
 the king that the report of the Commons having 
 talked of his person otherwise than beseemed them 
 was untrue, which assurance Henry IV. said he 
 believed. Anxious to conciliate, that monarch not 
 only bore with, but rewarded, a freedom of speech 
 which his predecessor had punished in Haxey as trea- 
 sonable. " Ille crucem tulit, hie diadema." Sir John 
 Tiptoft was amply requited for his happy daring with 
 a rich grant of forfeited lands, with a patent of nobi- 
 lity as Earl of Worcester, and (strange specimen of 
 regal bounty) with the goods and chattels of Peter 
 Priswick, carpenter, a felon, amounting to £150. 
 The bold language of this lucky speaker was too dan- 
 
 " Prynne, cited by Hatsell.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. ."> 
 
 gerous to be drawn into a precedent. The king in 
 person told his successor, Sir Thomas Chaucer, when 
 making the common protestation "that he expected 
 the Commons would speak no unbecoming words, or 
 attempt anything that was not consistent with decency." 
 At this period, the speaker elect made no set oration, 
 refrained from all mock excuses, prayed for no privi- 
 leges, but contented himself with a protestation, that 
 what he had to say came from the whole House ; 
 therefore requesting that, if he should haply speak 
 anything without their consent, the same might be 
 amended before his departure from that place. 
 
 With Sir Richard Walsgrave, 5 Richard II., com- 
 menced the prayer to be excused, but only for some 
 real or supposed reason, and not as a mere matter of 
 etiquette 6 . When Sir John Popham was presented to 
 the king for his approval, 28 Henry YL, he desired to 
 be excused on account of his age, and that a new 
 choice might be made, to which the king assented. 
 If the speaker elect displeased his brother members 
 by any ill-advised address during his inauguration, he 
 was cashiered with little ceremony. In the 1 st year 
 of Henry IV., we read of Sir John Cheney being- 
 presented by the Commons for their speaker, accepted 
 by the king, and making the usual protestation. The 
 next day, Sir John, with the Commons, sought a 
 second interview of the sovereign, to announce that, 
 by reason of a sudden disorder, he was unable to 
 serve, and that they had elected in his stead Sir John 
 Dorewood, who was approved. This sudden disorder, 
 which still permitted the speaker to make his excuse 
 in person, may not improbably have existed in the 
 body corporate. 
 
 At the beginning of the next reign, Mr. William 
 
 e Elsynge.
 
 6 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Stourton, having made an indiscreet speech, which 
 gave offence to the House, was compelled to resign in 
 favour of a more wary prolocutor, John Dorewood, 
 Junior, who told his majesty that William Stourton lay 
 sick in his bed, and was not able to execute the office f . 
 " It should seem," says Elsynge, " that Stourton lay 
 sick for grief, and note, the king was not acquainted 
 with their choice of a new speaker before they 
 presented him." This laborious inquirer into the 
 privileges of the House has mooted two important 
 questions upon the election of speaker. First, if the 
 Commons might choose their speaker, whether the 
 king commands them or not ; and second, whether 
 the election be in their own absolute choice. He 
 answers the first question in the negative; as the 
 charge to choose their speaker has been continued 
 from the 2 Henry IV., the long use hath made it so 
 material, that, without the king's commandment, or 
 leave, they cannot choose their speaker. The second 
 query he resolves in favour of the Commons' absolute 
 choice, contrary to the opinion of Sir Edward Coke, 
 when elected to the office in 1592, who declared it to 
 be no election " until your majesty giveth allowance 
 and approbation," to which doctrine Blackstone 
 assents. It may be doubted whether a valuable 
 privilege was not drawn into question by the great 
 lawyer's vague use of courtly language, whether the 
 presenting of their speaker by the Commons was any 
 more than a public notification of their choice. The 
 precedent in Charles II. 's reign, when Mr. Seymour 
 was refused by the king, and, after a sharp dispute, 
 set aside by tacit consent, militates against this right. 
 Upon certain points of practice, there can be no dis- 
 pute that the member must be present who is put in 
 
 Ilutst'll's Precedents.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 7 
 
 nomination for the office of speaker, and that he 
 should hold a seat which is uncontested g . 
 
 The names of the speakers possess little historical 
 interest till we come down to the reign of Henry VII. 
 Their number is large, as they only presided over one, 
 or, at most, two parliaments, with the exception of 
 Roger Flower, Esq., the first below the degree of 
 knighthood appointed to the office, who, though only 
 ''entitled to write himself down Armigero," performed 
 the duties of speaker with such applause, as to be four 
 times elected. The first on whom devolved that most 
 grateful task, the returning thanks for eminent- ser- 
 vices, was Roger Hunt, who, in the presence of the 
 king and nobles, complimented the Duke of Bedford, 
 " nomine totius communitatis," for his warlike achieve- 
 ments and notable deeds in France 11 . 
 
 It was a sad degradation for the House when, 
 instead of the knightly De la Mare commending the 
 feats of chivalry, by wdiose decay the honour of the 
 realm did, and would, daily decrease, the pettifogging 
 lawyer Dudley, a tool of Henry the Seventh's extor- 
 tions, vaulted into the seat of dignity. Bacon remarks 
 in his history of that reign, that a man may easily 
 guess how absolutely the king took himself to be with 
 his parliament, when his creature, Dudley, who was 
 so odious to the public, was made speaker. As some 
 vindication of the wounded dignity of the Commons,, 
 it should be borne in mind that Dudley, however 
 odious, was still a gentlemen by birth, and a counsel of 
 eminence in his profession ; that, having committed 
 acts worthy of a felon's fate, the former speaker did 
 not disgrace in the manner of his death the dignity 
 attached to his late office, but suffered the penalties 
 
 s Parliaments and Councils of England. 
 h Parliamentary History, vol. i.
 
 8 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 of high treason, of which he was as innocent as of the 
 sin of witchcraft. To wipe off such a deep stain upon 
 the purity of their order, the House was permitted, in 
 the reign of Henry VIII. , to choose for speaker Sir 
 Thomas More, the first great man, and still the 
 greatest, of his race 1 ; the first English gentleman, 
 who signalised himself as an orator ; the first writer 
 of prose, which is still intelligible; the first layman, 
 Chancellor of England, that celebrated magistracy, 
 which has rarely been filled by a more learned, never 
 by a better, man. 
 
 In pleading his disabilities, when formerly pre- 
 sented for his royal master's acceptance, he intro- 
 duced, with classical taste, the story of Phormio 
 lecturing Hannibal on the art of war. " If I were to 
 presume to speak before his majesty of learning, and 
 the well-ordering of the government, or such like 
 matters, the king, who is so deeply learned, such a 
 master of policy, might say to me, as Hannibal to 
 Phormio, ' that he was an arrogant fool to presume 
 to teach one already master of chivalry and all the art 
 of war.'" 
 
 During his speakership, Cardinal Wolsey came 
 into the House with all his pomp, " with his maces, 
 with his pillars, his pole-axes, his crosse, his hatte, 
 and the great seal tooj," to require a subsidy of the 
 fifth part of every man's goods, to be paid in four 
 years. The House was silent, and the speaker, 
 falling on his knees, excused their silence, " abashed 
 at the sight of so noble a personage who was 
 able to awe the wisest and most learned men in the 
 realm." 
 
 To gloze with the tongue seems to have been such 
 
 1 Mackintosh's History of England, vol. ii. 
 J Roper's Life of Sir T. More.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 9 
 
 an essential attribute of the speaker, that even the 
 pure-minded More could not escape this degradation. 
 "Masters," quoth the cardinal, "unless it be the 
 manner of your House, as of likelihood it is, by the 
 mouth of your speaker, whom you have chosen for 
 trusty, and wise (as indeed he is), in such cases to 
 utter your minds, here is without doubt a marvellous 
 silence." 
 
 "And thereupon," adds Roper, in his life of Sir 
 Thomas More, " he required answer of Master 
 Speaker." He increased the anger of the high 
 cardinal by suggesting that, unless all the members 
 present could put their several thoughts into his head, 
 he alone was unable, in so weighty a matter, to give 
 his grace a sufficient answer, and that it was neither 
 expedient, nor agreeable with the ancient liberty of 
 the House, to make instantaneous reply. Wolsey 
 suddenly arose and withdrew, frustrated of his object, 
 nor Avould the Commons afterwards vote more than 
 two shillings in the pound subsidy. On resigning 
 the chair for the woolsack, Sir Thomas More was 
 succeeded by another lawyer, Sir Thomas Audley, to 
 whom he afterwards gave up the seals k . 
 
 From this period the chair was, by tacit consent, 
 yielded to the gentlemen of the long robe, and held 
 by them in succession (except in the solitary instance 
 of Mr. Seymour) till after the Revolution, their know- 
 ledge of precedents and constitutional information 
 being justly deemed most essential in asserting the 
 privileges and maintaining the rights of the House 1 . 
 
 k Parliaments and Councils of England. 
 
 1 " Robert Brooke, recorder of and member for tbe city of 
 London, elected speaker in the second year of Queen Mary, 1554, 
 is the first instance of a speaker not a knight of the shire.' — Old- 
 field's Representative Histdry.
 
 10 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 With professional precision, they introduced the cus- 
 tom of praying expressly for three things — access to 
 the king, freedom of speech, and freedom from arrest™ 1 . 
 Previously, their privileges had been enjoyed, except 
 in periods of tumult and anarchy, without any specific 
 claim or mention. Sir Thomas Hungerford proved 
 his access to the king, 51 Edward III., by announcing 
 that he had moved his majesty, then sick at Eltham, 
 to pardon all such as were unjustly convicted in the 
 last parliament. As soon as the privilege of access 
 began to be sought in the way of petition, the crown 
 took occasion to cavil at and curtail it. 
 
 " With regard to your first prayer for access," 
 replied the lordly Elizabeth, " her highness is well 
 contented that, in convenient time, and for convenient 
 causes, in convenient place, and without importunity, 
 as free access she granteth you, as any other hath 
 had 11 ." In the same reign, the Speaker Williams 
 petitioned, with old-fashioned bluntness, " that the 
 assembly of the Lower House may have frank and 
 free liberties to speak their minds without any con- 
 trolment, blame, grudge, menaces, or displeasure, 
 according to the ancient form." It would have been 
 well if the lawyers had not also imported from West- 
 minster Hall formal apologies and tedious harangues. 
 Elsynge notices this invention of prolixity, not reform. 
 ' ' The speaker's excuses at this day are merely formal, 
 and out of modesty ; anciently, they were both hearty 
 and real, or else no excuse at all was made. We may 
 gather from the parliament-rolls that anciently the 
 speaker delivered nothing but what the House gave 
 him in charge to speak ; but, at this day, it is in the 
 speaker's power to deliver in his speech what shall 
 
 ■ Elsyngo and Prynne. " Sir Symonds D'Ewcs' Journal.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 11 
 
 best please himself. Anciently, the privileges of the 
 Commons, though enjoyed, were never petitioned for 
 by the speaker." In the courtly presence of Henry 
 VIII., who dazzled his abashed Commons with the 
 purple pomp and stately splendours of the field of the 
 cloth of gold, the speaker first degraded the House by 
 strains of servile flattery and eastern adulation. 
 
 Sir Thomas Ingiefield, in presenting the money 
 bills, contented himself with enlarging on " the 
 youthful monarch's promising valour, wonderful tem- 
 perance, divine moderation in justice, and avowed 
 desire of clemency." Richard Rich, the speaker in 
 1537, not to be outdone by his predecessor, compared 
 the king " for justice and prudence to Solomon, for 
 strength and fortitude to Samson, for beauty and 
 comeliness to Absolom." This bad example infected, 
 with contagious facility, the future race of speakers* 
 who vied with each other alike in exaggerating the 
 merits of the sovereign, and depreciating their own. 
 Nothing could equal the height of their panegyric, or 
 the depth of their humility, except its utter hollow- 
 ness and falsehood. Some of the proceedings, as 
 faithfully reported in D'Evves, are very amusing. The 
 Lord Keeper Bacon, 5 Elizabeth, thus harangues the 
 Commons : 
 
 " My masters all, for that the Nether House, 
 being so many together, must of necessity have one 
 to be a mouth, aider, or instructor unto them, for the 
 opening of matters, which is called the speaker, there- 
 fore go and assemble yourselves together and elect 
 one, a discreet, wise, and learned man." The Com- 
 mons returned with Mr. Williams, who, among divers 
 authors of good laws, with rare pedantry enumerated 
 
 ° Parliamentary History, vol. i.
 
 12 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 to the queen ; first, " Palestina, the queen, reigning 
 before the deluge, who made laws as well concerning 
 peace as war: second, Ceres, the queen, which made 
 laws concerning evil-doers : and third, Marc, wife of 
 Bathilacus, mother to Stillicus the king, who enacted 
 laws for the maintenance of well-doers." This rhetoric 
 was so well approved that, at the next parliament, 
 Mr. Comptroller having proposed " Mr. Thomas 
 Williams, Esq.," one of the fellows of the Inner 
 Temple, the whole House, with one entire voice, cried 
 " Mr. Williams, Mr. Williams !" 
 
 So little were the privileges of the House and its 
 head settled and defined, even at this advanced period 
 in parliamentary annals, that they seemed wholly at a 
 loss how to proceed, inopes concilii, on any sudden 
 emergency. The speaker, "Mr. Thomas Williams, 
 Esq.," as he is throughout styled in the journals, to 
 show peculiar respect, having died during his year of 
 office 11 , a committee was appointed to wait upon the 
 Lords, to have their aid for the information of the 
 casualty to her majesty, and to know her pleasure 
 upon it. Her majesty's pleasure was, that the Com- 
 mons should resort to their usual place, and choose 
 a new speaker, after the accustomed manner, upon 
 which her solicitor-general, Mr. Richard Onslow 
 (ancestor to the famous speaker, Arthur Onslow), was 
 proposed. As the queen's solicitor must necessarily 
 attend on the House of Lords, his nomination gave 
 such umbrage to the independent members, that they 
 proceeded to a division against electing him, such an 
 unprecedented course, as to be termed a dissevering 
 of the House. The numbers are not recorded ; but 
 the queen's party of course prevailed' 1 . 
 
 i* Parliamentary History, vol. i. 
 
 *> Mr. Fulk Onslow was clerk of the crown, and elder brother to
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 13 
 
 The learned solicitor- general was both military 
 and metaphorical in his excuses. " For that I would 
 not be obstinate, I am forced to wound myself with 
 their sword, which wound, being yet green and new, 
 your majesty, being the perfect physician, may ease, 
 in disallowing that which they have allowed. If the 
 members for great carefulness would often inculcate it 
 into my dull head to signify the same unto your high- 
 ness, yet my memory is so slippery by nature and 
 sickness, that I should likely lose it by the way." 
 The Commons having set their hearts upon the 
 queen's marriage, that politic princess evaded their 
 uncivil importunity with courteous, but deceptive 
 answers. In returning their thanks, the speaker drew 
 a strange illustration from the Old Testament : " For 
 that your highness inclineth your mind unto marriage, 
 God grant us that, as your majesty hath defended the 
 faith of Abraham, you may have his desire when he 
 said ' Lord, what wilt thou give me when I go child- 
 less !' " It was agreed, upon the motion of this bib- 
 lical speaker, that a prayer should be said every day 
 by himself, such as he should deem fittest for the 
 time. 
 
 The next speaker, Sir Richard Bell, did not resign 
 his office on being appointed chief baron, but died 
 before the ensuing session. Many supposed that his 
 place of speaker was made void by this appointment, 
 the chief baron being a necessary attendant on the 
 upper house. As he was dead, the majority agreed to 
 go to the Lords to make petition for their mediation to 
 her majesty for license to choose a speaker, the place 
 being vacant, first, by the making Sir. R. Bell lord 
 chief baron, and, secondly, by his death. 
 
 Sir Richard. It is said, in the journals, that he was clerk sitting in 
 his place at the table, at the time of his younger brother's election.
 
 14 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Though privy-councillors had been introduced 
 into Parliament by Cardinal Wolsey, instead of the 
 royal will being delivered by a message at the hand of 
 a cabinet minister, the speaker still continued the 
 direct organ of communication with the House. 
 When a bill relating to rites and ceremonies in the 
 church had been read three times, the speaker was 
 commissioned to declare the queen's pleasure that, 
 from henceforth, no bills concerning religion should 
 be preferred or received, unless the same should be 
 first considered and approved of by the clergy. The 
 increased deference paid to their speaker is strongly 
 marked in a resolution which the House adopted at 
 this period. A motion was made, 1580, "That 
 Mr. Speaker, and the residue of the House of the 
 better sort of calling, would always, at the rising of 
 the House, depart, and come forth in comely and civil 
 manner for the reverence of the House, in turning 
 about with a low courtesie, like as they do make at 
 their coming into the House, and not so unseemly and 
 rudely to thrust and throng out, as of late times hath 
 been disorderly used ;" which motion, made by Sir 
 James Croft, Knight, was very well liked and allowed 1 '. 
 
 Passing over Mr. Wray, who treated the queen to 
 a speech of two hours, and Sergeant Snagg, of unfor- 
 tunate name, we come to the second greatest speaker 
 in the long catalogue, Sir Edward Coke. This erudite 
 lawyer, but pedantic and sorry rhetorician, could not 
 of course resist the temptation of arraying himself in 
 tropes and figures. " Although, as in the heavens," 
 said the lawyer to Queen Elizabeth, " a star is but 
 opacum corpus until it have received light from the 
 sun, so stand I corpus opacum until your highness' 
 
 r Sir Symonds d'Ewes.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 
 
 15 
 
 bright, shining wisdom hath looked upon me and 
 allowed me. In this House are many grave, many 
 learned, many deep, wise men, and those of ripe 
 judgments; but I am untimely fruit, not yet ripe, but 
 a bud scarcely blossomed, so as I fear me your 
 majesty will say, amongst so many fair fruit ye have 
 plucked a shaken leaf." 
 
 The following scene, some years later, most gra- 
 phic in its description of the homely members and 
 their modest head, is painted to the life s . Meeting to 
 go through the form of choosing a speaker with all 
 proper solemnity, "the comptroller of the household, 
 39 Elizabeth, Sir William Knolls, said, ' I will deliver 
 my opinion unto you who is most fit for this place, 
 being a member of this House, and those good abili- 
 ties which I know to be in him' (here he made a little 
 pause, and the House hawked and spat, and, after 
 silence made, he proceeded). ' Unto this place of dig- 
 nity and calling, in my opinion' (here he stayed a 
 little) ' Mr. Sergeant Yelverton' (looking upon him) 
 ' is the fittest man to be preferred' (after which 
 words Mr. Yelverton blushed, and put off his hat, and 
 after sat bareheaded), ' for I know him to be a man 
 wise and learned, secret and circumspect, religious 
 and faithful, no way disable, but every way able to 
 supply this place.' He then sat down, hoping for a 
 general consent, 
 
 " The whole House cried, ' Aye, aye, aye, let him 
 be,' and the master comptroller made a low reverence 
 and sat down ; and, after a little pause and silence, 
 Mr. Sergeant Yelverton rose, and, after a very humble 
 reverence, said : ' Whence your unexpected choice of 
 me to be your mouth, or speaker, should proceed, I 
 
 s Sir Symonds d'Ewes and Townsend.
 
 16 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 am utterly ignorant. If from my merits, strange it 
 were that so few deserts should purchase suddenly so 
 great an honour. Nor from my ability doth this your 
 choice proceed, for well known it is to a great number 
 in this place now assembled, that my estate is nothing 
 correspondent for the maintenance of this dignity ; for 
 my father dying left me a younger brother, and nothing 
 to me but my bare annuity. Then growing to man's 
 estate, and some small practice of the law, I took a 
 wife, by whom I have had many children, the keeping 
 of us all being a great impoverishment to my estate, 
 and the daily living of us all nothing but my daily 
 industry. Neither from my person nor nature doth 
 this choice arise, for he that supplieth this place ought 
 to be a man big and comely, stately and well spoken, 
 his voice great, his courage majestical, his nature 
 haughty, and his purse plentiful and heavy ; but, con- 
 trarily, the stature of my body is small, myself not so 
 well spoken, my voice low, my carriage lawyer-like 
 and of the common fashion, my nature soft and bash- 
 ful, my purse thin, light, and never yet plentiful.' " 
 
 It is pleasant to see any attempt made at checking 
 this tone of fulsome insincerity. When, after the 
 destruction of the Spanish Armada, the Speaker 
 Crooke asserted that the peace of the kingdom had 
 been defended by the mighty arm of their dread and 
 sacred queen, the bluff Queen Bess instantly answered : 
 " No ; but by the mighty hand of God, Mr. Speaker !" 
 Her majesty preferred a style of honest truth, the 
 more especially when, at the time of using it, she 
 could administer what she loved as well — a sharp 
 rebuke. His harangue, on returning thanks to the 
 queen for revoking her grants of monopolies, resem- 
 bles the abject sycophancy of barbarian prostrations,
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 17 
 
 rather than the bold speech of the representative of 
 freemen. "All of us, in all duty and thankfulness, 
 do throw down ourselves at the feet of your majesty, 
 do praise God and bless your majesty. Neither do 
 we present our thanks in words of any outward thing, 
 which can be no sufficient retribution for so great 
 goodness, but, in all duty and thankfulness, prostrate 
 at your feet, we present our most loyal and thankful 
 hearts, even the last drop of blood in our hearts, and 
 the last spirit of breath in our nostrils, to be poured 
 out, to be breathed up, for your safety.' Then, after 
 three low reverences made, he with the rest kneeled 
 down." 
 
 It is only thus, by making ourselves parties to the 
 servile scene, and., as it were, witnessing the genu- 
 flexions which took place, that we can fully under- 
 stand how inferior our ancestors were, both in habits 
 and phrases of freedom, how erect their descendants 
 stand in comparison, still, in the proud consciousness 
 of independence, paying the fullest and most complete 
 respect to royalty. Our distaste at these passages of 
 degrading form is increased, when we find the same 
 compliments continued to the pedantic James. The 
 king's serjeant, Sir Edward Philips, the first speaker 
 in his reign, poured forth the rich stores of euphuism 
 in " full measure, and running over," upon the de- 
 lighted prince. 4 " This great and important public 
 service requireth to be managed by the absolute per- 
 fection of experience, the mother of prudence ; by 
 the profoundness of literature, the father of true 
 judgment ; and by the fullness and grace of nature's 
 gifts, which are the beauty and ornament of arts and 
 actions : from the virtues of all and every whereof I 
 
 1 Parliamentary History, vol. i. 
 VOL. I. C
 
 18 HISTORY OP THE 
 
 am so far estranged, that, not tasting of Parnassus 's 
 springs at all, nor of that honey left upon the lips of 
 Plato and Pindarus by the bees, birds of the Muses : 
 as I remain touched with the error of the contrary, 
 and thereby am disabled to undergo the weight of so 
 heavy a burthen., under which I do already groan, and. 
 shall both faint and fail, if not by your justice disbur- 
 dened, or by your clemency commiserate." 
 
 Who could have divined from such inflated fustian 
 that he was speaking in the age of Shakspeare and 
 Haleigh, of Spenser and Bacon, though the reader 
 might, perhaps, from their worst passages, have in- 
 ferred the subjection of English literature to a king, 
 who assured his faithful Commons : " That my inte- 
 gretye is like the whitnes of my roabe, my purety 
 like the mettel of gold in my crowne, my firmness 
 and clearnes like the presious stones I weare, and my 
 affectyones naturalle like the rednes of my harte." 
 
 But the times were become too critical not to 
 scatter these inanities. The hollow murmurs of dis- 
 content had begun to rise in sullen echoes through 
 the House; the harsh vaunt of prerogative was 
 answered by the cry of privilege ; and the ceremonial 
 speeches of the king, and chancellor, and speaker, 
 drifted on, of as little worth, and prized as lightly, as 
 sea-weed on the surging waters. An improved tone 
 may be discerned in the discourse of the monarch, as 
 if addressing an assembly of freemen, and in their 
 spokesman a dawning consciousness that he knelt in 
 the presence of a constitutional king. With what 
 increased spirit and good sense does the Recorder of 
 London, Sir Heneage Finch, address Charles I., when 
 presented for speaker : u " Since we all stand for 
 
 u Parliamentary History, vol. ii.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS, 19 
 
 hundreds and thousands, for figures and cyphers, as 
 your majesty the supreme and sovereign auditor shall 
 please to place and value us, and like coin to pass are 
 made current by your royal stamp and impression 
 only, I shall neither disable nor undervalue myself, 
 but, with a faithful and cheerful heart, apply myself, 
 with the best of my strength and abilities, to the per- 
 formance of this weighty and public charge." 
 
 His successor, Serjeant Glanville, a man, accord- 
 ing to Clarendon, x "very equal to the work, very well 
 acquainted with the proceedings in parliament, of a 
 quick conception, and of a ready and voluble expres- 
 sion,'' evinced his alacrity and firmness, when speaker 
 elect, by chiding the quarter-waiter on his majesty, 
 who came to summon the Commons to the House of 
 Lords, commanding him to tell the gentleman-usher, 
 that it was his duty to have brought the message him- 
 self, and that, but for detaining his majesty, the House 
 would not have attended to a message brought by 
 such a messenger. This assertion of the respect due 
 to the House at so seasonable a time reflected great 
 credit on the young speaker, who, in announcing the 
 Commons' choice to Charles I., proved how well he 
 understood the duties of the office : "Your Commons' 
 House have chosen one of themselves to be the mouth, 
 indeed the servant, of all the rest, to steer watchfully 
 and prudently in all their weighty consultations and 
 debates, to collect faithfully and readily the genuine 
 sense of a numerous assembly, to propound the same 
 seasonably, and to mould it into apt questions for 
 final resolutions, and so represent them and their 
 conclusions, their declarations and petitions upon all 
 
 * History of the Rebellion, vol. i, 
 
 C 2
 
 20 HISTORY OP THE 
 
 urgent occasions, with truth, with right, with life, 
 with lustre, and with full advantage to your most 
 excellent majesty." He at once submitted, when his 
 election had been confirmed, saying, with appropriate 
 grace,, "My profession hath taught me that, from the 
 highest judge and highest seat of justice, there lyeth 
 no writ of error, no appeal." 
 
 The parliament over which this distinguished 
 orator presided was permitted to continue only one 
 short month, and, when the next House of Commons 
 met in November, 1640, the discontented party had 
 accomplished their plans so effectual ly, that the person 
 whom the king had selected for the post could not 
 obtain a seat. y By a peculiar infelicity, he was 
 constrained to nominate Mr. Lenthall, a disaffected 
 barrister of Lincoln's Inn, whose memorable answer 
 to the monarch, when, for the only time in our annals, 
 he invaded the penetralia of the House, has conferred 
 upon the utterer a species of fraudulent immortality. 
 The question how far the speaker was the servant of 
 the House, or of the king, had been discussed at an 
 earlier period of the reign. Sir J. Elliot and four 
 others had paid the penalties of a constructive riot, 
 for detaining Sir John Finch in the chair by force 
 whilst they read a factious resolution. 2 
 
 As the speaker sometimes failed in asserting his 
 independence, the House on their part appear to have 
 been occasionally wanting in the respect due to their 
 head. During the turbulent debates on privilege, 
 which marked the close of the reign of James I., when 
 the nominee of the crown was suspected of being an 
 enemy in disguise, their anger exploded in a sort of 
 tumultuous insurrection against authority. The notes 
 y Forstef's Statesmen. ' State Trials, vol. iii.
 
 HOUSE or COMMONS. 21 
 
 of the dialogue in fragments, which accompanied this 
 outbreak, are exceedingly curious. 
 
 "March 9, 1G21. Mr. Mallory will spare none, 
 though they sit in chairs. Mr. Speaker came out of 
 the chair without consent of the House : — Sir R. 
 Phillipes admonisheth the speaker that sometimes he 
 neglecteth his duty to the House in intricating or 
 deferring the question : Mr. Nevyll must a little 
 reflect upon Mr. Speaker, that he hath made plausible 
 motions abortive : Sir H. Manners, ' Mr. Speaker is 
 but a servant to the House, not a master, nor a 
 master's mate:' Sir H. Withrington, 'Mr. Speaker is 
 the fault of all their faults, by preventing them with 
 rising :' Sir W. Herbert, ' he was required to sit still. 
 He must respect the meanest, as well as those about 
 the chair.' Sir Nathaniel, — \ He may never rise out of 
 the House at an inconvenient time, nor at the ordinary 
 time, if the House oppose it without dividing it by 
 question.' " 
 
 When, in obedience to the king's command, Sir 
 John Finch quitted the chair, having previously refused 
 to put the question, saying, with tears of abject humi- 
 lity, u I will not say I will not put the question ; but I 
 say I dare not," the next House of Commons very 
 properly voted his conduct a breach of privilege. 
 The language of Lenthall, inspired by his fears, when 
 he refused to answer questions off-hand, was far more 
 in accordance with their rights and his duty. 
 
 When the king had borrowed the speaker's chair, 
 and asked him, as he stood below, whether any of the 
 persons he sought were in the House, whether he saw 
 any of them, and where they were, the moment in 
 which Lenthall fell on his knees and faltered forth his 
 apology was the proudest of his life — a spark struck
 
 22 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 from rotten wood — the flash of spirit darting up from 
 a life of meanness. His words have become apho- 
 ristic : " May it please your majesty, I have neither 
 eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place, but as 
 the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am 
 here ; and humbly beg your majesty's pardon that I 
 cannot give any other answer than this to what your 
 majesty is pleased to demand of me.'' The king's 
 retort, " I think my eyes as good as yours, but the 
 birds are flown," could ill conceal his baffled displea- 
 sure. Yet Lenthall was in truth a poor creature, the 
 tame instrument of a worse and more vulgar tyranny, 
 the buffeted tool of the army and the rump ; subdued 
 to sit or go, to remain at home or return, to find the 
 doors of St. Stephens shut or open, according to the 
 will of his masters, the officers, and at the bidding of 
 Cromwell. 
 
 His subserviency secured him, at a critical time, 
 April 1642, when the forms and names of old officers 
 seemed to carry weight w 7 ith the people, a vote of 
 £6000 as a voluntary gift, and the promise of a 
 " further thankfulness." This timid time-server fol- 
 lowed, instead of leading, the House during the civil 
 war, a and more respect was paid to the clerk's stool 
 than to the speaker's chair. Assuming the garb of 
 sanctity, he pretended private business, to wit, pre- 
 paring himself for the sacrament, when anxious to 
 escape an inconvenient attendance during the usurpa- 
 tion. Obsequious to power in the ascendant, and 
 forgetful of his memorable saying, he proved at Scot's 
 trial his declaration in parliament, that " he would 
 have his vote, as the king's judge, written on his 
 grave." b The Restoration put an, end to Lenthall's 
 
 " Whitelocke's Memorials — Ilatsell. b State Trials.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 23 
 
 full-blown hopes. Being excepted out of the act of 
 pardon, he wrote to the speaker after the Restoration, 
 to remove the misapprehension which prevailed as to 
 his gains. u The House ordered that I should have 
 £5 of every compounder, but the order was shortly 
 disannulled, so that what I received was inconsider- 
 able. Before his late majesty's going from London, 
 the House took into consideration my great and 
 extraordinary charge and loss, and gave me by vote 
 £6000, but I never to this day received the one half 
 of it ; besides which I never had gift of land or money, 
 nor any part of that £5 per diem which is due to 
 the speaker, as speaker, whilst he so continues.'' 
 
 Lenthall escaped with impunity, for his vice of 
 compliance was mean and grovelling, when compared 
 with the daring crimes of more aspiring spirits. He 
 died in September 1662, apparently very penitent; 
 but some of the contrition may be ascribed, no doubt, 
 to his fears, and part to the zeal of his confessor. 
 " My trouble is," he said, in his last sickness, " diso- 
 bedience to the pater patriae. I confess with Saul, I 
 held their clothes whilst they murdered him ; but 
 herein I was not so criminal as Saul, for I never con- 
 sented to his death. No excuse can be made for me, 
 that I proposed the bloody question for trying the 
 king ; but I hoped, even then when I put the question, 
 the very putting the question would have cleared 
 him, because I believed there were four to one against 
 it — Cromwell and his agents deceived me." They 
 might, we fear, have retorted, " Qui vult decipi, 
 decipiatur." 
 
 Under the military regime which the latter fever- 
 ish days of the Commonwealth introduced, when " the 
 
 'Parliamentary History, vol. iv.
 
 24 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 gentlemen in red" usurped the chief seats in the 
 assembly, their speaker seems to have been treated 
 with marked inattention and disrespect. The House 
 divided on a clause, says Burton, d making void all 
 other marriages ; and, the number being equal, 69 
 to 69, the speaker stood up and reported, and said, 
 " I am a yea — a no, I should say." This caused 
 an alternate laughter all the House over, and some 
 said " he was gone." On another occasion, when the 
 speaker was roughly called upon to report, a member 
 speaking too low for his disorderly audience to catch 
 the drift of his argument, the Master of the Rolls 
 interposed in defence of the chair. " Mr. Speaker is 
 not bound in such cases to report. Every man is 
 bound to speak so high as others may hear, and every 
 man is also bound to attend to what is said." Mr. 
 Speaker added submissively, "he was glad to hear 
 that information, for gentlemen would talk so loudly 
 to one another, that they could not hear another 
 speak, and then called to him to report." 
 
 To shew his independence of forms, the turbulent 
 demagogue, Sir A. Haslerig, turned from the chair in 
 his address, though there was not even a reporter's 
 gallery to face, and, when the House called upon him 
 to speak to the chair, he said, " I am not bound to 
 look you in the face, like children, to see 'if you have 
 a penny in your forehead.' There was a great noise 
 and horrid confusion. Mr. Young compared it to a 
 cockpit ; Dr. Clargcs excepted against him as using 
 unparliamentary language ; Sir Arthur justified him. 
 This confused noise held for an hour." The reporter, 
 inured to such disorderly scenes, expresses his amaze- 
 ment, when a new speaker endeavoured to introduce 
 
 d Burton's Diary.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 25 
 
 some degree of order, and tighten the lax bonds of 
 discipline. 6 " The chair behaves himself like a Busby 
 among so many schoolboys, and takes a little too 
 much on him but grandly." 
 
 - With the more courtly times of Charles II. ensued 
 a partial improvement. The following strange dia- 
 logue between a petulant speaker and the old common- 
 wealth soldier. Colonel Birch, shews, however, that 
 much of the republican leaven remained/ The 
 speaker taking notice of Colonel Birch changing his 
 seat to another side of the House, Colonel Birch said, 
 " I wonder the speaker should take notice of my 
 changing sides, when I never took notice of the 
 speaker changing the chair" (alluding to the speaker 
 pretending to be sick, when the court, being displeased 
 at him, put Sir R. Sawyer in the chair). Some time 
 after the speaker told Colonel Birch that it was in- 
 decent for him to brush his beard without a looking- 
 glass ;" to which Birch replied, "You would not 
 think it so if you had a beard to brush !" On another 
 occasion, having to apologize, the speaker said, " he 
 mistook only the forepart of the law about petitions 
 for the latter, and he hopes his mistake will never 
 cost the House so much as Birch's has done" (in 
 something relating to a tax-bill). Colonel Birch 
 retorted, " Whatever his mistake has cost the House, 
 he is sure the marks were not upon the bags" (mean- 
 ing that the speaker had lost money at play, and the 
 king's marks were upon the bags he sent the money 
 in, being the navy bags). The rebukes on his disso- 
 lute manners, addressed by the opposition members 
 to that arrogant young rake, Mr. Edward Seymour, 
 who then dictated his pleasure from the chair, would 
 
 ' Burton's Diary. f Grey's Debate?.
 
 26 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 not be tolerated in our more refined days, the House 
 being insulted in the insults offered to their head.s 
 
 "You expose the honour of the House," said 
 Mr. Harbord, "in resorting to gaming-houses with 
 foreigners, as well as Englishmen, and to ill places." 
 u You are too big for that chair," added Sir Thomas 
 Littleton, " for you, that are one of the governors of 
 the world, to be our servant, is incongruous !" These 
 instances are, however, marked exceptions to the rule, 
 the House in general treating their chief with defer- 
 ence and respect. Immediately on the return of 
 Charles II., the habits of the old regime began to be 
 revived. The members subsided into decorum, and 
 the speaker relapsed into forms and ceremonies, some 
 of which would have been "more honoured in the 
 breach than the observance." 
 
 In the honeymoon of the Restoration, he stretched 
 his throat to dulcet strains of sycophancy and obse- 
 quiousness. The crabbed old Presbyterian knight, 
 Sir Harbottle Grimston, just absolved from the guilt of 
 rebellion, harangued the king on " the monsters, who 
 had been guilty of blood, precious blood, precious, 
 royal blood, and declared ' we must needs be a happy 
 Parliament, a healing Parliament, a reconciling and 
 peace-making Parliament, a Parliament propter excel- 
 lentiam that may truly be called Parliamentissimum 
 Parliamentum.'' " Well might the royal prodigal, who 
 loved a more familiar style, have retorted " Rise up, 
 old rebel, and speak in plain English like a man ! " 
 but he contented himself with ridiculing the vile 
 rhetorician in private, and expressing his wants in the 
 homely, good-natured, phrase, which went to the 
 heart more nearly than whole sentences of tawdry 
 
 k Grey's Debates.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 27 
 
 declamation, " and that which troubles me most is, to 
 see so many of you come to see me at Whitehall, and 
 to think you must go somewhere else to seek your 
 dinner." 11 
 
 The speaker's clumsy attempt at raillery to emu- 
 late the royal style was as ungraceful as a shuffling 
 dance in fetters "that we might with some cheerfulness 
 see your majesty's face, we have brought our brother 
 Benjamin with us. I mean your act of oblivion. I take 
 the boldness to call it yours, for so it is by many titles : 
 your majesty first conceived it at Breda, you helped 
 to contrive and form it here in England, and we must 
 all bear you witness, you laboured, and travailled, till 
 it was brought forth. And since it had a being, some 
 question being made of its legitimacy, your royal heart 
 is not at ease, until it is confirmed." Sir Harbottle 
 was a better presbyter than rhetorician. When a bill 
 was introduced in 1677 for changing the punishment 
 of Romish Priests and Jesuits from death to im- 
 prisonment for life, he indignantly asked ' Is this the 
 way to prevent Popery ? We may as soon make a 
 good fan out of a pig's tail, as a good bill out of this !" 
 
 There was as little sincerity in these state haran- 
 gues as personal honour in the speaker. When Sir 
 Edward Turner was appointed to the chair,, strangers 
 might have inferred the most boundless national pros- 
 perity, wealth, and greatness from his address. "If 
 the affections of all Englishmen can make you happy, 
 if the riches of this nation can make you great, if the 
 strength of this warlike people can make you con- 
 siderable at home and abroad, be assured you are the 
 greatest monarch in the world : give me leave to double 
 my words and say it again. I wish my voice could 
 
 k Wallace's History of England.
 
 28 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 reach to Spain, and to the Indies too : You are the 
 greatest monarch in the world ! " Yet this was the 
 period of the closing of the Exchequer — of the in- 
 glorious war with Holland — of the King of -England 
 sinking into a pensioner of France. Sir Edward Turner, 
 himself convicted of receiving bribes from the East 
 India Company, was translated from the chair to the 
 chief seat in the Exchequer — integrity from bribes 
 being deemed in that arcadian age superfluous on the 
 judgment seat ! 
 
 Sir Job Charlton, Sergeant, succeeded Sir Edward 
 Turner, but only held his office eleven days, alleging 
 indisposition as an excuse for resigning. 1 Some in- 
 sinuated that the speaker was sick of his post. To 
 purify the system with an infusion of fresh blood, by 
 a happy innovation on the precedents of two cen- 
 turies, a young country gentleman, the proudest of a 
 haughty race, Mr. Edward Seymour, was voted into 
 the chair. By his very haughtiness and pride he con- 
 tributed to reduce a turbulent and unruly House into 
 subjection, enforced respect to his office, and even 
 against order controlled the factious members. At 
 a critical moment, when the House was in committee, 
 and in consequence of some dispute in telling a di- 
 vision, swords had been drawn, and blows struck, he 
 resumed the chair of his own authority, contrary to 
 rule, and instantly reduced the turbulent scene into 
 exact discipline. k 
 
 When the House had ordered several lawyers into 
 custody for pleading before the Lords, being forbidden 
 by their resolutions, Mr. Seymour, in passing through 
 Westminster Hall, directed the Mace to take Sergeant 
 Pemberton instantly into custody. "He saw me," said 
 
 ' Grey's Debates. k Hatsell.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 29 
 
 the imperious speaker, "and paid me no respect, 
 though I was near him, or very slightly." 1 
 
 Mr. Seymour was not free from personal corrup- 
 tion, hut scorned all petty bribes, and gave the fees 
 due to the speaker on private bills to the poor of his 
 parish (St. Giles). Always bearing in mind his 
 descent from a Protector of the realm, that the Duke 
 of Somerset was a member of his family, not he of the 
 Duke's, when summoned to the Privy Council, he 
 walked to the head of the room, and leaning over 
 Charles, whispered too audibly, that he should 
 not prevaricate with himself. Hardened in his pride 
 by age, he treated William the Third with the airs of 
 an equal, if not a superior, and, when dismissed from 
 his place of comptroller of the household by Queen 
 Anne, sent word that he should return his staff by the 
 common carrier ! 
 
 One instance of his hardihood in the exercise of 
 the duties of speaker is highly to his credit. A 
 message being brought that the king was seated on 
 his throne, and his presence desired to hear the proro- 
 gation of Parliament, he refused to stir, till the Bill of 
 Supply had been returned according to precedent from 
 the House of Lords; and, though again warned that 
 his Majesty was waiting, he declared he would be 
 torn by wild horses sooner than quit the chair. The 
 bill was brought, and the Commons advanced to the 
 Bar of the Lords encouraged by the triumph of their 
 Head. These matters of punctilious observance, how- 
 ever trifling in appearance, are far from insignificant, 
 when considered as tests of the respect which must 
 be paid, or the slight that may be offered with im- 
 punity, to a sensitive and jealous assembly. 
 > Grainger's Biographical History.
 
 30 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 From a private pique, his re-election as speaker 
 was opposed at court, and, though he abstained from 
 offering any excuse, when presenting himself for the 
 royal approbation, much to his own private rejoicing — 
 for his was not ' the pride that apes humility' — the king 
 peremptorily refused his assent, and compelled the 
 hesitating Commons to make a fresh election. Among 
 other articles of impeachment that were voted against 
 Seymour, there was one for receiving exorbitant pen- 
 sions as Speaker, £3000 a year as Treasurer of the 
 Navy, and £3000 a year in addition from the secret 
 service money, extravagant sums undoubtedly, and 
 which argue corruption. At that period, the yearly 
 salary of the Lord High Treasurer, the highest post 
 in the realm, was but £8000 ; the President of the 
 Council had £1500; the Secretary of State £1950; 
 and the twelve judges £1000 each. In England 
 public functionaries have never been overpaid. The 
 regular income of the Speaker was only £5 a day, in 
 addition to fees on private bills. His salary has been 
 since regulated by Act of Parliament, and made more 
 commensurate with the dignity and importance of his 
 office, the state he must keep, and the household he is 
 expected to maintain : £ 5000 a year forms his present 
 liberal, but not munificent, allowance, over and above 
 which, he is entitled to £1000 of equipment money, 
 and 2000 ounces of plate immediately on his election, 
 two hogsheads of claret, £100 a year for stationery, 
 and the apanage of a handsome residence. 
 
 "When Charles II. established his right to refuse, 
 though he could no longer nominate, the speaker, the 
 Commons' choice relapsed into the hands of practising 
 lawyers, servile, or corrupt, of Serjeant Gregory, after- 
 wards a puisne judge, and the butt of Jeffries' buffoon-
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 31 
 
 eries — of Sir Robert Sawyer, and of Sir William Wil- 
 liams, who was denied the protection of privilege, 
 and paid the penalty of the violence exhibited by 
 Charles' last Parliament, in a fine of £10,000, a 
 large portion of which, £8,000, he actually paid for 
 licensing the publication of Dangerfield's criminatory 
 report.™ It was fortunate for the dissolved Parliament 
 that the rapacity and vindictiveness of the royal bro- 
 thers did not fasten on each individual member. For, 
 if their speaker was liable, who acted but by the com- 
 mands of others, and as their minister, how much 
 more would all those have been liable by whose com- 
 mand he acted ? 
 
 The degenerate line of legal speakers closed with 
 Sir John Trevor, an apt and fitting head to the 
 ignoble House of Commons that was packed by king 
 James, only forty of whom were not to his liking — in 
 other words, proper instruments of tyranny. Mascu- 
 line in bearing, he read to the king with marked 
 emphasis, as if he had felt the force of the passage, 
 the closing sentence of an animated resolution, that 
 " they trusted to the king's word for the safety of the 
 Church of England, which was dearer to them than 
 their lives." Corrupt as adroit, he disgraced for a 
 few years the choice of William the Third, and sullied 
 what would else have been during his reign a compa- 
 ratively pure and honourable succession of speakers. 
 
 With the Revolution commenced the real import- 
 ance of the speaker, in rank, in character, and con- 
 sideration. "Jam domiti ut pure ant non ut serviant." 
 From that auspicious era, he has occupied his 
 proper station at the head of English gentlemen. 
 Ever since the statute 1 William and Mary c. 21, 
 
 •» C. W. Wynn's note to the State Trials.
 
 32 HISTORY OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 
 
 he has constantly taken place next to Peers of Great 
 Britain, at all times, hoth in and out of Parliament. 
 In all public commissions he is so ranked, and has the 
 precedence at the Council Table, as a privy councillor. 
 Though on common occasions the speaker gives place 
 to Irish peers, and those, who by courtesy take rank 
 before some peers of the realm, as sons of dukes and 
 marquises, yet in all commissions by act of parlia- 
 ment, he is named before them, and so ought to be on 
 all solemn and national occasions. 11 In the com- 
 mission for the union of England and Scotland, 
 Mr. Smith, the speaker, was named immediately after 
 the peers who were in the commission, and before the 
 Marquises of Hartington and Granby, and signed the 
 treaty before them, next after Lord Somers, the junior 
 baron, and the first of the Commoners. In 1694 it 
 was ordered that in the procession at Queen Mary's 
 funeral, no person do intervene between the speaker 
 and the House of Lords. To secure his perfect in- 
 dependence, and to silence all imputations of leaning 
 to the ministry of the day, he ceased, in George the 
 Third's reign, to hold any of office of profit under the 
 crown ; the great Arthur Onslow setting that excellent 
 example to which his successors have invariably ad- 
 hered. His impartiality and acquaintance with pre- 
 cedents have been insured by a fixed tenure of office, 
 and his arduous duties justly rewarded, at the close of 
 long service, with a coronet. 
 
 n Hatscll's Precedents.
 
 33 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 We know no higher distinction for a commoner, 
 than to have been the first man in the Convention 
 Parliament. Upon Mr. Henry Powle, then member 
 for Cirencester, was conferred the special honour of being 
 unanimously chosen speaker, greatly to the mortifica- 
 tion of tbe haughty Sir Edward Seymour, who had 
 previously filled the chair with marked ability, and 
 had hoped by his joining the Prince of Orange at 
 Exeter and an ardent display of converted loyalty, to 
 earn again the place, which his pride most coveted, 
 of the foremost gentleman of England. But Mr. Powle 
 produced better credentials, in his abilities as a lawyer, 
 and the fidelity with which he had always espoused 
 the cause of the liberal, and then dominant, party. 
 Sir Edward was a bitter tory, whilst his successful 
 rival had ranked for many years among the chosen 
 leaders of the whigs. 
 
 Bishop Burnet portraying the characters of some 
 of the principal members of the parliament of 1675, 
 says in his homely style a , "Littleton and Powle were 
 
 * Burnet's Memoirs, vol. ii. 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the men that laid the matters of the House with the 
 greatest dexterity and care. Powle was very learned 
 in precedents and parliamentary journals, which goes 
 a great way in their debates, and, when he had time 
 to prepare himself, he was a clear and strong speaker." 
 His course in the parliament of Charles the Second 
 had been full of turbulence and peril, but conspicuous 
 for many honourable passages of consistent magna- 
 nimity, and his energy as a debater the opposition or 
 country party proved upon several remarkable occa- 
 sions. Even through the mutilated parliamentary 
 reports, which give the reader far less notion of the 
 force and beauty of former eloquence than the frag- 
 ments of the Elgin marbles present to the eye an idea 
 of ancient symmetry, traces of the orator are still 
 visible. "I will not invade prerogative, neither will 
 I consent to the infringement of the least liberty of 
 my country, 15 " was the memorable saying in which he 
 sought to designate his parliamentary policy, nor can 
 it be denied that to the last branch of the alternative 
 he did most rigidly adhere. 
 
 When Charles in 1672 issued a second declaration 
 of indulgence, expressing his positive will and pleasure 
 to suspend all penal laws in matters ecclesiastical, 
 and assured the House on their meeting, in his speech 
 from the throne, " that he should stick to his declara- 
 tion," the House discussed that part of the royal 
 speech in a tumult of displeasure; Powle said the 
 declaration would suspend at once forty acts of par- 
 liament, and was in fact only a paper order under no 
 seal. An address was voted that penal statutes in 
 matters ecclesiastical cannot be suspended but by act 
 
 '' Grainger's Biography, Art. Powle.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 35 
 
 of parliament, and that an address and petition for 
 satisfaction should be presented to the king. He re- 
 asserted his prerogative. A second address was then 
 drawn up by Powle, " to clear the apprehensions that 
 may justly remain in the minds of your people by 
 your majesty having claimed a power to suspend 
 penal statutes in matters ecclesiastical, which your 
 majesty does still seem to assert to be inherent in the 
 Crown, where we humbly conceive your majesty hath 
 been very much misinformed. We do therefore, with 
 an unanimous consent, become again most humble 
 suitors to. your most sacred majesty, that you would 
 be pleased to give us a full and satisfactory answer to 
 our petition." 
 
 The king, perplexed at this proof of contumacy, 
 appealed in person to the Lords on the propriety of 
 such an address. Lord Clifford termed it " monstrum, 
 horrendum, ingens," and the Lords voted that his 
 answer was sufficient. But Charles, irresolute, and 
 fearful of his father's fate, should he commence open 
 hostilities against the refractory Commons, yielded, 
 notwithstanding his pledged word, and with his own 
 hand in council cancelled the declaration. 
 
 In another contest between the speaker and the 
 crown, this energetic leader of opposition w r as less 
 successful. Charles, indignant at an address which 
 dictated an alliance with Holland, commanded the 
 House to attend him presently in the Banqueting 
 House at Whitehall. Some members rising from 
 their seats, and going to the door before the speaker 
 had reported the king's command, Mr. Seymour repri- 
 manded them c : "The burgesses of Newcastle and 
 Leicester are in great haste to be gone before the 
 
 c Grey's Debates 
 
 D 2
 
 36 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 king's message is reported, as if they went to get 
 places at a show or a play." 
 
 The king spoke very sharply ; told the Commons 
 that by their address they were invading his funda- 
 mental power of making war and peace, and that, if 
 he yielded to the dictation of parliament, he should 
 only think himself the empty sound of a king. " I 
 would have you return to your House, and I require 
 that you immediately adjourn." When they had 
 returned to their own House, where the speaker 
 reported the king's speech, Mr. Powle stood up, but 
 the speaker interrupted him. " I must hear no man 
 speak, now the king's pleasure of adjourning the 
 House is signified." Mr. Powle persisting in his 
 determination to be heard, Mr, Seymour suddenly 
 sprang out of the chair; some cried, " Stop the mace 
 upon the table." Others would have put him again 
 into the chair, or somebody else. But the speaker 
 was soon surrounded by several of his party, and the 
 mace secured, and he went away with it before him, 
 but not without reproachful speeches d . 
 
 At the commencement of the next session the 
 speaker was severely chidden for undertaking to be 
 bigger than the House, and, upon his own authority, 
 subverting their known rights. In the king's speech, 
 Mr. Powle contendedthat his majesty directed himself 
 to the gentlemen of the House, and not to Mr. Speaker. 
 " How has the speaker then the authority of adjourn- 
 ing the House ? I never yet saw a pocket order of 
 adjourning the House admitted. It may be doubted 
 whether this power is in the crown. I take the Lords' 
 House and the Commons to be but one court in judg- 
 ment of law, and that is the High Court of Parliament. 
 
 Grey's Debates.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 37 
 
 must follow, then, the king must adjourn the whole 
 court. If the king should adjourn the Commons, and 
 leave the Lords sitting, it would breed confusion. 
 But, if the power of adjournment be not in tbe crown, 
 it cannot be in the chair. The speaker is called the 
 mouth and tongue of the House, which speaks the 
 conceptions of the mind. Not that he is to make 
 those conceptions, but pronounce what he has in 
 command from the House. Lenthall, upon an occa- 
 sion known to most, told the late king " he had 
 neither tongue, eyes, nor ears, but what the House 
 gave him." 
 
 But, though other members of opposition sup- 
 ported his views, Sir Thomas Clarges complaining 
 of Seymour's pattering out of the chair with such 
 extreme precipitancy, and Mr. Waller reminding him 
 "that he was entirely in potestate senatus/' no vote 
 was adventured upon his conduct. After calm reflec- 
 tion, it was admitted that the speaker had acted with 
 due respect to the prerogative, as well as regard to 
 their own privileges, in permitting no debate, when 
 the king's pleasure that they should adjourn them- 
 selves had been once announced 6 . 
 
 In the following year, Mr. Powle was hurried along 
 by the whirl of political intrigue, in which those 
 factious times revolved, to support the re-election to 
 the chair of the man who had treated him so cava- 
 lierly, but with no real, though seeming, inconsistency, 
 as the struggle still lay for precedence between the 
 Commons and the king. When Mr. Seymour went up 
 to the Lords for his majesty's approval, he declared 
 that he had been chosen by the unanimous vote of the 
 House, but omitted the usual formal plea of modesty, 
 
 c Hatsell.
 
 38 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 desiring to be excused, a prayer which it was sus- 
 pected, from the lord treasurer's enmity to Seymour, 
 the chancellor would cheerfully grant. 
 
 " I am come hither," said the haughty commoner, 
 in a tone of arrogance till then unknown, " for your 
 majesty's approbation, which, if your majesty please 
 to grant, I shall do the Commons and you the best 
 service I can." However disconcerted by this novel 
 boldness, the royal purpose was too firmly fixed to be 
 thus eluded. 
 
 " The approbation," said the chancellor, after an 
 embarrassed pause, " which is given by his majesty to 
 the choice of a speaker, would not be thought such a 
 favour as it is, and ought to be received, if his 
 majesty were not at liberty to deny as well as to 
 grant it. It is an essential prerogative of the king 
 to refuse as well as approve of a speaker. The king 
 is the best judge of men and things. He knows 
 when and where to employ. He thinks fit to reserve 
 you for other service, and to ease you of this. It is 
 his majesty's pleasure to discharge this choice, and 
 accordingly, by his majesty's command, I do discharge 
 you of this place you are chosen for, and in his 
 majesty's name command the House of Commons to 
 make another choice, and command them to attend 
 here to-morrow, at eleven o'clock*." 
 
 The members withdrew from the royal presence in 
 a fever of resentment at this contumelious treatment 
 of their head, nor did any fan the flame with more 
 zeal than Mr. Powle. " I have ever," lie said, "taken 
 the record to be, that no man was ever refused being 
 speaker, when presented to the king, but for some 
 disability of body, as in Sir John Popham's case, who 
 
 1 Parliamentary History, vol. iv.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 39 
 
 desired to be excused from that service by reason of 
 disability of body from wounds lie had received in the 
 wars (28th Henry VI.); and lately Sir Job Charlton, 
 not being able to endure the employment, by reason 
 of disability of body. But nothing of this can be 
 objected against Mr. Seymour ; must any private 
 person inform the king of his unfitness without any 
 cause assigned ? I know not what may come of it. 
 I do protest before God, that I think the greatness of 
 the nation is under the privileges of this House. A 
 people can never heartily support the government that 
 does not protect them. A slavish people can never 
 heartily support the government. Those that come 
 after us here, if we are dissolved upon this point, will 
 speak the same language. I fear not dissolution." 
 
 The debate having been adjourned to the next day, 
 Mr. Powle moved that an application should be made 
 to the king, that the matter delivered by the lord 
 chancellor yesterday was of such great importance 
 relating to the speaker, that we desire some time to 
 consider of it. An address to this effect was presented, 
 and his majesty consented to a further time, suggest- 
 ing that, as he would not have his prerogative en- 
 croached upon, nor encroach on the privileges of the 
 Commons, a third person might be found out as an 
 expedient. Serjeant Streete after this named Mr. 
 Powle himself as speaker, but he was not suffered to 
 proceed, as it might seem a waiver of their rights. A 
 further resolution was voted, which Mr. Powle, as 
 ringleader of his stubborn parliament, read to the king, 
 who made, on the instant, a short and severe reply. 
 " Gentlemen, all this is but loss of time ; therefore, 
 I command you to go back to your House, and do as 
 I directed you." A prorogation of two days was
 
 40 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 ordered, and Mr. Seymour required to absent himself, 
 to which evasion that trafficking courtier readily 
 assented. When the House resumed its sittings, 
 though a few of the opposition leaders appeared to be 
 still undaunted, saying that they had had rougher 
 answers than that, the majority remarked, in the 
 quaint phraseology of the day, that in Seymour's 
 absence it was only playing French cockles, and, by 
 virtue of a secret compromise, elected Serjeant Gre- 
 gory, a choice which was immediately ratified by the 
 king. 
 
 Burnet is mistaken in stating, as the result of this 
 contest^, that the unconditional choice of a speaker 
 was tacitly surrendered to the Commons. All that 
 was, in fact, conceded, appears to have been the barren 
 trophy, that the speaker might be named by one who 
 was not a privy councillor 11 . 
 
 From these fierce and constantly recurring contests 
 with the court, Powle found himself suddenly trans- 
 lated into a high place of trust. After the dismissal 
 of Lord Danby, Charles had consulted Sir William 
 Temple upon the best method of forming a govern- 
 ment. That theoretical statesman recommended a 
 new privy council, to consist of thirty members, one 
 half of whom should be selected by the king from the 
 officers of his court, and the other chosen by the 
 king's leading antagonists in both houses'. Wealth 
 was to be an essential qualification; that these thirty 
 councillors should command £300,000 in case of 
 exigency, no brilliant amount of money, even if 
 quadrupled to meet the present standard of value. 
 The needy monarch caught at the scheme, and made 
 
 K Memoirs, vol. ii. b Speaker Onslow, quoted by Hatsell. 
 
 1 Courteuay's Life of Sir W. Temple.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 41 
 
 Lord Shaftesbury president, still more to propitiate 
 the opposition. Only five commoners did this aristo- 
 cratic estate permit to enter their number, — Lords 
 Russell and Cavendish, Sir Henry Capel, Seymour, 
 and Powle. The malcontents, though thus suddenly 
 heaved into power, as if by some violent convulsion, 
 brought with them the elements of dissolution. They 
 could not cordially coalesce with the other members, 
 were not confided in, and bore the responsibility of 
 measures in which they had not been consulted. 
 Still more annoying was the loss of their credit with 
 the people, — -the popularity of the patriot beginning to 
 wane, as soon as he was detected within the precincts 
 of the palace. "So true is it," says Sir John 
 Reresby, when mentioning the fact, " that there is 
 no wearing the court and country livery together 11 ." 
 
 At length, when parliament had been prorogued, 
 without any previous intimation to the council, the 
 opposition members repaired to court in a body, and 
 solicited to be excused from further attendance, as 
 they despaired of being able to serve him. The king 
 instantly replied, more sincerely than courteously, 
 "With all my heart!" The vernal promise and 
 equinoctial disappointment were complete. Relapsing 
 into vehement opposition, Powle and his allies agitated 
 petitions from all quarters for the meeting of parlia- 
 ment, and presented the Duke of York to a Middlesex 
 grand jury, by a master-stroke of Shaftesbury's daring 
 genius, as a popish recusant. Chief Justice Scroggs 
 discharged the grand jury before they could make this 
 presentment, and rebuked them sharply for drawing 
 up a petition that parliament might soon meet. To 
 
 k Sir J. Reresby 's Memoirs.
 
 42 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 aggravate his iniquities in the eyes of the opposition, 
 he had been active in expressing abhorrence of this 
 tumultuary petitioning. 
 
 Immediately on the meeting of parliament, Powle 
 arraigned his conduct in a speech full of vindictive 
 energy and of rhetoric bordering on bombast. But 
 great allowance should be made for the bad taste of 
 the reporter 1 . - c The two great pillars of the govern- 
 ment are parliaments and juries : it is this gives us 
 the title of free-born Englishmen, for my notion of 
 free Englishmen is this, that they are ruled by laws of 
 their own making, and tried by men of the same con- 
 dition as themselves. The two great and undoubted 
 privileges of the people have been lately invaded by 
 the judges that now sit in Westminster Hall \ they 
 have espoused proclamations against law ; they have 
 discountenanced and opposed several legal acts that 
 tended to the sitting of this House ; they have grasped 
 the legislative power into their own hands, as in the 
 instance of printing (that printing of news might be 
 prohibited by law) ; they have discharged grand juries 
 on purpose to quell their presentments and shelter 
 great criminals from justice ; and, when juries have 
 presented their opinion for the sitting of this House, 
 they have in disdain thrown them at their feet, and 
 told them they would be no messengers to carry such 
 petitions, and yet, in a few days after, have encouraged 
 all who would spit their venom against the govern- 
 ment ; they have served an ignorant and arbitrary 
 faction, and been the messengers of abhorrences to 
 the king. What we have now to do is to load them 
 with shame who bade defiance to the law ; they are 
 guilty of crimes against nature, against the king, 
 1 Grey's Debates.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 43 
 
 against their knowledge, and against posterity. The 
 whole frame of nature doth loudly and daily petition 
 to God their Creator, and kings, like God, may be 
 addressed in like manner, by petition not command. 
 The judges likewise knew it was lawful to petition: 
 ignorance can be no plea, and their knowledge aggra- 
 vates their crimes ; the children unborn are bound to 
 curse such proceedings, for it was not petitioning but 
 parliaments they abhorred. The atheist pleads against 
 a God, not that he disbelieves a Deity, but would have 
 it so. Tresilian and Belknap were judges too ; their 
 learning gave them honour, but their villanies made 
 their exit by a rope ! The end of my motion there- 
 fore is, that we may address warmly our prince against 
 them ; let us settle a committee to inquire into their 
 crimes, and not fail of doing justice upon those that 
 have prevented it ; let us purge the fountain, and 
 the streams will issue pure." 
 
 At the conclusion of this animated speech, it was 
 resolved, "That the discharging of a grand jury by any 
 judge, before the end of the term assizes, or sessions, 
 while matters are under consideration and not pre- 
 sented, is arbitrary, illegal, destructive to public jus- 
 tice, a manifest violation of his oath, and is a means to 
 subvert the fundamental laws of this kingdom." The 
 chief justice escaped by an opportune dissolution the 
 consequences of an impeachment. 
 
 In the frenzied horror of the Popish Plot which 
 covered the nation as with a lurid cloud, overshadow- 
 ing the judgments and darkening the hearts of Eng- 
 lishmen, Powle, with the other leading patriots, strayed 
 widely from the path of political rectitude. Evelyn 
 speaks of his summing up the articles of impeachment 
 in a vehement oration against the Earl of Stafford,
 
 44 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 murdered under forms of law, though the evidence of 
 Oates, as the good old man wisely and humanely 
 says m , " ought not to have been taken against the life of 
 a clog !" Mr. Powle, in a similar fanatical spirit, passed 
 the watchword of " No Popery" on the slight circum- 
 stance of some troops being required, according to the 
 strict rule of military discipline, to pay a mark of 
 respect to the established religion of the place where 
 they were stationed : " I hear a strange rule, that our 
 forces beyond sea must stand uncovered at the Host 
 passing by in their processions. I would be secured 
 from those forces bringing in popery !" 
 
 This zealous Protestant champion not only shared 
 with the country party their anti-papistical alarms, but 
 is liable to the reproach, with which nearly all were 
 tainted, of receiving pay and pension from France. 
 On terms of intimacy with Barillon, the celebrated 
 ambassador of Louis, who describes Powle as " a man 
 fit to fill one of the first posts in England,, very elo- 
 quent, and very able," he stooped to accept his mas- 
 ter's bounty, and is put down in that black list, among 
 the first class of pensioners: "A sieur Powle 500 
 guinees"." Lord William Russell was alone unbribed, 
 and his able descendant, the historian Lord John Rus- 
 sell, has insinuated doubts more specious than solid, 
 of that high-minded nobleman's colleagues being alike 
 free from gifts . " Powle, Littleton, Harbord, Hamp- 
 den, Titus, William Harbord, are put down for 500 
 guineas ; Sacheverell, Foley, 300 ; Algernon Sydney 
 500. But it is remarkable, that, of the twenty 
 persons mentioned, not above half were in parliament, 
 and almost all of those were leaders. Now, if any one 
 
 m Evelyn's Diary, vol. i. " Appendix to Dalrymple. 
 
 °- Lord John Russell's Life of Lord William Ilussell.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 45 
 
 or two obtained money from Barillon for persons to 
 whom they did not distribute it, or if Barillon himself 
 embezzled the money, the names, which would natu- 
 rally appear in his list, would be those of the speakers 
 who had the greatest reputation. But, if the transac- 
 tions were real, it is much more probable that he should 
 have been able to buy the lower and more obscure 
 members than those whose fame stood highest for 
 ability and integrity." The purchase would have 
 been easier assuredly, but would have been scarcely 
 worth the clever Frenchman's notice. 
 
 We learn from Madame de Sevigne, that Barillon 
 enriched himself by his mission to England, " Cette 
 annee il mangera cinquante mille francs p;" and that 
 the perfect accuracy of his accounts may be questioned 
 where there was no check against peculation. In the 
 present instance, however, there were both checks and 
 vouchers. To confirm his foul impeachment of fair 
 and honourable names, we must admit the generality 
 of the suspicion that French louis d'ors were tinkling 
 in the House of Commons, and the certainty that even 
 detection in venal practices did not, in that degenerate 
 age, entail the disgrace with which the very rumour 
 would overwhelm a modern statesman. Our notions 
 of political honour and integrity would have been 
 deemed prudery in the days of the laughing Charles 
 and Louis le Grand. The memoirs of contemporaries 
 corroborate the revelations of M'Pherson and Dalrym- 
 ple, and leave a stain on his countrymen which the 
 English historian would fain remove, at any cost but 
 that of truth. Upon the evidence it is impossible to 
 return a verdict of acquittal, and not proven is more 
 than, as an honest chronicler, he can safely record. 
 
 f Sevigne's Letters to her Daughter,
 
 46 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 When the band of patriots had been overthrown 
 by their own violence, and parliaments were discon- 
 tinued during the dark and evil latter days of Charles 
 and the undisguised despotism of James II. , Mr. Powle 
 appears to have sought shelter in the courts of law, 
 though he had not been regularly educated to the bar, 
 and in the calm pursuits of science. We learn from 
 the following curious letter to Sir Christopher Wren q , 
 that he had been from the first a member of the 
 Royal Society, but we have no other memorial of his 
 taking an active part in their proceedings. 
 
 " To Sir C. Wren, at All-Sours College, in Oxford. 
 
 " Sir, — I am commanded by the Royal Society to 
 acquaint you, that his majesty expects you should 
 prosecute your design of making the representation of 
 the lunar globe in solido, and that you should proceed 
 in drawing the shapes of little animals, as they appear 
 in the microscope, and that he doth expect an account 
 of this from you shortly. 
 
 " I am, Sir, &c. 
 
 " HENRY POWLE." 
 
 In observance of the king's command, we are told 
 the globe of the moon in solid work was accurately 
 finished, and presented to his majesty at Whitehall, 
 fixed on a pedestal of lignum vita?, and placed by the 
 king among the curiosities of his cabinet. 
 
 The advance of the Prince of Orange upon London 
 recalled the whig leader to his political sphere of duty. 
 Lord Clarendon's diary affords a glimpse of the eager- 
 ness with which the contending factions sought an 
 audience of the invader, and of the marked difference 
 
 i Life of Sir Christopher Wren, by his Son.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 47 
 
 displayed in the reception of their overtures 1 ". " De- 
 cember 16th. Sir Robert Howard and Mr. Powle came 
 together to Windsor, and were a long time in private 
 with the prince. Colonel Titus and Sir William 
 Williams were there likewise, but could not be admit- 
 ted to the prince." 
 
 When all the old parliament men who had sat in 
 the House during the reign of Charles II., together 
 with the lord mayor, aldermen, and sixty common- 
 councilmen of the city of the London s , by way of 
 Corinthian capital to a composite base, were convened 
 at St. James's, Mr. Powle attended the summons at 
 the head of one hundred and sixty members. Upon 
 their return to Westminster, to consider the best 
 method of calling a free parliament, he was chosen 
 chairman, and solved the grave doubt then first started, 
 what authority they had to assemble, by the short 
 answer, " that the request of the prince was a sufficient 
 warrant." The next morning he read their address 
 to his highness, requesting that he would assume the 
 administration of public affairs, and that letters should 
 be issued to summon a convention. Returned for 
 Windsor, with his old correspondent, Sir Christopher 
 Wren, as a colleague, he was voted by a unanimous 
 call to the chair, the 22nd January, 1688-9, and thus 
 attained the highest station to which a statesman 
 could aspire, — speaker of the Convention Parliament. 
 His formal excuse of inability was overruled by the 
 House, and, the throne being vacant, the ceremony of 
 presenting him for approval was omitted*. His elec- 
 tion to the chair forms the second instance, in which 
 neither the form of having the royal permission to 
 
 r Lord Clarendon's Diary, vol. ii. 
 • Ward's Essay on the Revolution. l Hatsell.
 
 48 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 proceed to the election of a speaker, nor the still 
 more important form of the king's approbation of the 
 person elected, was observed. 
 
 The first violation of the royal prerogative had 
 arisen in this instance from absolute necessity, in 
 April 1660, when the Convention Parliament, which 
 met at the Restoration, voted Sir Harbottle Grimston 
 speaker. In lieu of a speech from the throne, Mr. 
 Powle read a letter from the prince, and the House 
 proceeded to business as quietly as if all their solemn 
 rites had been duly performed. It would have been 
 quitting the substance for the shadow had they aimed 
 at more. Of the eloquence and effective energy with 
 which the speaker seconded the prince's wishes for 
 war with France, a striking illustration is given in 
 Ralph u . 
 
 " Mr. Powle opened the diet with an harangue on 
 the dangerous state of the nation, the fatal conse- 
 quences of anarchy, the deplorable condition of the 
 Protestants of Ireland, the dreadful consequences to 
 England of the loss of that kingdom, the growth of 
 the power of France, the insatiable ambition of the 
 most Christian king, his sworn enmity to the Protest- 
 ant religion and the interests of England ; the neces- 
 sity of putting the nation in such a posture as might 
 not only secure it from any affront, but enable it to 
 subdue France a second time, or at least secure the 
 jirovinces of Normandy and Aquitaine, which were 
 the inheritance of our kings ; and whatever else had a 
 tendency to convince or persuade his audience that 
 their all depended on the Prince of Orange ; and with 
 such great success did he play the orator on this 
 occasion, that the House rang with applause, and in a 
 
 u Ralph's History of England.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 49 
 
 sort of transport all was agreed to that was proposed 
 either for his highness' honour or his interests." 
 
 A speech that was hailed with such enthusiasm 
 could not deserve Bolingbroke's contemptuous men- 
 tion w . "There is a humdrum speech of a speaker, I 
 think, who humbly desired his majesty to take this 
 opportunity of reconquering his ancient Duchy of 
 Aquitaine. We were soon awakened from these 
 gaudy dreams!" There might be Quixotry in the 
 orator's visions of conquest ; but his object was to 
 infuse a martial spirit into a doubtful and hesitating 
 audience, and their shouts attested the triumph of 
 his art, 'how well he could persuade!' It was a 
 proud day for himself and his country, that 13th day 
 of February, 1688-9, when he stood at the head of the 
 assembled Commons on the left side of the Banquet- 
 ing House, the Marquis of Halifax, speaker of the 
 Lords, with the Peers, on the right, and heard the 
 declaration of rights asserted previously to the tender 
 of the crown. In the magnificent procession that 
 paraded through the streets of London to proclaim 
 William and Mary, the speaker in his carriage took 
 precedence of the Duke of Norfolk, earl marshal, 
 and the other nobles. 
 
 He was with seven other Commoners summoned 
 to his first privy-council by the new king, and, on the 
 admirable remodelling of the bench of judges, at the 
 time that Holt was appointed chief-justice of the 
 King's Bench, and Sir Robert Atkyns chief- baron, 
 received his patent as master of the rolls. This office, 
 the third station of rank in the law, had been held by 
 several of his predecessors in the chair, Lenthall, 
 
 w Bolingbroke's Letter to Sir W. Wyndham. 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Sir Harbottle Grimston, and others, and at a period 
 when business pressed with lighter weight on both 
 courts, when sessions were short and equity arrears 
 slight, seemed well adapted to be held, as it were in 
 commendam, by the first commoner of England. 
 Independently of this additional income, the stipend 
 of the speaker, though reformed on a liberal scale, 
 would have been scarcely sufficient to maintain his 
 high station. Mr. Powle received £1,000 for the first 
 session of Parliament, an outfit of plate, and perqui- 
 sites amounting to £5 on every private bill. There 
 was sound policy in accumulating the favours of the 
 crown upon one who could play the part of loyal 
 courtier or zealous patriot with equal facility, and on 
 whose private counsels the king implicitly relied for 
 the answers he should publicly return to the addresses 
 of the House. Thus, when the Commons had voted 
 a deputation and a monthly assessment of £420,000, 
 King William, we are told, deferred receiving them 
 until, in concert with the speaker, he had prepared a 
 suitable reply. And when any memorable state occa- 
 sion required it, his eloquence appeared equal to the 
 greatness of the exigency, worthy of a place in the 
 journals. His congratulatory oration to their majes- 
 ties on the coronation, concluded with a felicitous 
 and graceful allusion to the reign, in which parlia- 
 ments met x . 
 
 " May the lustre of both your names so far out- 
 shine the glory of your predecessors, that the memory 
 of their greatest actions may be forgotten, and your 
 people no longer date the establishment of their laws 
 and liberties from St. Edward's days, but from the 
 
 * Journals of the Commons, vol. x.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 51 
 
 most auspicious reign of King William and Queen 
 Mary." 
 
 Upon an event equally memorable — presenting 
 the Bill of Rights — the speaker prefaced his offer of 
 the statute for his majesty's gracious acceptance with 
 some well-chosen and judicious sentences. "They 
 have agreed upon a bill for declaring of their rights 
 and liberties, which were so notoriously violated in 
 the late reign, humbly desiring your majesty to give 
 life to it by the royal assent, that so it may remain, 
 not only as a security to them from the like attempts 
 hereafter, but be a lasting monument to all posterity 
 of what they owe to your majesty for their deliver- 
 ance." 
 
 An address less pleasing to his ungracious royal 
 master, but listened to with delight by his brother 
 Englishmen, was delivered by Mr. Powle, at the close 
 of the session of 1689. The phrase of conquest had 
 been industriously whispered, a prelate had preached 
 upon King William and Queen Mary Conquerors, 
 and there seemed to prevail an overweening sense of 
 the service rendered within the precincts of the court. 
 To lessen this conceit, the speaker introduced an 
 historical reminiscence >'. "It is little more than an 
 age since the most illustrious Prince of Orange, your 
 majesty's great-grandfather, whose name will ever be 
 famous for his love to his country, did, by the assist- 
 ance of the English, redeem those provinces from the 
 like oppressions, which shews how inseparable the 
 interests of these two nations are ; and, since it was 
 the fatal policy of those that laboured our destruction 
 to endeavour to divide us, it ought to be the endea- 
 
 y Ralph's History. 
 
 E2
 
 52 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 vours of all true lovers of their countries to keep us 
 firmly united, in order to our preservation." 
 
 Mr. Powle displayed equal tact and discretion on 
 still more trying occasions. When James II. wrote 
 to him a letter to present to the House, replete with 
 appeals to their loyalty and feelings, the speaker 
 relieved the country from danger by refusing to open 
 the document. It was confessed by his rival, Sir 
 Edward Seymour, that he kept order excellently well, 
 and escaped censure in the single instance in which 
 the privileges of the House appeared to be invaded, 
 the apprehension of Lord Danby on a charge of 
 treason 2 . His staff of office was broken at the disso- 
 lution of the parliament in 1690. A more unscrupu- 
 lous partizan was required to propitiate in the chair a 
 corrupt and factious majority. Sir John Trevor, — 
 whom he had supplanted at the rolls, the apt speaker 
 of James II. 's solitary House of Commons, — suc- 
 ceeded, and even the seat of the discarded whig was 
 wrested from him on petition. Notoriously partial 
 as election committees then were, they decided that 
 the majority of legal votes had been given in his 
 favour ; but their decision was reversed by the House, 
 who, whilst they excluded their late head from a seat, 
 paid him the tribute of dread, and proved in their 
 iniquity how much they feared him. 
 
 Mr. Powle retired to the rolls, and maintained 
 the independence of the office by refusing to attend 
 the Lords at their pleasure, asserting that he was an 
 assistant to, but not an attendant upon, the House. 
 He died in November, 1092, and was interred in the 
 village church of Quenington, in Gloucestershire, 
 
 * Parliamentary History, vol. v.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 53 
 
 where he was lord of the manor. Upon a flat stone, 
 within the communion rails, is inscribed the follow- 
 ing too flattering memorial : — 
 
 "Herelyeth the body of the Right Honorable Henry Powle, Esq., 
 Master of the Rolls, one of the Judges Delegates of the Admiralty, 
 and of his Majesty's most Honorable Privy Council, who departed 
 this life 2 1st of November, 1692, set: 63. 
 
 11 Regi et regno fidelissimus, 
 
 " iEqni rectique arbiter integerrimus, 
 
 " Pius, probus, temperans, prudens, 
 
 " Virtutum omnium 
 
 " Exemplar magnum a ." 
 
 By his wife Elizabeth, who died long before her 
 husband, July 1672, a daughter of Lord Newport, 
 he had an only child and heiress, Catherine, married 
 to Henry Ireton ; through whom he derived the manor 
 of Williamstrop. 
 
 His successor, " a bold, bad man b ," was descended 
 from an ancient family in North Wales, which traced 
 its origin to Tudor Trevor, Earl of Hereford, but was 
 reduced to indigence. That wicked gossip, Roger 
 North, gives a curious history of his early rise : c " He 
 was bred a sort of clerk in old Arthur Trevor's cham- 
 bers, an eminent and worthy professor of the law in the 
 Inner Temple. A gentleman that visited Mr. Arthur 
 Trevor, at his going out, observed a strange-looking boy 
 in his clerk's seat (for no person ever had a worse sort 
 of squint than he had), and asked who that youth 
 was : ' A kinsman of mine,' said Arthur Trevor, ' that 
 I have allowed to sit here to learn the knavish part 
 of the law ! ' This John Trevor grew up, and took in 
 with the gamesters, among whom he was a great pro- 
 
 a Nash's and Sir R. Atkyns' Gloucestershire. 
 b Evelyn. c North's Life "of Chief Justice North.
 
 54 HISTORY OP THE 
 
 ficient, and, being well grounded in the law, proved a 
 critic in resolving gaming cases and doubts, and had 
 the authority of a judge amongst them, and his sen- 
 tence for the most part carried the cause." 
 
 But he had the countenance of a more fortunate 
 gambler in the law than even these worthy associates, 
 the execrable Jeffries, his first cousin, and former 
 lover of his second wife. Trevor was patronized by 
 that lucky lawyer, who displayed gleams of good- 
 nature amid ferocious cruelties, and shared in his 
 rapid ascent. Smuggled into the Parliament of 
 Charles II., in 1677, as a retainer of the court, he 
 lost no time in betraying his servile allegiance : " Tis 
 the king's prerogative to make peace or war ; 'tis he 
 that makes it, and he that breaks it. The disciples 
 came to our Saviour in the ship, and said, i Lord, save 
 us or we perish,' and we can say no more to the 
 king d ." 
 
 The fawning and profane courtier could, however, 
 assume a tone of patriotic virtue when the public 
 mind was frenzied with the terrors of a popish plot, 
 and declaim boldly against the queen, without, of 
 course, the most distant suspicion that the royal 
 voluptuary might not be loath to put her away. " I 
 would satisfy the loyal subjects of England, and 
 pass a vote in plain English, to make an address 
 to the king, that the queen and her family, together 
 with all reputed or suspected papists, may be removed 
 from Whitehall." The vote was passed by acclama- 
 tion, but not carried into effect, for the king had more 
 humanity than his " goodman burgess." The con- 
 venient conscience of this hireling politician was not 
 troubled with a doubt on the guilt of Lord Stafford, 
 and he clamoured for that legal murder in language 
 
 Grey's Debates.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 55 
 
 as choice as the sentiment was pure. " Upon the 
 evidence, I am satisfied clearly that this Lord Stafford 
 is guilty, and so / tvould make no manner of bones to 
 demand judgment. I would have no more delay, but 
 go up and demand judgment." 
 
 When the vengeance of the vindictive Commons 
 pursued a more worthy victim, and the House debated 
 on an address to the king to remove Sir George Jeffries 
 out of all public offices for his abhorrence of petitions, 
 his cousin pleaded earnestly in his behalf, artfully 
 extolling the merits of the judge, and palliating his 
 immoralities as a man. " I take it, he stands fair as 
 to his carriage relating to the libel and the rape. 
 This gentleman has been Recorder of London many 
 years, and it is a place of great authority, and it is his 
 happiness that there is no evidence against him that 
 he ever packed a jury, or has gone about to clear a 
 person innocent. He has been counsel for the king 
 when persons were indicted for the horrid plot, and 
 behaved himself worthily, and, if I may say so, he 
 was too forward in prosecuting ; if so, that may make 
 some atonement for his forwardness in other matters. 
 I hope in some measure you will take pity of him." 
 
 The House was deaf to his pathos, and Jeffries, 
 faint-hearted when exposed to danger, however prone 
 to tyrannize over others, resigned his appointment, 
 incurred the scorn of the king, who would sneer at 
 his bullying judge, " as not parliament-proof," e and 
 on his knees at the bar cowered before the severe 
 rebuke of the speaker. During the sanguinarv cam- 
 paign of that determined butcher in the west, Lord 
 Keeper North, and Sir John Churchill, Master of 
 the Rolls, died, and the grateful monarch, when he 
 
 e Woolryche's Life of Jeffries.
 
 55 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 had made Jeffries keeper of his conscience, appointed 
 Trevor Master of the Rolls. As a further proof of 
 favour, he was elected, by the court influence, speaker 
 of his first and only parliament in 1685 ; a parliament, 
 according to Evelyn, f composed of the worst mate- 
 rials, and which comprehended even gentlemen's ser- 
 vants, among its members, honourable by courtesy. 
 It is most probable that his remarks were dictated by 
 pique, his brother having lost his election for Surrey, 
 and that he spoke of some who had raised themselves 
 from that menial station, as was the case in later par- 
 liaments with Craggs and Moore. Lord Bolingbroke 
 has vindicated its general respectability, and declares 
 that Bishop Burnet (who asserts that the members 
 were neither men of posts nor estates) speaks of it 
 very indecently, and, I think, very untruly." 
 
 Be this as it may, the speaker presented a resolu- 
 tion to the king with the Money Bill, that they trusted 
 to the king's word for the safety of the Church of 
 England, which was dearer to them than their lives, 
 and, in a spirit of sturdy boldness, repeated the last 
 emphatic words with a raised voice and marked tone. 
 The king dissembled his displeasure, but seized the 
 opportunity of the intelligence of Monmouth's inva- 
 sion to prorogue his refractory Commons, and when 
 they met again only allowed them to sit for fifteen 
 days. 
 
 Relegated to the rolls, Sir John Trevor presided 
 over his court with much ability, and relieved the 
 ennui of professional toil by intriguing against his 
 patron. Jeffries had thrown clown the gauntlet by 
 reversing his decrees, discharging his most common 
 orders of course, and setting up officers of his own 
 
 1 Evelyn's Diary.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 57 
 
 appointment to question the authority of the master, 
 and insult him publicly on the seat of justice. Daring 
 and unprincipled, the master hesitated not in making 
 fierce reprisals, and when the fortunes of the favourite 
 began to waver, from his tenacious adherence to the 
 Church of England, would wrangle with him publicly 
 in Whitehall s. He told the chancellor fearlessly, in 
 Cornish's case, that if he pursued that unfortunate 
 man to execution it would be no better than murder. 
 Jeffries was not the man to grow pale at such a 
 charge, nor would Trevor have preferred it on a prin- 
 ciple of humanity, but his bearing evinced the reck- 
 lessness with which he would fain have tripped up his 
 quondam protector. "Like a true gamester," says 
 North, " he fell to the good work of supplanting his 
 friend, and had certainly done it, if the affairs of King 
 James had stood right up much longer." 
 
 In July, 1688, he was sworn of the privy council, 
 a circumstance which the Earl of Clarendon has noted 
 in a tone of holy horror h . " July 6th, 1688. Sir John 
 Trevor, master of the rolls, Colonel Titus, and Mr. 
 Vane, Sir Henry Vane's son, were sworn of the privy 
 council. Good God bless us ! What will the world 
 come to !" The privy councillors were scattered with 
 the leaves of autumn, but Trevor had the merit of 
 more fidelity than his fellows, and attended the 
 monarch's levee on his return from Rochester. The 
 result of this council, which the Duke of Hamilton, 
 Lords Berkeley, Craven, Preston, and Godolphin, also 
 attended, was a proclamation for suppressing tumul- 
 tuary outrages, inserted in the Gazette, the last act of 
 sovereignty performed by King James in England. 
 At the revolution, Trevor was displaced from the rolls 
 
 s Roger North. '' The second Lord Clarendon's Diary.
 
 58 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 to make room for a more worthy man, Mr. Henry 
 Powle ; but nothing daunted, he resumed his practice 
 at the bar, and was loud and voluble in the House. 
 When it was proposed to disfranchise the borough of 
 Stockbridge for bribery and corruption, and that two 
 members should be added to the county of Southamp- 
 ton instead, having a fellow feeling for such practices, 
 he manfully opposed the measure 1 . 
 
 "I never heard of boroughs dissolved before. I 
 am afraid, if this question pass, you, Mr. Speaker, 
 and I, shall sit no more in that chair. I have the 
 honour to serve for a borough in Devonshire (Beeral- 
 ston), for which I am obliged to a member of the 
 House (Maynard),, and to the gentlemen of that 
 county. If you break the ancient constitution of 
 elections, I know not the consequence. The security 
 of the nation was ever thought to lie in the mixture of 
 this House. What shall then become of merchants 
 to inform you of trade ? The House stands upon 
 ancient constitutions, and I hope you will not remove 
 old land-marks." 
 
 The zealous advocate of corruption was not 
 doomed to remain long unrewarded. Appointed first 
 commissioner of the great seal in the room of Maynard, 
 on the meeting of King William's second parliament, 
 in the spring of 1G90, he was unanimously elected 
 speaker, and, on the death of Mr. Henry Powle in the 
 autumn of 1 692, nominated his successor at the rolls. 
 He exhibited in the chair much of the boldfacedness of 
 Bully Bottom, for instance k : <r It was said by Harbord, 
 he stood astonished at what a man in the greatest post 
 in England did. Let us know it, that we may be 
 astonished too ! " Harbord, not to be brow-beaten, 
 1 Parliamentary History, vol. v. k Ibid.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 59 
 
 explained that he alluded to the Earl of Nottingham, 
 who spoke of King William as a king de facto 
 merely. The members, whom their speaker could 
 not hector, he undertook to bribe. He offered, ac- 
 cording to Burnet l , to manage that party, provided he 
 was furnished with such sums of money as might 
 purchase some votes, and by him began the practice 
 of buying off men, in which hitherto the king had 
 kept to stricter rules. " I took the liberty to complain 
 to the king of this method ; he said he hated it as 
 much as any man could do, but he saw it was not 
 possible, considering the corruption of the age, to 
 avoid it, unless he would endanger the whole." 
 
 Sir John Trevor had contaminated the chair too 
 long, a space of five years exactly, when the committee 
 appointed to report on corrupt practices in causing 
 the Orphan Bill to pass, brought before the indignant 
 notice of the House an order of the common council 
 of London, directing "that Mr. Chamberlain do pay 
 to the Hon. Sir John Trevor, knight, speaker of the 
 House of Commons, the sum of 1000 guineas, so 
 soon as a bill be passed into an act of parliament for 
 satisfying the debts of the orphans, and other creditors 
 of the said city." And on the back of the said order 
 was this indorsement, viz., "The within mentioned 
 1000 guineas were delivered, and paid unto the Hon. 
 Sir John Trevor, this 22nd June, 1694, in the pre- 
 sence of Sir Robert Clayton and Sir James Houblon, 
 which at 22s. exchange, comes to £1,100 m ." 
 
 The House, after a careful perusal of these and 
 
 other documents, establishing the guilt of the accused 
 
 beyond cavil, came to a unanimous resolution, upon 
 
 reading which even the countenance of Trevor must 
 
 1 Burnet's Memoirs. m Parliamentary Hist. vol. v.
 
 GO HISTORY OF THE 
 
 have worn a hue of shame : "That Sir John Trevor, 
 speaker of this House, receiving a gratuity of 1000 
 guineas from the city of London, after passing of the 
 Orphans Bill, is guilty of a high crime and misde- 
 meanor." The next day, an incensed and curious 
 House found their meeting for business impeded by 
 the following letter, inclosed in one to the clerk : — 
 
 "Gentlemen, 1 did intend to have waited upon 
 you this morning ; but, after I was up, I was taken 
 suddenly ill with a violent cholic. I hope to be in a 
 condition of attending you to-morrow morning; in 
 the mean time I desire you will be pleased to excuse 
 my attendance. I am, with all duty, gentlemen, your 
 most obedient, humble servant, J. Trevor, speaker. 
 March 13, 1694—5. 
 
 This plea of convenient illness was readily under- 
 stood; but the members, however disgraced by their 
 unworthy head, resolving to follow precedents, ad- 
 journed to the next morning at 10 o'clock, when there 
 came another written apology : — 
 
 " Mr. Jodrell, my illness still continues, which 
 makes me unable to come abroad, wherewith I desire 
 you to acquaint the House, and that I humbly pray 
 they will please to excuse me for not attending them. 
 I am your friend, and servant, 
 
 March 14, 1694. "J. Trevor, Speaker." 
 
 The consent of the king having been obtained, 
 they proceeded immediately to make a worthier choice 
 in Mr. Paul Foley, chairman of the committee of 
 scrutiny, and, as soon as their new speaker had been 
 presented and approved, expelled Sir John Trevor the 
 House. This act of righteous retribution was, how- 
 ever, incommensurate with his misdeeds. We should
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. Gl 
 
 form a very inadequate estimate of his corrupt gains, 
 were we to restrict ourselves to this one transaction, 
 though, even in this very measure, it was generally 
 helieved that a much greater present had been made 
 on behalf of the orphans. The douceur of 1000 
 guineas would seem to have been entered regularly in 
 the ledger from a notion that it was a mere matter of 
 business, and too trifling to excite comment. The 
 company had thriven and hoped to thrive by bribery 
 at court. Lord Halifax wrote in lG81 n , "The East 
 India men intend to have it moved to give a yearly 
 present to the king of £10,000, and leave it to his 
 pleasure whether he will accept the gift or no." 
 
 On examining their boohs, it was ascertained that 
 200 guineas had been given to Sir John Trevor for a 
 new year's gift. A further sum of £10,000 had been 
 set apart at the time of soliciting their bill, of which 
 Sir John was to have one-third in the event of the 
 charter being confirmed, and the act of parliament 
 passing into a law. A day or two before this search- 
 ing investigation of the committee, 500 guineas were 
 brought back from Trevor's house, which had been 
 paid to him by Sir Thomas Cooke, the governor of 
 the East India Company, under colour of arrears due 
 to the speaker, as first commissioner of the great seal. 
 An impeachment was mooted to compel this corrupt 
 official to disgorge some of his gains, but hushed up 
 by the intrigues of the court. Naked, but not 
 ashamed! stripped of every shred of reputation, yet 
 still confident and callous, he was quietly banished to 
 his lucrative and most important office at the rolls, 
 and, after tampering with the moneys of the orphans, 
 
 n Clarendon Correspondence.
 
 62 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 he was permitted for twenty-three years more to decide 
 on the rights of suitors ! 
 
 For retaining the mastership of the rolls, he had, 
 shameful to relate, a precedent, exactly in point. " Sir 
 Edward Turner," says North, " had served long as 
 speaker of parliament, and had been useful to the 
 crown and also to himself. But, on the discovery of 
 a small present made him by the East India Company, 
 he was denounced in the House of Commons. The 
 anti-court party took all advantages against the 
 court, and made a mountain of this mouse, for it was 
 but a trifle ! However, it lost him much of his 
 credit and authority in the chair, which he was need 
 to have, and he thought fit to give way, and sit 
 there no longer to be exposed to the taunts which 
 would be continually thrown in his way!" 
 
 The slight flaw of which this accommodating party- 
 writer speaks so trippingly, was no less than taking a 
 bribe of several hundred pounds from the East India 
 Company, a disqualification for the speakership ; but 
 as personal corruption could not possibly work any 
 mischief in his majesty's Court of Exchequer, he was 
 made chief baron ! Sir John Trevor retained his 
 situation as master of the rolls more than twenty 
 years. His age was not sufficiently base, nor yet honest 
 enough to appreciate the value of a judge, whose hands 
 should be free from gifts, and on whose fair fame not 
 even the shadow of suspicion should be allowed to 
 rest. There was more laughter than resentment at 
 the detection of the speaker's venality ; the wits said, 
 alluding to the glide in his eyes, " that justice was blind 
 indeed, but that bribery only squinted; that he could 
 no longer take an oblique view of every question from
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 63 
 
 the chair ." A retort, ascribed to the excellent Arch- 
 bishop Tillotson, was in general circulation. That 
 prelate, chancing to meet the speaker some time 
 before his disgrace, at the door of the House of Lords, 
 Sir John Trevor could not conceal his spleen, but 
 muttered, loud enough to be overheard, " I hate a 
 fanatic in lawn sleeves." Archbishop Tillotson turned 
 full round upon the impudent lawyer, and recriminated, 
 " And I hate a knave in any sleeves." 
 
 It shows the laxity of the age, that the ex-speaker 
 should have continued to live, after his public expo- 
 sure, on familiar terms with celebrated divines of his 
 day. He had appointed Atterbury preacher at the 
 rolls, in 1698, from his singular excellence in the 
 pulpit ; and this eloquent priest writes of his patron to 
 Bishop Trelawny, in 1704p : "The master of the rolls 
 drank the healths of your lordship and of the whole 
 family, quite through to me on Sunday;'' as if his 
 notice could have conferred honour or pleasure on the 
 Bishop of Winchester. 
 
 Indifferent to disgrace, Sir John Trevor would have 
 returned with unblushing front to the new parliament 
 which met in 1695, but for the express prohibition of 
 the king. In the Shrewsbury Correspondence we find 
 Lord Somers writing to the Duke (November, 1695), 
 "The king said he had, in a manner, commanded the 
 master of the rolls not to come into the House of 
 Commons, on purpose to prevent the inconvenience 
 the reviving that matter would occasion." He had 
 lost caste in public though not in private life by the 
 notoriety of his corruption, and was cashiered by the 
 court, not for taking bribes — there was nothing 
 
 Yorke's Tribes of Wales. 
 p Atterbury's Correspondence, by Nicholls.
 
 64 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 uncourtierlike in that — but in being found out! On 
 the subsequent expulsion of Duncombe for similar 
 mal-practices, Montague, chancellor of the exchequer, 
 writes, q " Trevor has been for some time laid aside, 
 and Guy may be made to be subservient, or, if he 
 may not be trusted, I think he should be sent after 
 Duncombe." 
 
 Tainted as he was, Sir John Trevor contrived to 
 be member of the first privy council of Great Britain, 
 though no more than eight commoners in all were 
 admitted to that distinction. In the solemn proces- 
 sion to St. Paul's, in 1706, to return thanks for one of 
 Marlborough's victories, he rode in the same coach 
 with Chief Justice Holt, blending together the pure 
 and the spotted ermine. He had adopted the cautious 
 example of the chief justice, and, on the accession of 
 Queen Anne, procured a new commission. His merit 
 as a lawyer was confessedly great. He decided the 
 various matters of equity submitted to his adjudica- 
 tion with marked ability, and, taking warning by 
 public exposure, pronounced his decrees without the 
 surmise of purchased favour. He followed, indeed, a 
 bad precedent in granting audience to suitors at his 
 private residence. r When Dr. Waugh made a com- 
 plaint of his ward being taken from him and married 
 without his knowledge, Sir John Trevor heard the 
 parties at his house at Knightsbridge, and, the regis- 
 trar attending him there, made an order for taking 
 several persons into custody for contempt of court. 
 Sir Harbottle Grimston, in like manner, converted 
 into a court his country-house at Gorhambury. 
 
 A modest demeanour might have been looked for 
 
 q Shrewsbury Correspondence. 
 » Jekyll, on the Rights of the Master of the Rolls.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. G5 
 
 from the disgraced judge, so much at the mercy of 
 those who practised before him, but far from being 
 subdued and sensitive to reproach, he carried into his 
 court the tone and manner of a bully, and treated the 
 counsel (the independence of the bar had not yet been 
 established) with extraordinary freedom. A broad, 
 frowning, face, large bushy eye-brows, and an abomin- 
 able squint added to the terrors of his vituperation. 
 Some reproaches roughly flung at his nephew, a young 
 man of promise, lately called to the bar, but shy, and 
 of a nervous temperament, are said to have gone so 
 near his heart, that he drooped under them and died 5 . 
 Superior in legal attainments to all the chancellors 
 and lord keepers of his day, with the exception, per- 
 haps, of Somers, he seems to have presumed on his 
 learning, and to have loved to play the despot. AVe 
 find Lord Harcourt, on several occasions, seeking 
 support in the judgment of Sir John Trevor 1 . In one 
 case, for instance,, having expressed an opinion that 
 certain process issued against a wife, during her 
 husband's absence abroad, was irregular, but being 
 met by an observation from counsel which staggered 
 him, my lord keeper said he would ask the master of 
 the rolls his opinion, and be governed by that. After- 
 wards, the master of the rolls coming into court, was 
 clearly of opinion that the process was regular, and 
 said the practice of the court had been constantly so, 
 and so, accordingly, the case was determined. In 
 another cause, on which the master of the rolls had 
 already adjudicated, my lord keeper returning to his 
 seat, and being asked his opinion, said he was of 
 the same opinion, to prevent a rehearing before 
 himself. 
 
 * Roger North. • Life of Lord Harcourt, in Law Magazine. 
 VOL. I. F
 
 66 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 The rule founded in equity, that marriage and the 
 birth of a child shall revoke a will, such a complete 
 change of circumstances not having been contemplated 
 by the maker of the will at the time he made it, was 
 first laid down by this excellent jurist. He died at his 
 house, in Clement's Lane, May 20th, 1717, leaving 
 behind him the repute of being a good lawyer, but 
 good in no other sense whatsoever, dissolute in private 
 life, covetous, and sordidly mean. His place was 
 supplied by Sir Joseph Jekyll, a still more able judge, 
 and honest. 
 
 On the convenient illness and resignation of their 
 speaker, Mr. Paul Foley was voted by the House into 
 the vacant chair, through the indiscretion of Mr. 
 Wharton, comptroller of the household. His unlucky 
 phrase, that he would nominate, was met by loud cries 
 of "No," and "Order," and, in the heat of indignation 
 at a supposed slight sought to be cast upon their pri- 
 vileges, a majority of thirty-three members elected 
 the chairman of the committee, which had done such 
 signal service, speaker, in preference to Sir Thomas 
 Littleton, the nominee of the crown. The plain and 
 unvarnished report of this proceeding, given in the 
 Parliamentary History, deserves to be transcribed, as it 
 furnishes an important page in the annals of privilege". 
 
 " Mr. Wharton stood up, and spake as followeth : 
 
 ' Mr. Jodrell, I am commanded by the king to 
 inform this House, that the late speaker, Sir John 
 Trevor, hath sent him word, That his indisposition 
 does so continue upon him, that he cannot further 
 attend the service of the House, as speaker, and 
 further commanded me to say, That there may be no 
 delay in the public proceedings, he does give leave to 
 
 " Parliamentary History, vol. v.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. G7 
 
 this House to proceed to the choice of a new speaker. 
 Sir, the filling of that chair is the highest station any 
 commoner of England can be called to ; but, however 
 honourable it is, the toil and difficulties of it are so 
 great, that, I believe, there is no reasonable man, that 
 hears me, but would be rather glad to have it supplied 
 by any man than himself, and, therefore, I shall, 
 without fear of displeasing any person, out of so many 
 who are qualified to serve you, nominate •' 
 
 " Upon this he was interrupted by a great noise in 
 the House crying ' No, No, No ;' and several gentle- 
 men stood up to speak to order. Exceptions were 
 taken by several members, '' That it was contrary to 
 the undoubted right of the House of choosing their 
 own speaker, to have any person who brought a mes- 
 sage from the king to nominate one to them/ Not- 
 withstanding, the comptroller stood up again, and 
 named Sir Thomas Littleton, which was seconded by 
 Sir Henry Goodrick : whereupon arose a debate ; 
 and another person, viz., Paul Foley, Esq., was pro- 
 posed by Sir Christopher Musgrave, and seconded by 
 the Lord Digby. And after a long debate in relation 
 to both the persons, the question was put by the 
 clerk, 'That Sir Thomas Littleton take the chair of 
 this House as speaker:' the clerk declared the yeas 
 had it. The House was divided ; the yeas on the 
 right hand, and the noes on the left. The tellers were 
 appointed by the clerk, viz., for the yeas, James Chad- 
 wick, Esq., 146. The tellers for the noes, Colonel 
 Granville, 179. So it passed in the negative. 
 
 " Then the second question being about to be put, 
 Mr. Foley stood up to speak, but the House would 
 not hear him, but ordered the clerk to put the ques- 
 tion, ' That Paul Foley, Esq. take the chair of this 
 
 F2
 
 68 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 House, as speaker/ It was resolved nem. con. Upon 
 which Mr. Foley made his excuse in his place, which 
 was not admitted by the House. He was conducted 
 to the chair by the Hon. Colonel Granville and the 
 Hon. Henry Boyle, Esq., and upon the first step of 
 the chair, after some pause, he made a speech to the 
 House again to excuse himself, which not being 
 allowed, he sat down. And then the mace was laid 
 upon the table." 
 
 Mr. Foley, having acquiesced in the decision of 
 the House, with less show of reluctance than previous 
 ceremonial might require, went up to the House of 
 Lords next day to solicit the royal assent, and, as he 
 might not unreasonably fear lest the precedent of 
 Sir Edward Seymour's rejection by the king should 
 be applied to his case, were he too peremptory in 
 framing excuses, contented himself and appeased the 
 jealous phantom of etiquette with the following humble 
 and deferential, but firm, language. " May it please 
 your most excellent majesty ! The Commons of Eng- 
 land, in Parliament assembled, having by a very extra- 
 ordinary occasion lost the service of their late speaker, 
 proceeded to a new election, and, being commanded 
 by your majesty to present their speaker at this time 
 and place, they now wait on your majesty in full par- 
 liament, to present me to succeed, on whom they have 
 unanimously agreed. I must acknowledge myself very 
 unfit for so great an employment, and wish they have 
 not done themselves a great prejudice therein, which 
 they might have avoided, having choice of much more 
 able members for that service ; but I dare not oppose 
 my own opinion to that of so great a body as the 
 Commons of England, and therefore, witli your ma- 
 jesty's approbation, am ready to serve your majesty,
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. C9 
 
 and them, to the utmost of my abilities. If they find 
 themselves on trial mistaken, and that I cannot answer 
 expectations, though hitherto they will not allow me 
 to excuse myself, yet then I hope they will, and 
 provide one more fit for your majesty's and their 
 service." 
 
 The lord keeper in terms of courtesy which graced, 
 as it became, " the gentle Somers," at once ratified the 
 Commons' choice. The speaker, on whom greatness 
 had been thus suddenly thrust, was, according to 
 Burnet, a deserter from the republican ranks to the 
 tories. Writing of the year 1693, he says: "But 
 the party of the tories was too inconsiderable to have 
 raised a great opposition, if a body of whigs had not 
 joined with them : some of them had such republican 
 notions, that they were too much set against the pre- 
 rogative, and they thought the king was become too 
 stiff in maintaining it. Others were offended because 
 they were not considered nor preferred, as they 
 thought they deserved. The chief of these were 
 Mr. Paul Foley and Mr. Harley, the first was a 
 younger son of one, who, from mean beginnings / had 
 by iron works raised one of the greatest estates that 
 had been in England in our time. He was a learned, 
 though not a practising, lawyer, and was a man of 
 virtue and good principles, but morose and wilful, 
 and he had the affectation of passing for a great 
 patriot, by his constant finding fault with the govern- 
 ment, and venting an ill -humour and a bad opinion 
 of the court. Foley joined with the tories to create 
 jealousies and raise an opposition. They soon grew 
 to be able to delay matters long, and set on foot some 
 very uneasy things that were popular : such as the 
 bill against parliament-men being in places, and that
 
 70 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 for dissolving the parliament, and for having a new 
 one every third year." 
 
 If we may rely on the malicious gossip, Roger 
 North, this republican zeal had been carried by Foley 
 in his youth to a ranting excess, and had betrayed the 
 too ardent lawyer, on one occasion, into a forgetful- 
 ness of what he owed to himself as a gentleman. 
 " Paul Foley had applied himself very closely to the 
 learning of records. He showed Lord North a book 
 which he had compiled, which was designed to go 
 beyond the ordinary collectors such as Cotton and 
 Prynne. I heard him say things would never go well, 
 till forty heads flew for it. He had very singular 
 opinions: one was, that ' all foreign trade was loss and 
 ruinous to the nation.' The mortal evil of foreign 
 trade was the great supply it brought to the crown, 
 by which it could be supported, without being con- 
 tinually at the mercy of the parliament for supplies. 
 When his lordship (Lord Keeper Guilford) was named 
 in the House of Commons in order to be criminated, 
 he was pleased to say in the House, that he certainly 
 knew that person to be of arbitrary principles, because 
 he had heard him discourse to that purpose at his 
 own table." 
 
 It is to be hoped for the credit of the first gen- 
 tleman in England by courtesy, that this hearsay 
 tale was the mere invention of some enemy : North's 
 zealous nepotism would at once give credit to the 
 scandal, without any searching scrutiny into its truth. 
 "The lord keeper," he says, " found that factious law- 
 yers, and particularly Paul Foley, were very busy in fer- 
 reting the musty old repositories, with design to produce 
 in parliament what they thought fit to the prejudice 
 of the crown and its just prerogative. They conferred
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 71 
 
 with the bellwethers of the party in the House of 
 Commons, and frequently alleged passages in the re- 
 cords of parliament, and certain exotic cases, extracted 
 chiefly from those in irregular times, when the crown 
 had been distressed, and imposed upon, and done, 
 not only partially, but often untruly, and always de- 
 fective. By which means they sustained their anti- 
 monarchic institutions." 
 
 As Foley had a good face for a grievance, the 
 House generally deferred to him, in originating mo- 
 tions of rigour. An impeachment of Lord Peter- 
 borough for conforming to the Church of Rome being 
 voted, he was instructed to carry up the articles w . 
 When a bill was brought in for securing the govern- 
 ment against papists, and other disaffected persons, it 
 was recommended to his care ; when some method 
 was sought for the better help of creditors, by means 
 of more stringent penal enactments, he and Serjeant 
 Wogan were recommended to prepare it. A virulent 
 and ready declaimer against men and measures could 
 not, in those disaffected times, fail of commanding a 
 party. Harley appears to have been the head, and 
 Foley the right hand, of opposition : the one prompt to 
 devise, and the other to attack. The jejune and 
 scanty fragments of debate which remain prove his 
 dexterity and daring as an alarmist, an advocate for 
 severity, and a strong supporter of retrenchment and 
 reform x . " We are in danger from France and from 
 some amongst us. There were never so many Louis 
 d'ors in payment ; a third part of great payments is 
 made in Louis d'ors. Sawyer pressed execution, and 
 that is his crime, and things will never be well ; till 
 some of that profession are made examples. . . . When 
 
 w Journals, vols, x., xi. x Parliamentary History, vol. v.
 
 72 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 money was asked by Edward III. to maintain what 
 he had conquered in France, the parliament answered 
 they were concerned only to keep England, and not 
 what was conquered in France." 
 
 In his strenuous opposition to ministers, Mr. Foley 
 cared not to incur the king's personal antipathy : " It 
 is a great prejudice that English forces should be 
 commanded by foreign officers. This summer there 
 was a mighty great confusion in the English army : 
 orders were given in Dutch and French to the English, 
 who understood neither Dutch nor French ! The 
 general officers were at dinner, when they should have 
 sustained our men." A speaker who indulged in such 
 topics was sure to have a large and willing audience. 
 He carried a resolution that, many of the great 
 affairs of the Government having been unsuccessfully 
 managed, their majesties be humbly addressed to pre- 
 vent the like mischief in future, by employing men of 
 known ability and integrity. The opposition orator, 
 moving in 1693 to consider the miscarriages of the 
 fleet, declared that we once had great hopes, but were 
 become a scorn and contempt to other nations. Soaring 
 a still higher flight, he ventured on language for which 
 he might have been committed to the Tower. When 
 the king had refused to pass the Place Bill, the Com- 
 mons agreed to a representation that they imputed it 
 to his majesty's being unacquainted with the constitu- 
 tion of parliament. The king treated the House, 
 according to a Jacobite papery, "with the whipped 
 cream and perfumed air" of a vague and general reply. 
 Foley moved, on its being reported, that an humble 
 address and remonstrance be made to the king for a 
 further answer. " The king," he said with almost se- 
 y The Danger of Mercenary Parliaments.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 73 
 
 ditious boldness, " has a great regard to our constitu- 
 tion, but it appears not that he understands our con- 
 stitution, which he may take to be to reject our bills 
 of ever so just grievances." 
 
 His motion for an address to the king for a further 
 answer, which would have pushed their difference to 
 extremity, was overruled by the good sense of a large 
 majority : 229 members against 88 marking their dis- 
 like of its extravagance. But he soon regained his 
 accustomed sway, on the investigation of the corrupt 
 and peculating practices which then infected every 
 department of the state. Appointed chairman of a 
 committee to inspect the books of the East India 
 Company, and discovering that £80,000 had been 
 abstracted from its funds in the preceding year, he 
 traced the grievance of corruption to the fountain- 
 head, and laid bare the venality of the late speaker of 
 the Upper House and the speaker of his own, upon 
 whose ruin he mounted to the chair. 
 
 When re-chosen in the next parliament, he was 
 said 2 to have evinced disgust at the slight of not being 
 made privy councillor, according to precedent, and to 
 have become in consequence still more alienated from 
 the court. In an important debate, he had the plea- 
 sure of pointing to his son, and hearing' him speak 
 with spirit and feeling against that violent inroad on 
 constitutional law — the attainder of Sir John Fenwick. 
 In conformity with his notions of economical reform, 
 he desired to be furnished with a table of all fees for 
 private bills and other proceedings, and readjusted 
 the scale a . His allowance was so judicious that it 
 continued without variation for more than half a cen- 
 tury, and was only modified according to the change 
 
 Vernon's Letters. ■ Hatsell.
 
 74 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 in the value of money in 1751. It would appear, 
 from the homely but truth-telling letters of Mr. Ver- 
 non, that the ex-speaker, towards the close of life, 
 evinced a strong disposition to rat. " February 11, 
 1697-8. Paul Foley gives me a strange reason for pre- 
 ferring him, saying he is at the head of the Jacobites 
 in Herefordshire, and if he were removed they would 
 moulder away. He speaks of his son as of one other- 
 wise inclined, that would be knight of the shire next 
 choice, but if he shall vote as his son does, the Jaco- 
 bites would have another head of the same family." 
 The son did not degenerate from his sire in the useful 
 attribute of modest assurance. "I hear," Vernon 
 writes in another letter, "that Tom Foley has been 
 with the king, to desire the Bishop of Bristol might 
 be translated to Worcester, and the king's answer was 
 that he should consider it as much as he and his 
 friends considered any business that related to him." 
 The last notice of the ex-speaker is furnished in a 
 letter from Mr. Vernon to the Duke of Shrewsbury : 
 "July, 1698. Mr. Foley told me the whigs were 
 setting up in Westminster, and his son was likely to 
 be disturbed in Stafford/' He died in the summer of 
 the following year, in the whirl and vortex of politics, 
 leaving a long line of descendants, afterwards ennobled, 
 but none more able than himself, or more worthy than 
 the good old man, his father. 
 
 We are told by Nash, in his History of Worcester- 
 shire : ' ' The parish of Witley was purchased by 
 Thomas Foley, Esq., and has continued the principal 
 seat of that very opulent family for above one hundred 
 and fifty years ; a family that is a striking instance 
 what great riches may be acquired in a trading country 
 by integrity, industry, frugality, and an extensive
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 75 
 
 trade; this within four generations. Bishop Fleetwood 
 says the law hath laid the foundation of two-thirds of 
 all the honours and great estates in all England ; more 
 than this proportion may be reckoned in Worcester- 
 shire. In all England there is no noble family, and 
 very few opulent ones, that sprang from the church, 
 except Lord Sandys'. Physic hardly ever raised its 
 professors above knighthood or baronetage. Our 
 county, besides a Foley, can show a Knight, a Taylor, 
 and others, who have gained a more than ministerial 
 fortune by the iron trade." ' Mr. Thomas Foley, the 
 father of the speaker,' says Baxter b , ' from almost 
 nothing did get about £5000 per annum, or more, by 
 iron-works, and that with just and blameless dealing. 
 In thankfulness to God for his mercies to him, he 
 built a well-endowed hospital near Stourbridge, to 
 teach poor children to read and write, and then set 
 them apprentices, and contributed to its support about 
 £500 a-year : ' My end being,' Mr. Foley writes in his 
 will, ' the glory of God, and their real good.' " 
 
 It were to be wished that more personal anecdotes 
 could be obtained descriptive of the character of his 
 celebrated son, but few can imagine what scanty notices 
 remain, except those who have attempted, as in this 
 biography, to visit the neglected, and call to remem- 
 brance the forgotten. 
 
 With Sir Thomas Littleton was revived the custom 
 to appoint country gentlemen to the chair in preference 
 to lawyers, a custom which is attended with the advan- 
 tage of placing in the post of honour the representa- 
 tives of counties and men of landed property ; thus 
 attaching to the speakership that respect which wealth 
 and social position always command, but obnoxious to 
 
 b Baxter's Memoirs.
 
 /6 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the serious evil of investing with an arduous pre- 
 eminence men of comparatively little skill, without 
 the requisite technical knowledge, and of no practised 
 ability. In the present instance the mischief was not 
 felt, as the speaker had been trained in habits of busi- 
 ness from his youth. The youngest son of a poor 
 baronet, he was designed for trade, and accordingly 
 bound apprentice to a citizen of London, Sir John 
 Moore, sometime lord mayor, with whom he continued 
 till his elder brother's death c . His father immediately 
 removed the young apprentice on this event before 
 completing his articles, and gave him a liberal educa- 
 tion at the university. His talents, sharpened in the 
 city and polished at Oxford, introduced him into 
 notice, and formed a sure passport for an intriguing 
 politician to the school of the Cabal, not exactly the 
 best forcing-house for young patriots. In 1667 he 
 was chairman of the committee which came to the 
 shameful resolution that Clarendon should be im- 
 peached of high treason. 
 
 Pepys records, under date of 1668 d , that Sir 
 Thomas Littleton and Sir Thomas Osborne were put 
 into the navy; the one a creature of Arlington's, and 
 the latter of the Duke of Buckingham, a comely gen- 
 tleman. Being ousted in 1675, and inspired by the 
 secret counsels of Shaftesbury, he took his place in the 
 front ranks of opposition with Sir William Coventry, 
 Colonel Birch, Sir Thomas Meres, Lord Cavendish, 
 and Powle. The murmuring Commons having voted 
 an address for the recall of two thousand English 
 auxiliaries from the service of the French king, Charles 
 gave a positive refusal, asserting that the recall of that 
 
 c Burnet, and Noble's Continuation of Grainger. 
 d Pepys's Memoirs, vol. i.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 77 
 
 force would derogate from his honour and dignity. In 
 the warm debate which ensued, Sir Thomas Littleton 
 distinctly asserted, for the first time in the proceedings 
 of parliament, the constitutional latitude by which a 
 king's speech is animadverted on, as proceeding from 
 the minister. 
 
 " Here," said he, " is an answer from the king ; 
 I desire that what is said upon it may be thought to 
 reflect, not upon the king, but upon its authors. I 
 think it a very bad bill, one highly prejudicial to the 
 people, and destructive to the king." 
 
 " He had," says Lord John Russell e , " more than 
 any other person of his time, that command of his- 
 torical knowledge, and that skill in argument, which 
 are necessary to form an able speaker of the present 
 day." On the bill for prohibiting French commodities 
 in 1677, Sir Thomas Littleton moved " an exemption 
 of one year for printing paper, by reason of the great 
 works in printing now in hand ; such cannot be carried 
 on without papers of several sorts, and so will con- 
 strain men to print beyond sea, to the great detriment 
 of trade." His clear-sighted amendment was nega- 
 tived, but the discerning statesman had too keen a per- 
 ception of his own interests to linger long in the ranks 
 of opposition. Setting the fashion, so well followed 
 up since by steady, scheming whigs, he became, in 
 1G81, a commissioner of the admiralty, but continued 
 to draw his pension of £500 a-year from Barillon, and 
 to preserve a good understanding with the Prince of 
 Orange. Though soon removed from office, he acted 
 as a peace -maker in the House between the court and 
 country party ; and, in this character, when the House 
 e History of Europe.
 
 78 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 were running wild with schemes for excluding the Duke 
 of York from the succession, mooted the impracticable 
 notion of a Protestant regency under the Prince of 
 Orange, leaving to James the empty title of king, 
 making a mere puppet of the sovereign, and the crown 
 a bauble. The idea seems to have been started by 
 Bishop Burnet, with whom Sir Thomas Littleton lived 
 in habits of intimacy, and who prefaces his report of 
 the manner in which it originated with a partial de- 
 scription of the future speaker, colouring his portrait 
 with the warm tint of friendship*. 
 
 " He was the ablest and vehementest arguer of 
 them all. He commonly lay quiet till the end of a 
 debate, and he often ended it, speaking with a strain 
 of conviction and authority that was not easily 
 resisted. I lived the very next door to him for 
 several years, and we spent a great deal of our time 
 every day together. He told me all their manage- 
 ment, and commonly, when he was to put his whole 
 strength to argue any point, he used to talk it over 
 with me, and to set me to object all that I could 
 against him. He lived wholly in London, so matters 
 were wholly in his hands during the intervals of par- 
 liament, and by his means it was that I arrived at 
 such knowledge of their intrigues. He was a wise 
 and worthy man, had studied much modern history, 
 and the present state and interests of Europe." — " I 
 thought/' said Burnet, "there should be a protector 
 declared, with whom the regal power should be 
 lodged, and that the Prince of Orange should be the 
 person. Lie approved the notion, but thought that 
 the title ' protector' was odious, since Cromwell had 
 
 Memoirs, vol. ii.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 79 
 
 assumed it, and that 'regent' would be better. We 
 dressed up a scheme of this for near two hours, and 
 I dreamt no more of it." 
 
 The worthy Doctor was awakened from his day- 
 dream by the unwelcome intelligence that their pet 
 scheme had been scouted by the Oxford parliament, 
 which would not hearken to half- measures or an 
 equivocating compromise, and could not certainly be 
 accused of refusing to listen to reason, because it 
 rejected with contumely his irrational proposition?. 
 Sir Thomas moved "That a bill to secure the Pro- 
 testant religion should be brought in, and consist of 
 the following heads : — That the Duke of York should 
 enjoy the title, but the Prince of Orange exercise the 
 power ; that, if a prince should be in being when it 
 should please God to take our present king, they 
 should have power to sit. That the judges, and all 
 other officers of the crown, should be continued till 
 liberty and property were secured ; that if there was 
 no parliament sitting, one should assemble of course, 
 and that to prevent the duke's interfering to prevent 
 this, he should by the same act be banished to the 
 distance of five hundred miles from England, not to 
 return as long as the king lived." "For my part," 
 said the projector, speaking to his great discomfort 
 from the neutral benches, " I have had the ill-fortune 
 to have the wind in my face ; to be against the 
 general opinion and stream of the world ; and, having 
 had no share for some time in the government, I may 
 speak my mind possibly more freely than those that 
 have. I have proposed the best expedient I can to 
 preserve religion and quiet the minds of the people ; 
 but I am afraid if we do nothing at all, but let the 
 
 Ralph's History.
 
 80 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 thing lie loose, we shall gratify the Jesuits on the one 
 hand by our conclusion, and let the Commonwealth 
 men shuffle again on the other hand ; but if you 
 go into some medium, both these men will be un- 
 done." His chimerical scheme was almost univer- 
 sally scouted. " Some seven or eight disquieted law- 
 yers,'' says Reresby h , "who thought they had been 
 so active, should the duke come to the crown, he 
 would never forget they were for exclusion, gave the 
 measure a cold support ;" but the times were too 
 completely "out of joint" for such a clumsy con- 
 trivance to mend them. 
 
 Littleton's parliamentary career after the Revolu- 
 tion tends more to justify the bishop's panegyric on 
 his talents than his integrity. A strenuous advocate 
 for all measures that would gratify the court, and 
 a thorough partizan, he declared this to be the secret 
 of his policy 1 : — "I, for my part, have a way how to 
 guide my vote always in the House, which is to vote 
 contrary to what our enemies without doors wish ;" 
 making, of course, his own opinion the test of their 
 desires — the most convenient pretext ever urged for a 
 politician playing fast and loose. He opposed the 
 salutary bill for allowing counsel to prisoners in trials 
 for high treason, because it was obnoxious to the 
 prejudices of William, and countenanced by the 
 tories ; and to win over the country gentlemen, 
 though he had not their excuse, played upon the 
 prejudice entertained by the weak against the strong, 
 a violent dislike of lawyers. " Here you shall have 
 cunning lawyers defending an impeachment. I hope 
 I shall not degrade your members to argue against 
 lawyers ; but when an impeachment is by gentlemen 
 
 Sir J. Rcresby's Memoirs. ' Parliamentary History, vol. v.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 81 
 
 of his own quality, I think a cause is as well tried 
 without counsel, and I would disagree with the 
 Lords." This puerile objection to the Lords' amend- 
 ments to the Bill of Trials, though it lent a colour 
 to the royal veto for a time, did not ultimately 
 prevail. 
 
 In the same illiberal spirit, upon the debate whe- 
 ther Sir John Fenwick should be allowed further time 
 to produce his witnesses, Littleton suggested — u It 
 may be the counsel have a mind to have another 
 fee !" and inveighed against the constraint of being 
 fettered by the rules of legal evidence. "They say 
 we are not to give our judgment upon our private 
 opinion. I always will. Whether this be strictly 
 legal evidence I do not lay so much weight upon 
 it, as whether it hath satisfied my conscience." 
 
 According to this cunning standard, any vote 
 might be held good ; weighed in this elastic measure, 
 any parliamentary proceeding would be of the required 
 tale. 
 
 The merits of such a convenient politician and 
 dexterous debater were too signal to be overlooked. 
 Accordingly, in 1695, we find the Duke of Shrews- 
 bury writing to the king in his behalf, and insisting 
 strongly on his claims. "The manner of his service 
 in the House does more directly entitle him to ask a 
 place in the treasury, than any other man that I 
 know." He was re-appointed commissioner of the 
 admiralty, and in 1698 chosen speaker. In a pam- 
 phlet published at the time k , his character was held 
 up to obloquy, as " that of a known profligate in the 
 service of the court, who had no other characteristics 
 than confidence and dexterity ; a person already de- 
 
 k Considerations upon the Choice of a Speaker. 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 bauched, and once rejected by the House on a like 
 occasion, and who, being already a lord of the treasury, 
 was under the greatest temptation to do whatever was 
 demanded of him, and consequently could neither with 
 honesty nor decency hold two such trusts as were 
 inconsistent with each other." After which the 
 author speaks of another gentleman, who, at the Revo- 
 lution, was £16,000 in debt to the crown, and, by a 
 particular clause in the Act of Indemnity, procured 
 a release. By the last of these gentlemen he meant 
 Sir Edward Seymour, and by the first, Sir Thomas 
 Littleton, concerning whom, and what was to be 
 expected from him, he farther writes as follows: — 
 " Suppose there is a debt growing every day upon 
 the nation by seamen not discharged, while the money 
 given for so necessary a purpose has been disposed 
 of for keeping up an army that should have been 
 disbanded, pursuant to the determination of the last 
 parliament, after the most mature and solemn debates, 
 must not the House expect interruptions in bringing 
 on that matter, difficulties in wording, and delays in 
 putting the question, from one who in his station 
 at court may be perhaps charged with advising the 
 keeping up of the army, and in the last parliament 
 was the best and most artificial advocate for not 
 disbanding at all ?" 
 
 The pamphleteer, who sought by these disparaging 
 inuendoes to secure the election of Harley against both 
 competitors, was disappointed, Sir Thomas Littleton 
 being chosen by a large majority. He made a speech 
 of self-abasement on the occasion, more apologetic 
 even than the false and hollow etiquette, " the pride 
 that apes humility," demanded ; but the whole scene
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 83 
 
 of his installation is thus excellently described in one 
 of Vernon's Letters. 
 
 "December 6, 1698. — Sir John Rolles began the 
 opposition, who said Sir Thomas was an able and honest 
 man, but he excepted against one in that situation for 
 reasons given in the printed considerations, which was 
 urged more virulently by Mr. Byerley with reflections 
 on the treasury, who was answered by Mr. Pelhani, 
 he desiring that speech might be made when there 
 was a speaker, that they might vindicate themselves 
 from such aspersions. Lord Norris and Mr. Ham- 
 mond carried on the debate, and were answered by 
 Mr. Montague, Mr. Smith, ckc. ; but the naming any 
 competitor was all along avoided, and yet they would 
 not Sir Thomas should be brought to the chair without 
 a question, which others said was unusual and unne- 
 cessary, unless any other person was proposed ; but 
 Sir Edward Seymour interposing that there was no 
 other way of deciding hut by a question, Sir R. Onslow, 
 who was for Sir Thomas, came into it, and the ques- 
 tion was put very much to Sir Thomas's advantage. 
 He carried it by a majority of 107. It would have 
 been by one more had he not voted against himself. 
 The division was 242 against 135. Sir Thomas was 
 approved : he excused himself pretty laboriously, and 
 is rather thought to have overdone it, and he accepted 
 a little nattering, by saying, as the king had done 
 many impossibilities, he might do another in enabling 
 him to discharge the place, and added a Latin verse, 
 which is, I think, of his own making, 
 
 Non habeo ingenium, Caesar cum jussit, habebo." 
 
 His installation as head, without a competitor, 
 proved to be no good augury of a quiet session or a 
 whiggish house. The bill for disbanding the king's 
 
 G 2
 
 84 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 favourite Dutch guards was carried, to his high dis- 
 pleasure, with scarcely the semhlance of opposition ; 
 the Rose Club gave way in despair, and one of their 
 staunchest leaders, at the end of six weeks, exclaimed, 
 " We are a dispersed and routed party 1 !" 
 
 Infirm health tended to increase the speaker's 
 disquietudes. Vernon reports that, in February, 1 700, 
 he came ill with a fit of the gravel, and assumed the 
 chair only to adjourn the house. " Unless better 
 to-morrow, they will propose Mr. Harcourt or Mr. 
 Conyers; and if either of them be put into the chair, 
 he will be kept there. . . . When Sir Thomas 
 came, Harley very civilly desired to know when he 
 thought he should be in a better condition to attend 
 the service of the House. He returned thanks, and 
 if they pleased to spare him till Thursday, he hoped 
 he should be well, otherwise he would trespass no 
 longer on their patience." 
 
 The speaker occupied an uneasy chair for two 
 years, when the incensed monarch dissolved an almost 
 mutinous House of Commons. Summoning Sir 
 Thomas Littleton to his presence, on the meeting of 
 the new parliament, February 1700-1, the king de- 
 clared his pleasure to be, that he should give way to 
 Mr. Harley, as such an arrangement would be most 
 conducive to his interests. With the prompt com- 
 pliance of an old courtier, the ex-speaker acquiesced 
 in the royal will, and absented himself from the House 
 on the day of election. He was rewarded for his 
 complacency with the valuable office of treasurer of 
 the navy, which he held till his death, unshaken by 
 all the efforts made to remove him. "Mr. Montagus 
 told me," writes Vernon, " that he had seen Sir Thomas 
 
 1 Vernon's Letters.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 85 
 
 Littleton, and that he found him very indifferent 
 whether he removed from the treasury." " I have seen 
 Sir Thomas since," adds the disappointed intriguer, 
 "who is not near so indifferent as was represented.'' 
 Strange credulity in the whig official to dream that a 
 brother whig would be indifferent about parting with 
 a place of £1500 a-year and perquisites and possi- 
 bilities. 
 
 In King William's last parliament, the royal veto 
 being removed, Sir Thomas entered the lists against 
 Mr. Flarley, and was defeated in a full House by four- 
 teen votes only. The court favoured his election, and 
 canvassed several of the tories in office, Sir George 
 Rooke, Sir Charles Hedges, and others, in vain" 1 — so 
 powerless had become the personal wishes of the sove- 
 reign, who could once nominate the speaker, so great 
 the influence of Harley. By his dexterity as a debater 
 Sir Thomas Littleton materially assisted in accom- 
 plishing the union. Of his ready rejoinder, the court 
 annalist has given one short specimen. " When the 
 first four articles had been carried without a division, 
 which the tories called ' riding post,' Sir Thomas replied, 
 pursuing the metaphor, 'we do not ride post, but a good 
 easy trot, and, for my own part, as long as the weather 
 is fair, the roads good, and our horses in heart, I am 
 of opinion we ought to jog on, and not to stay till 'tis 
 night.' " Dunton, the bookseller, was so transported 
 with his eloquence, as to commemorate its triumph in 
 heroic verse D : 
 
 " Fair Albion's senate, once a listening- throng-, 
 Confessed the wondrous beauties of his tongue, 
 His country's patriot, and the land's defence, 
 For this, as well as that, shares the kind providence." 
 
 m Vernon's Letters. 
 ■ John Dunton's Life, by Himself.
 
 86 HISTORY OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 
 
 It must be hoped, for the credit of the navy trea- 
 surer, that his periods never halted so vilely as the 
 rhyme of his panegyrist. The active part which Sir 
 Thomas Littleton took in the debate on the union was 
 the last efficient service which he rendered to his party. 
 He died January 1, 1709-10, anticipating, with his 
 wonted fortune, the total overthrow of his friends, and 
 leaving behind him the memory of an excellent man of 
 business and sound practical statesman, not untinc- 
 tured with selfishness ; a favourable specimen of a race 
 not yet wholly extinct, the good old jobbing whig. 
 Mackey, in one of his brief portraits, too slight to 
 satisfy a lady, describes him as " a stern-looked man, of 
 a brown complexion, well shaped;" and Dunton adds 
 the further description, that "he was of the middle size." 
 As he left no family, the baronetcy descended to his 
 great-nephew, with an inheritance of good fortune, 
 which has rarely deserted the numerous scions of his 
 illustrious and favoured house.
 
 87 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The life and character of Littleton's eminent suc- 
 cessor deserve a more full investigation and searching 
 commentary. For twenty years the name of Robert 
 Harley exercised a talismanic influence over the House 
 of Commons, and the administration of the Earl of 
 Oxford, whether for weal or woe, is even yet felt in the 
 destinies of Great Britain. His family may be traced 
 to a period anterior to the Conquest. His father, Sir 
 Edward Harley, of Brompton Bryan, in Herefordshire, 
 was an active champion of republicanism and dissent, 
 in the civil wars. Among the earliest names to the 
 signature of the Solemn League and Covenant, we 
 meet with those of Lenthall, Cromwell, and Harley. 
 A zealous puritan, he was commissioned by the Long 
 Parliament to destroy all images, altars, and cruci- 
 fixes — a labour of love, which he discharged with such 
 zeal, that he would not allow any one piece in the 
 fragments of wood and stone to be at right angles upon 
 another a . He made some atonement for this extrava- 
 gance in 1656, when, excluded from the House by 
 the forcible interference of the protector, he joined 
 
 a Grainger.
 
 88 HISTORY OF T.IE 
 
 in a spirited remonstrance, that they would not 
 be frightened or flattered to betray their country, 
 and give up their religion, lives, and estates, to be 
 at the will, or to serve the ambition, of Cromwell. 
 Reconciled to the court of Charles II. by this 
 opposition, he was appointed governor of Dunkirk, 
 but still sided with the country party, and was 
 supposed to transmit a strong presbyterian bias to his 
 son. 
 
 Robert Harley, Sir Edward's eldest son, was born in 
 Bow-street, then a fashionable part of London, Dec. 5, 
 1641, and received his education at a private school 
 kept by a presbyterian minister, the Rev. Mr. Birch, 
 at Shelton, Oxfordshire. This dissenting academy 
 mi^ht have rivalled Eton in the future eminence of its 
 pupils. He had for school-fellows Harcourt, the 
 future lord chancellor, Trevor, afterwards chief justice 
 of the common pleas, and ten members of the House 
 of Commons. Being destined for the law, he was 
 entered early at one of the inns of court, without going 
 to either of the universities, his father probably dis- 
 liking their high church and tory character. At the 
 Revolution he was selected by the gentlemen of Wor- 
 cestershire to convey a tender of their services to the 
 Prince of Orange, and raised a troop of horse in his 
 cause. Returned to the Convention Parliament for 
 Truro and afterwards for Radnor, he raised his stand- 
 ard as an independent member, and, supported by his 
 brother-in-law Foley, established a sort of flying squa- 
 dron, attacking and skirmishing in the outskirts of both 
 parties. " Not being considered at the Revolution," 
 Avrites the hostile whig bishop b , " as bethought he 
 k Burnet, vol. viii.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 89 
 
 deserved, he set himself to oppose the court in every 
 thing. 
 
 "He had the chief hand hoth in the reduction of the 
 army and the matter of the Irish grants ; the high 
 party trusted him, though he kept up his interest with 
 the presbyterians, and he had so particular a dexterity, 
 that he made both the high church party and dissen- 
 ters depend upon him. He was a man of great indus- 
 try and application, and knew forms and records of par- 
 liament so well, that he was capable both of lengthening 
 out and of perplexing debates." All who are con- 
 versant with the bitter prejudices of this historian must 
 be aware that he would give as little praise to the sub- 
 verter of his faction as he could possibly help ; and 
 the reports of the debates, meagre and scanty as they 
 are, prove that Mr. Harley was entitled to a far larger 
 measure of applause than this. Eloquent he was not, 
 neither did he aspire to a high range of oratory, but 
 he proved himself a ready debater and thorough man 
 of business. c He displayed his tact and address as an 
 opposition leader in his bill for excluding placemen 
 from the House, in his constant reproduction of the 
 treason bill, and the act for limiting the duration of 
 parliaments, in his denunciation of the lavish gifts of 
 the crown, in his constitutional appeals against Sir 
 John Fenwick's attainder, in his invectives against a 
 standing army — that standing topic of grievance for 
 half a century to all orators out of place. 
 
 c Even the partiality of Swift could not subscribe to Mackey's 
 report, that Harley was skilled in most things, and very eloquent, but 
 dashed in the margin " a great lie !" Mackey continues " would make 
 a good chancellor or master of the rolls, a very useful man, of low 
 stature and slender." Swift subjoins, " He could not properly be 
 called eloquent, but he knew how to prevail in the House with few 
 words and strong reasons."
 
 90 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 But it was ill the character of financier that he 
 exercised paramount authority in the House, with no 
 rival but Montague, and still more regarded. He is 
 mentioned as moving committees of ways and means, 
 while Montague still continued to hold the office of 
 chancellor of the exchequer. " For these two years 
 past," writes Mr. Vernon, in 1699, d "he could have 
 given what turn he pleased to the taxes, and have 
 made things worse than they were." The trimming 
 councils of William could not refrain from an attempt 
 at conciliation, and installed the popular committee- 
 man in the chair of the House. He preserved his 
 speakership in the next parliament against the wishes 
 of the crown, and was chosen speaker of a third parlia- 
 ment, an honour then unprecedented, on the accession 
 of Queen Anne. Though whiggish councils still pre- 
 dominated, his abilities, influence, and moderation, 
 were thought of such, exceeding value, that for the last 
 year of his remaining speaker he received the seals as 
 secretary of state, and was reputed by courtesy, as in 
 fact, the leader of the House of Commons. But, even 
 when admitted to the cabinet, he was not cordially 
 trusted by his colleagues, who doubted the sincerity of 
 their versatile convert, and dreaded his aspiring ambi- 
 tion. He was accused of coquetting with the tories, 
 through his friends Bromley, Hanmer, and Freeman, 
 and of scattering hints, that the queen had become 
 wearied with the tyranny of the whigs, and longed to 
 be delivered. His intimacy with her majesty, to which 
 ' the intriguing cousin' Mrs. Masham introduced him, 
 his easy, polite, conversation, and insinuating address, 
 installed him high in the queen's favour, and sup- 
 ported him against the suspicions of the straight- 
 A Vernon's Letters by James.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 91 
 
 forward Godolphin, and the distrust of the wary 
 Somers. An amusing glimpse into their cabals is 
 afforded in Lord Cawper's diary. 
 
 "January 6, 1705-6, Sunday. I dined next, day 
 on an invitation with Secretary Harley. Present, the 
 Duke of Marlborough, the Lord Treasurer (Godolphin) , 
 Lord Halifax, Mr. Boyle, Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
 Mr. St. John, and Lord Sunderland ; Lord Somers, 
 I understood; had been invited but did not come, 
 being gone to his house in the country, but Secretary 
 Harley said he had sent him a kind letter to excuse 
 his absence. I believed, when I saw the company, this 
 to be a meeting to reconcile Somers and Halifax with 
 Harley, which was confirmed to me, when, after the 
 Lord Treasurer was gone (who first went) Secretary 
 Harley took a glass, and drank to love and friendship 
 and everlasting union, and wished he had more Tokay 
 to drink it in : (we had drunk two bottles, good, but 
 thick) I replied his white Lisbon was best to drink it 
 in, being very clear. I suppose he apprehended it, 
 as I observed most of the company did, to relate to 
 that humour of his, which was never to deal clearly 
 and openly, but always with reserve, if not dissimula- 
 tion, or simulation, and to love tricks, even when not 
 necessary, but from an inward satisfaction he took in 
 applauding his own cunning. If any man was ever 
 born under the necessity of being a knave, he was." 
 
 This is the painting assuredly of a determined 
 foe, but how faithful a likeness does it give of the 
 treasurer's dislike, evinced in his haste to be gone, of 
 Lord Somers' wary distrust, and of the chancellor's com- 
 placent chuckle over his own sly inuendo ! Between 
 men who entertained such feelings there could exist 
 no friendliness or union : the hope was merely that
 
 92 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 after-dinner rhetoric, which could deceive no one, and 
 he parted from his colleagues in a spirit of rivalry, 
 which might soonest supplant the other. The first 
 treacherous blow was dealt by the whig cabal. One 
 Gregg, a needy Scotchman, clerk in the foreign office, 
 had been employed by Harley to translate the foreign 
 correspondence, as he was himself unversed in the 
 French language, and took advantage of his culpable 
 carelessness, in leaving state papers loose and exposed, 
 to convey important intelligence to the French minis- 
 ter. The treason was soon detected, and the traitor 
 thrown into Newgate. There Lord Sunderland visited 
 him, with offers of safety on condition that he would 
 implicate Mr. Harley. The man had not sunk low 
 enough in baseness, to become the perjured tool of a 
 virulent faction, and on the scaffold left a declaration 
 in writing with the sheriffs, of his patron's entire 
 innocence. Such sharp intriguing on the part of his 
 colleagues produced reprisals, and the mine was al- 
 ready sprung by the counter-plotter for their destruc- 
 tion, when Godolphin insisted peremptorily on his 
 dismissal. Had not Harley's prudence acquiesced, 
 the queen would have refused to comply, but he per- 
 ceived that his hour was not yet come. ■ 
 
 In Vernon's letters we see the quiet ease with 
 which the secretary made his bow, and the rancour of 
 his late colleagues. "Feb. 10,1707-8. Mr. Secre- 
 tary was in the House a little while, and delivered 
 a message or two from her majesty, recommending 
 the case of the Londonderry people, which he moved 
 should be referred to a committee, and made this 
 observation upon it (in his stiff, dry way), that it 
 sometimes happened, those who served the public best 
 were least considered ; and soon after he went away. —
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 93 
 
 I can't but say that the little gentleman who is gone 
 off the stage, was almost capable of filling the whole 
 world with suspicions." 
 
 Driven from the cabinet in February, 1707-8, 
 Mr. Harley continued for the two following years the 
 secret confidant and underhand adviser of the crown, 
 setting that precedent of back-stairs influence which 
 was watched with such national jealousy in succeeding 
 reigns. As the friend of the national church, ever too 
 strong for her enemies, and which ministers laid them- 
 selves open to the popular charge of assaulting, he 
 patiently awaited his opportunity, accelerated by their 
 own infatuation, and hurled them from power. The 
 real head of the new tory administration, he sought 
 to restore peace and economy to an exhausted state, 
 and, in the moderation of his counsels, went before 
 the age. His conciliating policy had cooled the affec- 
 tion of his more zealous supporters, when a lucky 
 and well improved adventure restored the fortunate 
 viceroy to more than pristine favour. 
 
 In March, 1711, Antoine de Guiscard, a French 
 refugee, was brought before the privy council, to 
 answer some charge of treason into which a profligate 
 poverty had betrayed him. Maddened by detection, 
 and eager to w T reak his vengeance on any member of 
 the ministry, he stabbed Harley, who chanced to be 
 sitting within reach, twice in the breast with a pen- 
 knife. The feelings of the nation w T ere outraged by this 
 attempt at assassination, and, with awakened fondness, 
 rejoiced at his escape from a foreigner and a papist. 
 Addresses of congratulation were poured forth from 
 all quarters of the kingdom. An act was unani- 
 mously passed to make an attempt on the life of a privy 
 councillor, felony, without benefit of clergy. The poets
 
 94 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 of that Augustan age, to whom he was a generous 
 friend and patron, vied with each other in hymns of 
 triumph. On his convalescence, at the end of seven 
 weeks, he was honoured in the House of Commons 
 with an address of congratulation. The speaker, Mr. 
 Bromley, though personally hostile, could not resist 
 the popular enthusiasm, hut spoke in terms of the 
 most fervent eulogy. 
 
 Mr. Harley expressed his gratitude with more grace 
 than might have been anticipated from his usual con- 
 fused manner of delivery. " Mr. Speaker, the honour 
 this House hath done me, which you have worded in 
 so obliging a manner, is a sufficient reward for the 
 greatest merit : I am sure it so far exceeds my deserts, 
 that all I can do or suffer for the public, during the 
 whole course of my life, will still leave me in debt to 
 your goodness. The undeserved favour I have received 
 this day is deeply imprinted in my heart, and whenever 
 I look upon my breast, it will put me in mind of the 
 thanks due to God, my duty to the queen, and that 
 debt of gratitude and service I must always owe to 
 this honourable House, to you, Mr. Speaker, and to 
 every particular member." After introducing his 
 scheme for the South Sea trade, then highly ap- 
 plauded, Mr. Harley made his parting bow to the 
 House of Commons. His indulgent sovereign crowned 
 the national testimony by creating him Earl of Ox- 
 ford and Mortimer, the proudest titles in English he- 
 raldry, and placing in his hands the staff of Lord 
 High Treasurer. Within a few weeks he grasped the 
 richest and most coveted trophies of successful am- 
 bition, the white wand, an earldom, and the George ! 
 
 " This man/' writes Swift , c "has grown by perse- 
 « Swift's Diary.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 95 
 
 cutions, turnings out, and stabbings ;" he might 
 have added, by his talents as a clever politician and 
 subtle intriguer, by his address as a court favourite, 
 and chamber-gossip with the queen. For three years 
 his fortune culminated. The wand of Circe, the ring 
 of Gyges, the lamp of Aladdin, all the symbols of 
 felicity, as recorded in history or fiction, seemed to 
 lie ready to his touch. He stood at the queen's right 
 hand, as one whom she delighted to honour, and bore 
 the cup of maintenance of the state. He commanded 
 triumphant majorities in the one House, and caused 
 twelve peers to be created in one day — a coup d'etat 
 unexampled — that he might overawe the hostility of 
 the other. The members of convocation presented 
 addresses of congratulation ; the three denominations 
 still cherished a jealous fondness for their former 
 pupil ; the idol of Oxford, he was not unpopular at 
 Hackney. By the country gentlemen, though blamed 
 for not going far enough, he was trusted as " honest 
 Robin." On the Royal Exchange, his name to a pro- 
 posal was deemed a sufficient letter of credit. At the 
 court he was the centre round which all dignities 
 revolved, and was hailed by a nation sated with vic- 
 tories as the restorer of peace. 
 
 At the close of three years, however, as if by the 
 spell of an enchanter, this fair prospect became totally 
 overcast, and all his visions of prosperity proved false 
 and hollow. His treaty of Utrecht was denounced 
 as a national disgrace and obloquy ; the clauses relat- 
 ing to commerce were pulled to pieces, and himself 
 pelted with the fragments f . 
 
 The following lines of a popular ballads faithfully 
 
 f Bolingbroke's Letter to Sir W. Wyndhani. 
 In the Somers Tracts.
 
 96 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 reflect the feelings of an estranged and fickle people : 
 
 " Oh ! the wretched peace-makers, 
 Bob, Harry, Arthur, JYIatt, 
 Who 've lost our trade, our friends betrayed, 
 And all to serve a chamber-maid. 
 
 Marlborough the great our foes did defeat, 
 
 May they still by him be banged ; 
 May the skip be stript, and the drawer whipt, 
 
 But Bob and Harry hang'd !" 
 
 The more ignominious punishment being reserved 
 for Arthur Moore, who had once acted as a footman, 
 and Matt Prior, the son of a vintner, Hainan's fate 
 was allotted to Bolin^broke and Oxford. According 
 to the sweet voices of the multitude, hanging was too 
 good for the treasurer. 
 
 The March and October Clubs cried shame upon 
 his ambiguous, doubtful, vacillating policy ; his South 
 Sea scheme tottered down, a ruinous failure ; the high 
 church idolaters transferred their homage to Ormond 
 and Bolingbroke ; the queen discarded her careless 
 and presuming favourite ; the partizans of the exiled 
 family hated him as the author of their ruin. There 
 arose a House of Commons which knew their once 
 leader only to visit him with articles of impeachment ; 
 the Lords allowed their brother peer to languish two 
 years in prison. He escaped the penalties of his 
 trial by a quirk, and, unheeded, sunk into powerless 
 safety. 
 
 The abilities of a statesman so distinguished, and 
 who experienced such strange variations of fortune, 
 have formed the subject of wild exaggeration, as far 
 below the fanciful eulogies of courtiers and contem- 
 poraries, as superior to the disparaging, almost con- 
 temptuous, criticisms of later times. When Swift
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 97 
 
 describes the lord treasurer in the language of a 
 poet-laureat, as " by far the greatest minister he ever 
 knew," he strays as widely from the truth as a recent 
 historian, Lord Mahon h , who represents him "as one 
 of the most memorable instances in history, to prove 
 how possible it is to attain both popularity and power, 
 without either genius or virtue." In the highest 
 sense of the term, he was void of genius, but had 
 decided talents as a minister of the crown, and nume- 
 rous virtues, both political and moral, overshadowed, 
 indeed, by heavy defects, which marred the features 
 of his policy and accelerated his fall. 
 
 Not the least vexatious were his dilatory habits 
 and tricks of procrastination. The postmaster com- 
 plained that the secretary constantly kept the post- 
 office open an hour beyond closing hours for the state 
 letters. Prone to indolence and indecision by nature, 
 he became the more addicted to these foibles by the 
 peculiarity of his position as treasurer ; and, undeter- 
 mined what to do, did nothing more than recline on 
 the chapter of accidents. "He that knows not 
 whither to go," was the comment of the sententious 
 Johnson, " is in no haste to move 1 . Lord Oxford, 
 who was perhaps not quick by nature, became yet 
 more slow by irresolution, and was content to hear 
 that dilatoriness lamented as natural, which he ap- 
 plauded in himself as politic." He prorogued parlia- 
 ment eleven times, and suffered the negotiations at 
 Utrecht, too long spun out, to be rendered odious by 
 repeated postponements, to make the heart of the 
 nation sick with hope deferred, before their full 
 demerits were revealed. The suspicion, conceived not 
 
 t Mahon's History of England, vol. i. 
 1 Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets. 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 without reason, that St. John wished to go too far, by 
 secret articles of treaty, naturally increased his tardi- 
 ness and aversion from all precipitate measures. A fraid 
 of an ambuscade at every step, and not assured as to 
 the course into which his more daring colleagues meant 
 to hurry him, he refused to be forced forward, and 
 stood still. They murmured at this dead stop with 
 ludicrous impatience. 
 
 ct Cunctando," muttered Bolingbroke, " is a sad 
 device, by Monk's leave " (an allusion to General 
 Monk's lingering). " I have learned," writes Prior, 
 in his lively, bantering way, " that, in Britain, at 
 least, doing little is better than doing much, and 
 doing nothing is better than either." Another cause 
 for this fatal habit arose from the treasurer's attempt- 
 ing too much. "Eltee cannot do all himself," writes 
 Swift, using his quaint abbreviation k , " and will not 
 employ others, which is his great fault." He essayed 
 in vain to shame him out of his infirmity, by the 
 modern version of an old fable : — 
 
 " Atlas, we read, in ancient song, 
 Was so exceeding tall and strong, 
 He bore the skies upon his back, 
 Just as a pedlar does his pack ; 
 But as the pedlar, overprest, 
 Unloads upon a stall to rest, 
 Got Hercules to bear the pile, 
 That he might sit and rest the while. 
 Suppose, then, Atlas ne'er so wise, 
 Yet, when the weight of kingdoms lies 
 Too long upon his single shoulders, 
 Sink down he must, or find upholders." 
 
 But even Swift's raillery was inefficacious to root 
 out a besetting sin entwined with Oxford's nature, 
 k L. T., for lord treasurer, pronounced Eltee.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 99 
 
 and which he had discovered soon after his introduc- 
 tion. "His lordship has Ions: designed an answer to 
 the letters he received from the bishops, and has said 
 ten times he would do it to-morrow 1 .'" Many years 
 afterwards he was told himself by the earl's private 
 secretary — " Lord Oxford has received your letters: he 
 will answer them, but not to-day, ' sicut olim,' nothing 
 can change him."' In the crisis of his fate, as we learn 
 from the Diary, it was just the same m . "April 7th, 
 1713. I dined with the lord treasurer, and though 
 the business I had with him is something against 
 Thursday, when the parliament is to meet, and this is 
 Tuesday, yet he put it off till to-morrow. I never 
 saw his fellow for delays. To-morrow will be a 
 very important day ; all the world will be at West- 
 minster. Lord Treasurer was easy as a lamb."' Im- 
 mersed in too much business for a man of the most 
 exact habits to perform, the time that could not com- 
 prehend unavoidable engagements he dissipated in 
 such as were superfluous. He used to send triding 
 verses from court to the Scriblerus Club, and would 
 come and talk idly almost every day and night with 
 them, 'even when his all was at stake. In private 
 life, and to his friends, he was equally the dupe of 
 the morrow, nor could ever begin the business of the 
 week on the Monday morning. The simple act of 
 sitting for his picture for a friend, he delayed till the 
 opportunity was gone. Swift writes to the earl, 
 October 1722, "I have now been ten years solicit- 
 ing for your picture, and if I had solicited you for 
 £1000 (I mean of your money, not of the public), 
 I could have prevailed in ten days.'" Xor did he 
 
 1 Swift's Letter to the Archbishop of Dublin. 
 Journal to Stella. 
 
 H 2
 
 100 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 prevail at last, for death interfered with the old earl's 
 contemplated fulfilment of his promise. "I have 
 often heard my father say," his son writes from Wim- 
 ple, " that he did design to sit for you, but did not. 
 I shall certainly take care that you shall have a 
 picture." 
 
 There is reason to surmise that this inveterate pro- 
 crastinator was even more insincere than is expected 
 in a premier. He had been trained to politics in the 
 school of Machiavelli, and was familiar with artifice in 
 every shape and form. The reverse of his predecessor 
 Godolphin, who only spoke to fulfil, he appears to 
 have been a perfect courtier in the facility with 
 which he made and the recklessness with which he 
 broke a promise ; one of Wharton's porch, who 
 scarcely ever refused, and still more rarely performed 
 a favour, the single and splendid exception being with 
 respect to literary men. He wore his velvet mask so 
 constantly as never to let the features of his real policy 
 be seen, and seemed rather to enjoy than rectify the 
 mistakes into which his disguise betrayed the unwary. 
 " Among the many qualities I have observed in the 
 treasurer," writes Swift, Ci there is one that i£ some- 
 thing singular, that he will lie under an imputation, 
 how wrong soever, without the pains of clearing him- 
 self to his nearest friends, which is owing to great 
 integrity, great courage, or great contempt of censure." 
 Walter Scott ascribes this weakness, with more rea- 
 son, to that reserve and retenue which, under all 
 modifications, formed the leading features of his 
 character"." 
 
 The Duchess of Marlborough, an adept in spelling 
 backwards the qualities of all opposed to her husband, 
 
 " Scott's Life of Swift.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 101 
 
 has heightened the shades of Oxford's duplicity in the 
 following caricatured but still clever likeness . "He 
 was a cunning and a dark man, of too small abilities 
 to do much good; but of all the qualities requisite to 
 do mischief, and to bring on the ruin and destruction 
 of a nation. This mischievous darkness of his soul 
 was written in his countenance, and plainly legible in 
 a very odd look, disagreeable to everybody at first 
 sight, which, being joined with a constant awkward 
 motion or rather agitation of his head and body, 
 betrayed a turbulent dishonesty within, even in the 
 midst of all those familiar airs, jocular bowings, and 
 smiling, which he always affected, to cover what could 
 not be covered." 
 
 An hostile but somewhat less furious partizan of 
 the opposite faction has given a description of his 
 perfidious smoothness 11 . Cl He was, indeed, very civil 
 to all who addressed him, but he generally either spoke 
 so low in their ear, or so mysteriously, that few knew 
 what to make of his replies, and it would appear he 
 took a secret pleasure in making people hang on and 
 disappointing them." Kindlier motives may be attri- 
 buted by more partial observers for this trick of 
 deception, but whatever may have been the motive, the 
 fact is recorded to his extreme discredit, that he pro- 
 mised the same place to five different candidates at 
 the same time. In his contemplation, the duty of a 
 prime minister was as arduous as that which Sir 
 Henry Wotton ascribes to an ambassador, " to lie for 
 the good of his country." A fondness for trickery and 
 finesse was through life Oxford's cardinal sin. The 
 great rhetorician, his rival, might have taught him 
 
 Conduct of the Duchess of Marlborough. 
 p The Lockhart Papers.
 
 102 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 that " cunning is but the low mimic of wisdom ; that 
 dissimulation and simulation — those two seats of 
 cunning — are like the alloy mingled with pure ore, of 
 which a little may be necessary, and will not debase 
 the coin below its proper standard, but that if more 
 than this little be employed, the coin loses its cur- 
 rency, and the coiner his credit." Harley passed off 
 his false counters among all classes and parties — 
 Jacobites, whimsicals, high-flyers, low churchmen, and 
 dissenters, — till they became rejected by all, as of too 
 light weight. 
 
 How much the last were deceived and disappointed 
 is admirably illustrated in Arbuthnot's humorous His- 
 tory of John Bull. Jack the Presbyter is there per- 
 suaded by his friends to hang himself, in expectation 
 that Sir Roger (the name given to the Earl of Oxford) 
 would interpose and cut him down ; but Sir Roger 
 passes by without taking any notice, and suffers Jack 
 to hang on, notwithstanding his winks and contor- 
 tions of countenance. The satirist alludes to the pre- 
 mier's permitting Lord Nottingham's bill against occa- 
 sional conformity to pass without opposition. It would 
 have been debated in the House of Commons, but for 
 a firm persuasion, universally entertained, that, by the 
 influence of their former champion, its fate was sealed 
 in the Upper House. The queen, however, was, 
 inveterate, and Oxford treacherous; and the obnoxious 
 measure became law by a legislative sleight of hand. 
 
 The high church party might have complained of 
 similar tracasserie in a man whom his enemies alleged 
 to be 
 
 " True to no cause, to no religion true." 
 
 At Sacheverell's trial, he feasted one day with ortho- 
 dox divines, and fasted the next with non -conforming
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 103 
 
 zealots ; nay, carried his principles of tolerance so far 
 as to unite at his table (an indifference much censured 
 by that intolerant age) churchmen and dissenters. A 
 trimmer on principle, a trickster from policy, lie dis- 
 claimed alliance with both factions, and seemed to 
 wish "a plague on both their houses." " The vio- 
 lent whigs," he wrote to Godolphin' 1 , " are doing 
 their best to turn the pyramid on its point, but I hope 
 your lordship will rescue us from the violence of either 
 party ; and I cannot forbear saying, that I know no 
 difference between a mad whig and a mad tory ; and 
 as for the inveteracy of either party — ' Iliacos intra 
 muros, peccatur, et extra.' It is a very common 
 thing to match one malicious story from a tory with 
 another from a whig." His principles of moderation 
 may account for this aversion, no less than his adroit, 
 subtle, and insinuating character. " I dread," he 
 writes again, "the thoughts of running from the ex- 
 treme of one faction to another, which is the natural 
 consequence of party tyranny, and renders the govern- 
 ment like a door which turns both ways upon the 
 hinges, to let in each party as it grows triumphant." 
 But, however successful this neutral and ambidexter 
 policy might be for a season, the result of his over- 
 curious refinements and too complicated intrigues was 
 most disastrous. 
 
 " After six years of power," says Lord John Rus- 
 sell r , " although neither thwarted by hostile influence 
 in the cabinet, nor misfortunes abroad, he contrived 
 to break up a powerful party, of which he was the 
 leader, and to alienate at once his sovereign, his 
 friends, the adherents of the pretender, and those of 
 the House of Hanover." This statement is not wholly 
 
 q Coxe's Life of Marlborough. ' History of Europe.
 
 104 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 true. He was thwarted in the cabinet; and the po- 
 litical intimacies of St. John and Harcourt could 
 scarcely be deemed friendships. But the windings of 
 his tortuous policy led him to the foot of the scaffold, 
 and might not have ended even there had the Duke 
 of Marlborough been above imputation. The cordial 
 intimacy that once subsisted between them had been 
 cooled down into aversion on the part of the great 
 general, by hints of machinations, the fear of double- 
 dealing, a sense of constant distrust, and changed at 
 length into such sentiments of concentrated and per- 
 severing hate, as might have been thought strange and 
 foreign to his gentle nature. The progress and sever- 
 ance of this political friendship, as disclosed in their 
 correspondence, gives an amusing insight into the 
 character of both. Before and after obtaining the 
 seals, Mr. Harley compliments the great captain on 
 his triumphs in language not untinged with flattery : — 
 16 You have, my lord, exceeded our very hopes and 
 expectations, and no person could have done it but 
 yourself. What I took the liberty to say to the queen 
 upon this occasion is what I believe in my soul, that 
 no subject in the world has such a prince as the queen, 
 and that no prince in the world hath such a subject 
 as your grace." And again : " May your grace still 
 go on prosperously, the best general to the best queen, 
 and engaged in the best cause. You have united the 
 characters of Scipio and Hannibal ; your proceedings 
 are so swift, it is scarce possible with thought to keep 
 pace with them." 
 
 The duke in reply thanks the secretary warmly 
 for his defeat of the Occasional Bill, and all seems 
 frank and cordial. But in the following year the 
 saturnine Godolphin insinuates to Marlborough his
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 105 
 
 suspicions of intrigues, and, mentioning that Harley 
 was pointed at from all quarters, adds, " I doubt 
 so much smoke could not come without some fire." 
 His doubts were soon exchanged for certainty, and the 
 fraudulent apologies of an undermining colleague met 
 with his brief indignant rejoinder : " I have received 
 your letter, and am very sorry for what has happened, 
 to lose the good opinion I had so much inclination to 
 have of you ; but I cannot help seeing nor believing 
 my senses. I am very far from having deserved it of 
 you. God forgive you." 
 
 The disingenuous secretary was stripped of official 
 power, but contrived, by his secret influence with the 
 queen, to thwart the wishes of the generalissimo, whose 
 grasping ambition was extravagant enough to seek to 
 have the office conferred upon him for life. " As 
 often," writes Godolphin s , "as the necessary mea- 
 sures for compassing the success of the war are pro- 
 posed to her majesty, there is a lion in the way." At 
 the moment of Harley 's triumphant return to power, 
 the irritated general confesses his hatred to his ter- 
 magant duchess in terms of heartfelt bitterness. 
 
 " September, 1709. — You may live in the manner 
 which you may find most easy to yourself, for no be- 
 haviour of yours or mine can ever create any tender 
 concern in the queen for us. This villainy has been 
 insinuated by Mrs. Masham, by the instigation of 
 Harley, who certainly is the worst of men." In the 
 frenzy of the same month, Mainwaring writes " of the 
 ugly chambermaid that has betrayed her only friend 
 to a papist in masquerade (Duke of Shrewsbury) , and 
 to the most arrant, tricky knave in all Britain (Har- 
 ley), that no man alive can believe any more than 
 
 ' Coxc's Marlborough.
 
 106 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 an Oates or a Fuller." The scurrilous violence of his 
 retainers does not appear to have been displeasing to 
 Marlborough, who, however, determines with his usual 
 prudence, to capitulate, that he may retain his com- 
 mand. " I shall never fail making use of the cypher, 
 believing Mr. Harley has it in his power and inclina- 
 tions to open my letters at the post-office. I shall 
 continue with the army ; I detest Mr. Harley, but 
 think I have lived long enough in the world to be able 
 to distinguish between reason and faction." 
 
 In the correspondence that ensued between these 
 two admirable dissemblers, the duke assumed the tone 
 of an ardent well-wisher, and the treasurer that of an 
 injured man. " And now, my lord, since I must speak 
 of myself, I can say no more than this, that I shall 
 leave it to my actions to speak for me, and so give 
 your grace demonstration that I am the same man 
 toward you as I was the first day I had the honour of 
 your acquaintance; and I shall as heartily promote 
 everything under your care as I did, or would have 
 done, in any time since I have been known to you." 
 Lord Stair, whom the duke had sent to mediate on his 
 behalf, complained of being put off by Lord Oxford 
 from day to day, and sent back with a bamboozling 
 letter ; yet he wrote with all the suavity of a courtier : 
 " My lord, I desire this may serve to prepare you 
 to receive me such as you would desire to find me, 
 full of gratitude for the several marks of your friend- 
 ship this campaign^ and of resolution to do all that 
 lies in my power to cultivate it." Having written 
 again to complain of libels, of which the duke was re- 
 markably sensitive, the lord treasurer rejoined : "I 
 do assure your grace I abhor the practice as mean and 
 disingenuous. [He did all in his power to encourage
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 107 
 
 Swift.] I have made it so familiar to myself by some 
 years' experience that, as I know I am every week, if 
 not every day, in some libel or other, so I would wil- 
 lingly compound that all the ill-natured scribblers 
 should have licence to write ten times more against me, 
 upon condition they would write against nobody else." 
 A ludicrous proof of the truth of this indifference is 
 told by Mainwaring, the literary follower of the Duchess 
 of Marlborough. " Lord Oxford told me the duke 
 must not mind libels ; that he himself was called rogue 
 every day in print, and knew the man that did it 
 (meaning, I doubt, me), yet he should live fairly with 
 him." But, though the treasurer had no inclination to 
 maintain a friendly intercourse by letter, he shrunk 
 from a private interview, and only met the military 
 hero at the queen's command, when he returned to 
 London in December 1710, escorted by a tumultuous 
 procession. AVhen he again revisited England in the 
 winter of the following year, all the ministers paid 
 their official visits, except the treasurer, who sent him 
 a message of compliment, desiring that their first meet- 
 ing might occur, as if by accident, at the council or the 
 court, after which he would pay him the usual visit. 
 In escaping the uneasiness of a first interview in pri- 
 vate, the treasurer spared the feelings of both. Why 
 should they cumber themselves with false masks, or 
 speak in feigned accents of friendship, when there w r ere 
 no spectators present to applaud or criticize, and they 
 could not deceive each other ? 
 
 When they did meet, according to the treasurer's 
 arrangement, the reserve was mutual, and well it 
 might be, for, on the last day of the year, in the same 
 Gazette which contained the creation of twelve addi- 
 tional peers, came forth the peremptory and memor-
 
 108 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 able announcement, "The Duke of Marlborough is 
 dismissed from all his employments." 
 
 Prince Eugene alluded wittily to this dismissal. 
 Dining with the treasurer, who declared that " he 
 looked upon that day as the happiest of his life, since 
 he had the honour to see the greatest general of the 
 age in his house," the prince quickly retorted, " that 
 if it were so, he was obliged to his lordship for it !" 
 If he were the greatest general, what had become of 
 Marlborough ? 
 
 After this final rupture, the good offices of the 
 premier were confined to the procuring his grace a 
 passport for those foreign lands from which he only 
 returned on the day of the queen's death. From the 
 treasurer's letter to Mainwaring, it would appear as if 
 a mighty obstacle had been thrown in the way of a 
 favour so slight, that it would now be deemed a matter 
 of course. * " Sir, I desire you will, with my most 
 honourable service, assure our friend" [the italics are 
 ours] " that there have been endeavours from all sides 
 to obstruct granting the pass desired, yet I shall have 
 the honour to put it into his hands. When I under- 
 took it, I resolved not to be deterred from finishing it." 
 
 Though some detected letter of the duke's to the 
 pretender is supposed to have saved the earl from a 
 trial, and there are strong reasons for believing that a 
 secret negotiation was on foot between these inveterate 
 intriguers at the time when the duke sailed from Ostend, 
 he joined in all hostile votes and protests against 
 the fallen treasurer, and on the verge of fatuity pur- 
 sued to the death the plotting councillor, whose cabals 
 had alone prevented him, as he might not unreasonably 
 believe, from dictating peace at the gates of Paris. 
 
 ' Coxe's Correspondence of the Duke of Marlborough.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 109 
 
 For the enmity of another great man, still more 
 pregnant with bane to his living interests and 
 memory — the hate of Lord Bolingbroke — the treasurer 
 was perhaps as much indebted to his station and good 
 fortune, as to his failings, though the jealousy he 
 displayed of an ambitious rival, and his reluctance to 
 entrust him with even a small share of patronage, 
 ministered fuel to his aversion. Had the treasurer 
 been more frank and open, less suspicious of his 
 colleague, less retentive of command, easy, commu- 
 nicative, and generous, had he shared, instead of 
 engrossing, the good things of office, so completely, 
 that St. John could find no better place to bestow on 
 his private secretary than some petty appointment 
 during pleasure in the West Indies u , this repugnance 
 might have been subdued ; but the disparity in their 
 characters was too marked to admit of any feeling that 
 partook of real friendship. 
 
 The one, in his love of literature and the arts, pre- 
 sents some points of resemblance with the Pericles ; 
 the other, in his magnificence, recklessness, and ability, 
 may be most aptly assimilated to the Alcibiades of 
 the classic age : or, to draw the comparison from more 
 recent times and country, the one was the Mazarin 
 and the other the Richelieu of his native land. The 
 policy of the one was peaceful and circuitous, the am- 
 bition of the other direct and daring. Both were state 
 intriguers, but the fearless machinations of St. John 
 aimed at restoring the Stuart, and reigning viceroy 
 over him ; the politics of Harley might seem to 
 waver for a time in the direction of St. Germain, 
 according to the inclinations of his royal mistress, but 
 
 11 St. John's Letter to Lord Raby.
 
 1 10 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 permanently inclined to the House of Hanover. The 
 one, careless of money, was never worth £ 1 500 in the 
 world beforehand v , and winked at innocent jobs ; the 
 other, rich and thrifty, seemed to watch over the 
 nation's purse with even more cautious vigilance than 
 his own. The one was so open, that his love and hate 
 were legible in his countenance ; the other wore that 
 volto sciolto look of mystery, which no physiognomist 
 could interpret ; the one was as greedy, as the other 
 retentive, of power. In genius, eloquence, energy, the 
 lord treasurer was of a lower form j in prudence, 
 morals, tact, judgment, far superior to his libertine 
 associate. 
 
 There had been an outward show of friendship 
 between them since the time that St. John accompa- 
 nied Harley on his retirement from office, and though 
 the haughty spirit of the secretary at war was chafed 
 and fretted, when he found on their restoration no 
 higher place designed for him than his old and com- 
 paratively inferior situation, he made no public demon- 
 stration of displeasure, and the negotiations for peace 
 began in such seeming amity, that they were termed the 
 " sorcerer and his familiar w ;" and Madame de Torcy, 
 anxious to conciliate, united their healths in the toast 
 of "A Harre et a Robin." The penknife of Guis- 
 card, when St. John had declined a private interview, 
 pointing at him as the primary object of his murderous 
 attack, cut the bond of amity. Before the conse- 
 quences could be foreseen, the secretary expressed 
 himself as a friend. x 
 
 " It is impossible to express to you the firmness 
 and magnanimity which Mr. Harley showed upon this 
 
 " St. John's Letters. * Prior's Letters. * Letter to Lord Raby.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 1 1 1 
 
 surprising occasion. I, who have always admired 
 him, never did it so much ; the suddenness of the 
 blow, the sharpness of the wound, the confusion 
 which followed, could neither change his countenance, 
 nor alter his voice. You will wonder when 1 tell you, 
 that the whigs in the House of Commons, on this 
 occasion, which demanded the indignation of every 
 man who pretends to common humanity, behaved 
 themselves simply ; but when the matter came before 
 the House of Lords, they left their seats, and, since 
 they could not hang Mr. Harley, they were resolved 
 to show no resentment to Guiscard for stabbing 
 him." 
 
 But, when St. John found that the lucky treasurer 
 had been wounded into popularity, that his recovery 
 had been made the object of a nation's prayer, and that 
 the secretary was overlooked, his uneasy jealousies 
 and moody vexation could no longer be suppressed. 
 " Mr. Harley, since his recovery, has not appeared at 
 the council or at the treasury at all, and very seldom 
 in the House of Commons. We, who are reputed to 
 be in his intimacy, have few opportunities of seeing 
 him, and none of talking freely with him. As he is 
 the only true channel through which the queen's 
 pleasure is conveyed, so there is, and must be, a per- 
 fect stagnation, till he is pleased to open himself, and 
 set the waters flowing." Conscious of his own superior 
 ability, exulting in his power as an orator, the dictator 
 of the social circle, which he ruled with a sort of 
 magical charm, St. John might justly murmur at 
 being relegated to an inferior office, and envy the stab 
 of his ennobled chief. " See, what a rent that fatal 
 dagger made." His reflections on the promotion that
 
 112 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 followed are clothed in the cold garb of philosophy, 
 and seem almost prophetic of estrangement. 
 
 u Our friend, Mr. Harley, is now Earl of Oxford, 
 and high treasurer. This great advancement is what 
 the labour he has gone through, the danger he has 
 run, and the services he has performed, appeared to 
 deserve. But he stands on slippery ground, and envy 
 is always near the great, to fling up their heels, on the 
 least trip which they make. The companions of his 
 evil fortune are most likely to be the supporters of his 
 good ; and, I dare say, he makes this a maxim to him- 
 self, for, though he often wants that grace and open- 
 ness which engage the affection, yet, I must own, I 
 never knew that he wanted either the constancy or 
 the friendship which engages the esteem." 
 
 As if to nurse his spleen at the undue elevation of 
 his rival, St. John found himself compelled to force 
 his way into the House of Lords, and could not extort 
 a tardy title, even a barony, till the spring of 1712. 
 In writing to the Earl of Stafford, he makes no secret 
 of his complaints and indignation. " To make me a 
 peer was no great compliment, when so many others 
 were forced to be made, to gain a strength in parlia- 
 ment, and, since the queen wanted me below stairs in 
 the last session, she could do no less than make me a 
 viscount, or I must have come in the rear of several, 
 whom I was not born to follow. I confess to you that 
 I felt more indignation than ever in my life I had 
 done ; I remain cloathed with as little of the queen's 
 favour as she could contrive to bestow." The 
 writer's jealousy of the white wand, the superior title, 
 and the blue ribbon, plainly peep forth, in his hints to 
 the Duke of Shrewsbury, " of my lord treasurer's
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 113 
 
 tedious illness, and his unreasonable proportion of 
 business, when he is well. No principle of govern- 
 ment established and avowed — nobody but my lord 
 treasurer, and he cannot be in every place, and speak 
 to every man — able to hold out hopes, and fears, or 
 give a positive answer to any one question." A fort- 
 night before the final explosion, he gives forcible 
 utterance to his aversion and alarms. " I have some 
 reason to think that some people, who would rather 
 move heaven and earth than either part with their 
 power or make a right use of it, have lately made 
 overtures to the Duke of Marlborough. I have 
 thought things never could be as they are, were not 
 our leader in secret with our enemy ; and I believe 
 there is hardly a whig or tory in Great Britain that 
 is not of the same opinion. The utmost I could do 
 has been little enough to ward the stabs that were 
 levelled at me, and to discover the mines daily wrought 
 under my feet." 
 
 His flame of resentment, long smouldering, at length 
 burnt to such a white heat, that Bolingbroke frankly 
 confessed, " if the question were between the total ruin 
 of his party and reconciliation with Oxford and 
 safety, he would not hesitate to choose the first alter- 
 native." His wish was gratified — he effected Oxford's 
 ruin, after recriminations and reproaches, and sealed 
 his own. But he cherished his hatred in exile and 
 disgrace, with an inveteracy which misfortunes could 
 not soften nor death subdue. The secret of this vin- 
 dictiveness may be easily explained. Lord Oxford 
 came out of the "burning, fiery, furnace" of persecu- 
 tion, almost unscathed. He had with unshaken con- 
 stancy awaited his trial, and been unanimously 
 acquitted for want of accusers ; though banished the 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 court, he resumed his seat in the House of Lords, 
 supported his party with voice and vote, and preserved, 
 in their integrity, his rights, fortune, and fame. How 
 totally the reverse of this was the fate of his baffled 
 antagonist ! Condemned by his guilty terrors to an 
 ignominious flight — banished — attainted— a disgraced 
 refugee in the court of the pretender — constrained, 
 after eight years' wandering, to purchase his return 
 to England from the king's mistress, but not per- 
 mitted to re-enter the House of Lords, he spent the 
 last bitter years of a wayward life in violent but 
 futile efforts to win back his ascendency; to become 
 something more than the masqued champion, the 
 anonymous libeller, the proscribed partizan. But for 
 Lord Oxford's cold obstructions and perpetual impe- 
 diments, he might have changed a dynasty, and been 
 to the restored Stuart what the Duke of Albemarle 
 was to Charles, and, with his superior endowments, 
 the foremost man of Britain. In the bitterness of 
 crushed hope, he cursed the memory of his betrayer. 
 
 When Swift contemplated his history of the four 
 last years of Queen Anne, and the son of Lord Oxford, 
 with a pardonable anxiety, expressed some uneasiness 
 lest the biographer should disclose any unfavourable 
 traits of his father's character, the shrewd divine 
 points out what should be the true source of his 
 distrusts " Lord Oxford is in the wrong to be in 
 pain about his father's character, or his proceedings in 
 his ministry, which is so drawn, that his greatest 
 admirers will rather censure me for partiality ; neither 
 can he tell me anything out of his papers which I was 
 not then informed of, nor do I know anybody but 
 yourself, who could give me any more information, 
 
 y Swift's Letter lo Erasmus Lewis.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 115 
 
 than what I then received. I believe you know that 
 Lord Bolingbroke is now busy in France, writing the 
 history of his own times, and how much he grew to 
 hate the lord treasurer you know too well, and I 
 know how much Lord Bolingbroke hates his very 
 memory. This is what the present Lord Oxford 
 should be in most pain about, not about me." 
 
 Swift was right in his forebodings. The black 
 characters, graven hard and deep, are now the most 
 legible on his father's head-stone. The rancour of a 
 good hater overflows in Bolingbroke's private corre- 
 spondence with the dean. " You are worse than 
 peevish, you are unjust, when you say that it was 
 either not in the power or will of a minister to place 
 you in England. I know but one man who had 
 power at that time, and that wretched man had 
 neither the will nor the skill to make a good use of it. 
 We talk of characters, match me that if you can 
 among all the odd phenomena which have appeared 
 in the moral world!" To the jaundiced eye of this 
 prejudiced writer, even the physical defects of Oxford 
 were all assumed and a part of his disguise. " Your 
 deafness must not be a hackney excuse to you, as it 
 was to Oxford." 
 
 But when the historian came to paint for posterity, 
 he drew his whole-length libel with a force and vigour, 
 which compel perusal, but too disagreeably like not 
 to show the practised hand of a hostile limner 2 . li He 
 was the first spring of all our motions by his credit 
 with the queen, and his concurrence w T as necessary to 
 everything we did, hy his rank in the state : and yet, 
 this man seemed to be sometimes asleep and some- 
 times at play. He neglected the thread of business, 
 
 z Letter to Sir W. Wyndham. 
 
 12
 
 116 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 which was carried on, for this reason, with less 
 despatch and less advantage in the proper channels, 
 and he kept none in his own hands. He negotiated, 
 indeed, by fits and starts, by little tools and indirect 
 ways, and thus his activity became as hurtful as his 
 indolence. No good effect could flow from such a 
 conduct. The very work (the peace) which ought to 
 have been the basis of our strength, was in part 
 demolished before our eyes, and we were stoned with 
 the ruins of it ! Whilst this was doing, Oxford 
 looked on, as if he had not been a party to all which 
 had passed, broke now and then a scurvy jest, which 
 savoured of the inns of court and of the bad company 
 in which he had been bred, and, on those occasions 
 where his station obliged him to speak of business, 
 was absolutely unintelligible. Whether this man had 
 any determined view, besides that of raising his family, 
 is, I believe, a problematical question in the world ; 
 my opinion is, that he never had any other. The 
 Jacobites and tories were alike amused. The pre- 
 tender was to attempt nothing, his partizans were to 
 be still. Oxford undertook for all. The only con- 
 siderable thing he brought about after the peace was 
 the marriage, and by it an accession of riches and 
 honour to a family whose estate was very mean, and 
 whose illustration before this time I never met with 
 anywhere, but in the vain discourses which he used 
 to hold over claret. If he kept his word with any of 
 the parties, it must be supposed that he did so with 
 the whigs." 
 
 The author of this admirable satire, apparently 
 oblivious of his own extravagant hopes and deep 
 humiliation — of his waiting with the seals, hour after 
 hour, at the door of an outer chamber, and knocking
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 117 
 
 in vain for admittance — of his escape by night in dis- 
 guise — of the attainder which " tingled in every vein," 
 and the ignoble repulse to his overtures for reconcilia- 
 tion — exults at the grateful remembrance of the trea- 
 surer's disappointment. "He took for granted that, by 
 his secret negotiations at Hanover, he should have as 
 much favour in George Ist's reign as he had enjoyed 
 under that of the queen. He answered to Lord Dart- 
 mouth and to Mr. Bromley, that one should keep the 
 privy-seal and the other the seals of secretary ; and 
 Lord Cowper makes no scruple of telling how he 
 came to offer him the seals of chancellor. When the 
 king arrived, he went to Greenwich with an affecta- 
 tion of pomp and splendour. Against his suspicious 
 character, he was once in his life the bubble of his 
 credulity, — he was received with the most distinguished 
 contempt." The malignity of the commentator was 
 fed by an imagination so fertile, and a diction so terse, 
 that his images fasten themselves on the memory, as 
 when he supposes, "that Lord Oxford grew less by 
 his elevation, like a little statue placed on a mighty 
 pedestal ;" or, where he says, that " nature meant to 
 make a spy of him, or at most a captain of a company of 
 miners, but fortune, in one of her whimsical moods, 
 made him a general ;" or when he writes the strong 
 antithesis, "When anything was to be got, he could 
 wriggle himself in — when any misfortune was to be 
 avoided, he knew a way to wriggle himself out." The 
 readers of this noble historian, delighted with the 
 sparkling satire, have almost unconsciously imbibed a 
 portion of the venom. The whole race of modern 
 annalists have followed their leader with credulous 
 fidelity, and seem to be a generation lineally descended
 
 118 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 from St. John and the Duchess of Marlborough, 
 adopting, in their intensity, the prejudices of both, 
 and aspersing the character of their deadly foe with 
 all the poetry of the satirist and something of the 
 virulence of the shrew. 
 
 It must be confessed that the death-struggle be- 
 tween Oxford and Bolingbroke brought out in full 
 relief, and exposed in the strongest light, the moral 
 shades and defects in his character. " The Dragon," 
 says Arbuthnot, in his playful manner, "meets his 
 antagonist every day at the cabinet. They often eat, 
 drink, and walk together, as if there was no sort of 
 disagreement, and, when they part, I fear they give 
 one another such names as nobody but ministers of 
 state could bear without cutting throats. . . . He dies 
 hard. He is now kicking and cuffing about him like 
 the devil, and you know parliamentary management is 
 his forte." Again, "July 10. The Dragon holds fast 
 with a dead grip, the little machine his staff. If he 
 would have taken but half so much pains to have 
 done other things, as he has of late to exert himself 
 against the Esquire (Bolingbroke) , he might have been 
 a Dragon, instead of a Dagon. I would no more 
 have suffered and done what he has than I would 
 have sold myself to the galleys!" A week later, the 
 satirical but honest Scotch Doctor writes to a brother 
 of the Kit-Cat : " My Lady Masham has bid him de- 
 fiance, notwithstanding, he visits, cringes, flatters, &c, 
 which is beyond my comprehension." Though his 
 " Abigail," as the pasquinades of the day termed her, 
 vexed, because the treasurer would not connive at 
 her peculations, told him plainly, " You never did the 
 queen any service, nor are you capable of doing her
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 119 
 
 any," lie supped with the petulant dame, strange to 
 relate, the same evening, in company with Boling- 
 broke. Such pusillanimity chafed and grieved his 
 devoted friends, but the very heartiness of their 
 displeasure proves how much they loved him. 
 
 His private secretary, the faithful Erasmus Lewis, 
 could not forbear to murmur. "July 24. The Dragon 
 has broke out in a tiery passion with my lord chan- 
 cellor, and sworn a thousand oaths that he would be 
 revenged. This impotent, womanish, behaviour vexes 
 me more than his being out." " You judge me right," 
 he admits to Swift, "it is not the going out, but the 
 manner that enrages me. The queen has told all the 
 Lords, the reason of her parting with him, viz. : that 
 he neglected all business ; that he was seldom to be 
 understood ; that, when he did explain himself, she 
 could not depend on the truth of what he said ; that 
 he never came to her at the time she appointed ; that 
 he often came drunk ; lastly, to crown all, he behaved 
 himself towards her with bad manners, indecorum, 
 and disrespect." These reproaches of her majesty 
 would entail upon the fallen favourite of eight years' 
 standing lasting disgrace, were not a large allowance 
 to be given to the exaggerations of a weak woman, 
 deluded by her angry maid. It may be admitted that 
 he was often diplomatically obscure — that he was un- 
 punctual to a ludicrous degree—and more insincere 
 than even a first minister is permitted to be ; but still a 
 suspicion intervenes, that cousin Masham had dropped 
 the hint of inebriety, when he hastily attended a late 
 summons to the closet from the Kit-Cat ; and there is 
 no doubt that a very slight inattention to court etiquette 
 would appear in Queen Anne's sight an enormous
 
 120 HISTORY OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 
 
 breach of propriety. Who can forget her sacred 
 majesty's quarrel with Bolingbroke for venturing to 
 present Prince Eugene before he had time to purchase 
 a new full-bottom periwig ; and her indignant remark, 
 when that nobleman or Harley (for tradition ascribes 
 the misadventure to both) appeared in the royal pre- 
 sence in a tie-wig, that she supposed the noble lord 
 would next come before her in his night-cap !
 
 121 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The shadows which had deepened on the fair fame 
 of Oxford passed away with his disgrace ; and that fall 
 from power, which betrayed the baseness of so many 
 natures., reinstated him in the good opinion of his 
 friends. Banished from court, stripped of all his 
 offices, threatened with persecution to the death from 
 an hostile House of Commons, strictly confined in the 
 Tower, borne down by disease, he yet displayed a 
 cheerful fortitude, a magnanimous composure, that 
 presented a strong contrast to the guilty absconding 
 of Bolingbroke and the terror-stricken retreat of 
 Ormond. At their parting interview in the Tower, 
 the rash duke is said to have urged his friend to 
 accompany him in his flight, and to have communi- 
 cated the startling intelligence that his enemies had 
 vowed to have his blood. When he could not pre- 
 vail, he exclaimed tauntingly, "Farewell, earl without 
 a head ;" and, " Farewell, duke without a duchy," 
 was Oxford's calm, almost contemptuous retort. In the 
 spirit of mutual resentment, and as a friend to the 
 Hanover succession, he was thought to show more joy 
 upon proclaiming the king than was consistent with 
 the obligations he had received from Queen Anne. 
 He was hissed all the way by the mob, still furious
 
 122 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 for high church, Ormond, and Sacheverell; and some 
 of them threw halters into his coach a . But when, 
 contrary to all belief, he found himself selected for a 
 martyr, and ominous menaces were thrown out, he 
 treated them with contempt. He only smiled, when 
 informed that the versatile Earl of Anglesea declared 
 himself ready " to pursue an evil minister from the 
 queen's closet to the Tower, from the Tower to the 
 scaffold;" and that Lord Nottingham compared his 
 treaty to that of the Duke of Suffolk, in the reign 
 of Henry VI., adding, with rhetorical effect, " but 
 I say no more of the man, because he came to an 
 untimely end." 
 
 The earl's firmness never quailed, but commanded 
 in the dungeon Arbuthnot's warm admiration. " He 
 is without shadow of change, the greatest example of 
 an unshaken tranquillity of mind that ever I yet 
 beheld, seemingly perfectly well satisfied with his 
 own conduct in every particular. You know we have 
 often said there is but one dragon in rerum natura ; 
 I do not know what he thinks, but I am perfectly 
 well satisfied that there will not be that one dragon left, 
 if some people have their will." This magnanimity 
 was not overcome by two years' close confinement, 
 and elicited the noblest eulogy that was ever laid by 
 genius on the shrine of public virtue ; the dedication 
 of Parnell's Poems, known by heart to every lover of 
 poetry. 
 
 * The worst punning' libel in our language was published at this 
 time by Dunton. " Queen Kobin, or the second part of Neck or 
 Nothing, and O.r-ford and jBull-'m-hrookc, or a Funeral Sermon 
 upon the two beasts that are to be slaughtered upon Tower Hill, this 
 session. ' But these as natural brute beasts must be taken and 
 destroyed.' "
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 123 
 
 The following four lines are scarcely more poetical 
 than true — 
 
 A soul supreme, iu each hard instance tried, 
 Above all pain, all passion, and all pride, 
 The rage of pow'r, the blast of public breath, 
 The lust of lucre, and the dread of death. 
 
 " Strength of mind," says Warton 1 ', when com- 
 menting upon Pope's dignified, musical, and affecting 
 tribute, "appears to have been the predominant cha- 
 racteristic of Lord Oxford, of which he gave the most 
 striking proofs when he was stabbed, displaced, 
 imprisoned. Of his fortitude and firmness another 
 striking proof remains, in a letter which the earl wrote 
 from the Tower to a friend who advised him to medi- 
 tate an escape, and which is worthy of the greatest 
 hero of antiquity." When brought at length to the 
 Lords' bar, for the trial he had long earnestly sought, 
 his bearing was so noble, that Swift, in his history of 
 those who have made great figures in some one par- 
 ticular circumstance or action of their lives, enume- 
 rates " Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, at his trial." 
 Struck down by a hard blow, he seems to have 
 caught strength and spirit with the rebound. 
 
 On the afternoon of his acquittal, he entered the 
 House of Lords and received the congratulations 
 of his friends. Though forbidden the court, and 
 excepted by name from the Act of Grace, he sup- 
 ported the opposition with all his strength, daring 
 the resentment of those in power, and vehemently 
 opposed the act making it lawful for courts-martial to 
 punish mutiny and desertion with death, commencing 
 his speech, " As long as I have breath, I will speak 
 for the liberties of my country." Conscious inno- 
 
 b Walton's Notes on Pope.
 
 124 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 cence, the best inspirer of courage, swelled his breast 
 as he again confronted that high assembly, the major- 
 ity of whose members, though they shunned to sit at 
 his side, as if tainted with jacobitism, were more 
 guilty of treason than himself. He had been betrayed 
 indeed, by his indignation at unworthy treatment, to 
 write to the Pretender from the Tower; but, considering 
 the far-extended treachery of the times, this beginning 
 of a correspondence that intended more than com- 
 j^liment may be deemed comparatively venial in one, 
 who had never taken advantage of his jacobitism to 
 promote the cause of the Stuarts. In sending occa- 
 sional letters of ceremony to the French as well as to 
 the German court, he merely adopted the self-seeking 
 system of the age, and certainly did as much to baffle 
 the designs of St. Germains, by his dilatoriness, cold- 
 ness, and indecision, as the most zealous Hanoverian 
 could have desired. Barillon impugns his affection 
 for the cause ; and, so far as acts went, he might safely 
 have challenged the favour of George I. on his landing 
 at Greenwich. 
 
 The jacobite emissary, Lockhart, speaks the well- 
 founded feelings of his party. " That the queen did, 
 for a long- time, desire her brother's restoration, I do 
 not in the least question, but was prevailed with to 
 postpone and delay it, partly by her own timorous 
 nature, partly by the divisions and discord of her 
 ministers, and partly by the tricks, intrigues, and 
 pretences, of the Lord Oxford." This result had 
 been foreseen by the keen Duke of Berwick, who 
 sent over to Lord Ormond and his friends the 
 strongest representations against the treasurer, as 
 undeserving of confidence. The Pretender himself 
 never believed Oxford sincere, and his intimate friends
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 125 
 
 suspected treachery to the cause. Lady Masham 
 wrote to St. Germains that he would pique himself 
 on deceiving their hopes and disappointing their 
 wishes ; and the lady shewed the natural penetration 
 of her sex. Were further testimony wanted, we have 
 the confession of the Duke of Marlborough, that he 
 did not believe him in the king's interest. No sooner 
 had that intriguing soldier written home to assure his 
 friends that the restoration of the Pretender would 
 overturn the liberties of his country and endanger 
 the safety of Europe, than we find him active in 
 protestations of attachment to his person, through 
 Marshal Villars, and declaring that he would rather 
 cut off his right hand than oppose the Chevalier's views 
 to the crown. " As for me," he writes, " I have been 
 treated unworthily ; but God has blest me with a 
 great deal of temper and forbearance of mind. I 
 have taken my resolution to be quiet. I have deter- 
 mined to wait my time ; but, if Harley will push me 
 further, he shall know of what metal I am made. As 
 for the king's affairs, occasion is only wanting for 
 zeal." This and other letters prove the duke's want 
 of scholarship and his bad spelling ; but the absence 
 of all faith and honesty is far more disgraceful to the 
 writer than mere ignorance of grammar. For his 
 own unblemished fame Marlborough had better have 
 been a marksman. 
 
 Compared with his epistolary double-dealing, 
 Harley's graceful letter of compliment to the elector, 
 though far from speaking the truth, was sincere and 
 straightforward c. ' ' November 1710. I have hitherto 
 chosen that my devotion to your electoral highness's 
 person, and your serene highness, should appear 
 
 c Sir H. Ellis's Collection of Letters.
 
 126 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 rather by my actions than by bare words ; but, since 
 the queen has done me the honour to bring me again 
 into her service, I could not be a faithful or accept- 
 able servant to her majesty, without studying to serve 
 your highness' interest. I have taken the liberty to 
 write this in English, because I know your electoral 
 highness has an English heart, that you may be 
 assured it comes from a heart entirely devoted to 
 your service." 
 
 The elector replied — " Je seray toujours fort aise 
 de vous faire voir la consideration que j'ai pour 
 votre personne, et la sincerite avec laquelle je suis, 
 monsieur, votre ties affectionne, George Louis, elec- 
 teur." 
 
 In April, 1714, Oxford wrote again to his principal 
 minister — " I do in the most solemn manner assure 
 you, that, next to the queen, I am entirely and 
 undoubtedly devoted to the interest of your highness 
 of Hanover. 1 may without vanity say that I had 
 the greatest hand m settling the succession." The 
 lord treasurer wrote to the prince for the last time in 
 May, 1714. "As I am sure your royal highness' 
 great wisdom would not choose to rule a party, so 
 you will not let their narrow measures be the stand- 
 ard of your government. I doubt not this accident 
 which hath happened (about the writ), may be im- 
 proved to increase the most perfect friendship between 
 the queen and your serene family." 
 
 The tieasurer, by the queen's command, had vehe- 
 mently opposed the issuing of a writ to the prince, as 
 Duke of Cambridge, saying, " that his presence would 
 be like placing her coffin full in her majesty's view." 
 His opposition gave extreme umbrage, and he soon 
 found, at the accession, that his hopes of favour,
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 127 
 
 though resting apparently upon a firm foundation, 
 were built on sand. The king determined to pro- 
 scribe, if he could not exterminate, the tories, and 
 their leader's share in the Act of Settlement was 
 forgotten. He had his likeness taken as speaker, 
 with that act in his hand. When Prior, we are told, 
 saw the portrait after his impeachment, he wrote 
 upon the blank part of the scroll, "This bill paid in 
 full, July 12th, 1715," the date of the warrant for 
 Oxford's committal as a traitor. From the lights 
 that have been since reflected on the character and 
 conduct of the leading colleagues by whom he was 
 surrounded, we may almost congratulate the country 
 on his silence and reserve, and applaud the furtive 
 prudence with which, at this political game of loo, he 
 contrived to conceal his hand from the desperate 
 gamblers who made England their stake. " He must 
 play a very dangerous game," was Bolingbroke's 
 aphorism, "who shows all his cards to the man that 
 bets openly on the other side." The silence of the 
 prime minister and his Fabian policy had the nega- 
 tive merit of preventing a counter-revolution. To 
 his delays and mysterious hindrances, may be mainly 
 attributed the safety of the Protestant succession. 
 
 But the treasurer had other great and positive 
 merits, in addition to the negative one of being no 
 Jacobite. He was frugal of the public money, an 
 economical and incorrupt minister, a lover of peace, a 
 friend of toleration, placable, religious, moral, domes- 
 tic, devoted to literature, and the friend of literary 
 men. 
 
 Though the reported defalcation of forty-four 
 millions was a party cry, the hyperbole of faction, 
 there had been lavish profusion, which the treasurer
 
 128 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 checked, and bound up the bleeding veins of the 
 nation. He appears to have been more economical 
 of the public money than his own,' — a virtue most 
 praiseworthy, at a time when the state purse had been 
 drained too freely, and was yet exhausted with the 
 corrupt grants of the preceding reign and the cost of 
 a ten years' war. His retrenchments extended even 
 to Chelsea Hospital, where tradition relates d his 
 reducing the female soldier's pension from Is. to 5c/. 
 a-day. He could compute the accounts of a king- 
 dom, and suggest saving reforms to the most minute 
 article of expenditure, but w T as wholly careless of his 
 own private economy. On quitting office, the incor- 
 rupt lord treasurer, though weighed down with digni- 
 ties, had no better estate than when he assumed, it. 
 He refused Lady Mash am a share in the Assiento 
 contract, which would have been deemed a trifle in 
 that age, and found the queen's face averted from 
 him, because he would not minister to the fraud and 
 avarice of a kinswoman. At a period when corrup- 
 tion among statesmen was as common as it is now 
 happily rare, he stood beyond the atmosphere of 
 bribes, and thoroughly incorrupt. He neither tam- 
 pered himself with the public revenues, nor connived 
 at venality in others. 
 
 Unlike his vehement accuser, Walpole, who built 
 Houghton at such a lavish cost, that posterity are 
 left in silent conjecture what secret fountain the trea- 
 sures could have flowed from, his hands were pure 
 from gifts. The artificer of a peace more useful than 
 glorious, better fraught with benefit to the real inte- 
 rests of his country than conducive to her renown, he 
 strove to introduce a new spirit of temper and mode- 
 
 d Gleig's Chelsea Hospital.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 129 
 
 ration into the counsels of the crown, and was content 
 to establish a precedent, that ministerial responsibility, 
 when misapplied, should terminate in disgrace. He 
 scouted the notion, then too prevalent, oi' impeach- 
 ment, the scaffold, and the block. Shocked at the 
 extravagance of the March and October clubs, who 
 longed for reprisals on the prostrate but lately per- 
 secuting whigs, and animated by a lingering fondness 
 for the principles of the party with whom he first 
 entered on public life, he essayed to smooth the 
 differences of the antagonist factions, and, with the 
 common fate of all who would separate combatants, 
 exposed himself to the attacks of both. 
 
 Yet, though personally injurious, his attempt at 
 mediation and a moderate policy proved of essential 
 benefit in those excited times. The reproach of poli- 
 tical fanatics, that he promoted the return of indepen- 
 dent and neutral members to parliament ; that he 
 caused the sheriffs to be pricked from those of the low 
 church party ; that he connived at the continuance of 
 whigs in the lieutenancies of counties, in commissions 
 of the peace, in offices of the revenue, now that pas- 
 sion has died away, becomes a theme of panegyric. 
 What irreconcileable enmities must have sprung up in 
 a land giddy with faction, had he listened to the violent 
 non-jurors, and flung away the scabbard! What a drear 
 prospect of civil war would have loomed over the 
 land, had he not resisted such divines as the Bishop 
 of Rochester, ready with cope and stole to proclaim 
 James III. ; had he not rebuked the address of the 
 Highland chiefs 6 , when, with sword in hand, they ex- 
 pressed their hopes that, after her majesty's demise, the 
 parliamentary and hereditary sanction might possibly 
 
 e Scott's Tales of a Grandfather. 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 meet in the person of a lineal successor ; had he not 
 neutralized by suspense the wishes of the landed, 
 arrayed against the moneyed interest, that the crown 
 might revert to the good old line ! 
 
 The senseless imputation that he manoeuvred in the 
 elections of 1713 for the return of whigs, though the 
 returns in four places out of five went in favour of the 
 tories, whilst it proves the virulence of faction, proves 
 also the necessity of a master-hand to control and 
 allay it. "They blame Lord T.,"says the Journal, "for 
 his slowness in turning people out, but I suppose he has 
 his reasons." When the clerical polemic, wearied with 
 further delays, ventured to remonstrate, his patron 
 explained the motives of his policy, the necessity of 
 keeping men in hopes, the danger of disobliging those 
 who must remain unprovided for, and his desire not to 
 let the tories be too numerous, lest they should be 
 insolent and kick against him. Paltry reasons of 
 state-craft assuredly, but the wish to preserve in some 
 degree the balance of parties argued his wise modera- 
 tion, and anticipated the sound public ethics of later 
 days. 
 
 Lord Oxford proved, on a memorable occasion, that 
 policy, and not fear, was the motive of his public 
 conduct ; that he would not be deterred from taking a 
 decisive part, when the good of the state required it. 
 When General Macartney, Colonel Coote, and other 
 officers of the Guards, indignant at the prospect of 
 what they deemed a dishonourable peace, had the 
 foolish hardihood to drink destruction to the present 
 ministry, and, dressing up a hat on a stick, and calling 
 it Harley, to discharge their pistols at it, even wishing 
 the figure were Harley himself; the treasurer would 
 not overlook so flagrant an example of insubordination
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 131 
 
 in general officers, but compelled them to retire from 
 the army, or undergo the risk of being broke by a 
 court-martial. But to prove that the punishment 
 was inflicted on the grounds of public policy, and 
 not to gratify private spleen, he permitted them to 
 dispose of their commissions at half the real value. 
 With equal resolution, when the Duke of Marlborough 
 threw out hints of refusing to resign his command, 
 the treasurer caused a commission to be drawn up 
 immediately, under the great seal, to deprive him of 
 all his employments. The possession of a dauntless 
 spirit was proved by Harley, when Guiscard's pen- 
 knife broke in his body ; his countenance never 
 changed : with unfaltering voice he asked the surgeon 
 if he were in immediate danger, that he might settle 
 his affairs, for he did not fear death, and all who saw 
 believed him. 
 
 A beautiful Latin epigram was written by Atterbury 
 upon the unmoved countenance with which he received 
 the blow, contrasted with the agitation of feature and 
 changed colour which he evinced when receiving the 
 congratulations of the House of Commons upon his 
 escape : — 
 
 " Devotum sensit cum condi in pectore ferrum 
 
 Immoto Harlseus saucius ore stetit : 
 Dum laeta huic reduci gratatur voce Senatus 
 
 Confuso subitus surgit in ore rubor : 
 O pudor ! O virtus ! partes quam dignus utrasque 
 
 Sustinuit, vultu dispari, laude pari." 
 
 Threats of assassination, predicting, in disguised 
 characters, 
 
 " Though Guiscard's hand did not succeed, 
 A Fenton's yet may do the deed,"' 
 
 failed to disturb his equanimity, and anonymous libels 
 
 K 2
 
 132 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 signed "your humble servant, the Devil," full of the 
 sweltering venom of party, only raised his mirth. 
 Superior to foolish fancies, he remarked to a friend, 
 when the queen was attacked with gout in the stomach, 
 and there appeared a universal panic among his 
 retainers : " These people, when the queen is ill, 
 think she has not an hour to live, and, when she is 
 better, they act as if she were immortal." The sar- 
 casm might have been retorted on the speaker, " de te 
 fabula narratur," if lie had not been chained down to 
 inaction by distrust of his colleagues. 
 
 The subject, perhaps, of more violent enmities 
 than any man of his day, he was himself placable and 
 forgiving, cherished no resentments, and crushed no 
 foes from motives of personal hate. But their com- 
 bined opposition was insufficient to shake his purpose. 
 Resolute of will, though versatile in his methods of 
 effecting it, he supported the Church of England, her 
 discipline, and ministers, when assailed with virulence, 
 yet shielded the dissenters from persecution. That 
 noble fund for the relief of poor livings, known by the 
 name of Queen Anne's bounty (would it were larger !) 
 was commenced during his administration, which 
 had the further merit of originating that admirable 
 scheme for building fifty new churches in London and 
 Westminster — a noble monument of his zeal to supply 
 the religious wants of a great community, which the 
 miserable thrift of his successors cut down to less than 
 a fifth of the original design, and which, in its integrity, 
 not even the munificence of the present century has 
 been able to complete. An adopted son of the church, 
 he set an example but imperfectly imitated, of respect- 
 ing all who ministered at her altar. 
 
 The Examiner, after eulogizing Oxford as a firm
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 133 
 
 friend and placable enemy, and sneering at the pre- 
 ceding premier (Godolphin), contrasts with the conduct 
 of the whigs this amiable peculiarity. " There is some 
 mixture of human infirmity. His greatest admirers 
 must confess his skill at cards and dice to be very low 
 and superficial ; in horse-racing he is utterly ignorant : 
 then, to save a few millions to the public, he never 
 regards how many worthy citizens he hinders from 
 making up their plum ; and surely there is one thing 
 never to be forgiven him, that he delights to have his 
 table filled with black coats, whom he uses as if they 
 were gentlemen." Having, when speaker, to forward 
 the thanks of the House of Commons to the lower 
 House of Convocation, he mentioned to the prolocutor 
 his own personal zeal and deference to their house, and 
 added, " My most humble service attends those other 
 reverend persons who came with you last night. f " 
 The clergy had been so much accustomed to the lan- 
 guage of scorn and contumely from those in power, 
 that they received his courtesy with gratitude. An 
 excellent divine and scholar himself, he admitted all 
 who had taken their degrees in polite letters to his 
 fellowship, as members of a joint corporation. 
 
 An amusing instance is given in Seward's Anec- 
 dotes of his abstruse reading in divinity and ready 
 application. " A little before the Peace of Utrecht, 
 Bishop Lloyd, then eighty- three or eighty-four years of 
 age, came to Queen Anne, and told her he could prove 
 from Daniel and the Revelations that she ought not 
 to make a peace " — upon such terms there required 
 no spirit of divination to prove she ought not. The 
 queen replied to her prelate of Worcester, ' My lord, 
 I am no divine, I cannot argue that matter, but Lord 
 
 1 Atterbury's Correspondence by Nicholls.
 
 134 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Oxford may, perhaps, answer your objections.' At the 
 time appointed, the presence-chamber was full of 
 nobility to hear the conference, wherein the Lord 
 Oxford confounded the prophet, and exposed him to 
 the last degree." " Lord Oxford rehearsed the whole 
 conference to me," writes his friend to Dr. Charlatt, 
 " and it was the most diverting thing I ever heard in 
 my life, a vast deal of learning, mingled with a great 
 deal of wit." 
 
 His practical method of silencing other importunate 
 fanatics, without calling in aid the terrors of the law, 
 redounds still more to his credit. A number of 
 preachers, who thought they had the gift of prophecy, 
 used to collect vast crowds of idle people in Moorfields, 
 and the minister's interference was prayed to abate the 
 nuisance. Too wise to disturb the popular phrenzy 
 by force, he directed Powel, the master of the famous 
 puppet-show, to make Punch turn prophet on the 
 vacant ground opposite. Punch harangued with such 
 success, that the prophets and their prophecies were 
 quickly put to the rout. " Risu solvuntur tabulae !" 
 
 In the estimation of those who remember the majo- 
 rity of preceding prime ministers since the Restoration, 
 with the exception, perhaps, of Godolphin, it is no 
 light praise for the first minister of the crown to have 
 been a man of correct morals, and exemplary in all the 
 relations of private life. It was of public benefit to an 
 age scarcely recovered from the licence of the libertine 
 Charles, that he set an example of religious obligation 
 in his high estate, that the bearer of the white wand 
 was not ashamed of being a good husband and father, 
 that the lord treasurer could afford to dispense with 
 the eclat of fashionable vice. He was most beloved 
 where best known, in the circle of the domestic
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 135 
 
 hearth — his character shone brightest by the light of 
 his own fire-side. 
 
 When comforting the old earl on the death of his 
 only daughter, the Marchioness of Carmarthen, Swift 
 feelingly remarked, " I have often said to your lord- 
 ship that I never knew any one, by many degrees, so 
 happy in their domestics, as you. To say the truth, 
 my lord, you began to be too happy for a mortal, 
 much more happy than is usual with the dispensations 
 of Providence long to continue." Lord Oxford was 
 twice married; first to Elizabeth, daughter of the 
 excellent Thomas Foley, of Witley Court, Worcester- 
 shire, by whom he had one son, Edward, who suc- 
 ceeded him in the title \ and two daughters, Abigail, 
 afterwards married to the Earl of Kinnoul, and Eliza- 
 beth, whose marriage to the eldest son of the Duke of 
 Leeds called forth the bitter spleen of Bolingbroke. 
 
 The manners of Lord Oxford were peculiarly mild, 
 courteous, and conciliating, with none of the frip- 
 peries of a petit-maitre g . It is told of Le Sao, the 
 celebrated French dancing-master, that he asked a 
 friend, with an air of great surprise, whether it were 
 true that Mr. Harley was made an earl and lord 
 treasurer; and finding the report confirmed, exclaimed, 
 " I wonder what the d — 1 the queen could see in him, 
 for I attended him two years, and he was the greatest 
 dunce that ever I taught. h " His enemies admit that 
 he was pointedly civil to all who addressed him, but 
 add, what certainly detracts from the admission, that 
 he generally either spoke so low in their ear, or so 
 mysteriously, that few knew what to make of his 
 replies 1 . In one of his letters, he expressed, in a 
 
 e Mackey's Characters. Swift's Works by Scott. 
 
 1 Lockhart.
 
 136 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 strong figure, his facility of disposition and readiness 
 to oblige. " If the company should say Harrow on 
 the Hill or Maidenhead were the nearest way to 
 Windsor, I would go with them, and never dispute it, 
 if that might give content, and I might not be forced 
 to swear it was so." His easy, neglige manners would 
 have insured a welcome entry at White's or Boodle's, 
 and made him a favourite guest at the Beef- steak 
 Club. In writing to a brother of the Kit Cat, Arbuthnot 
 gives a lively description of his clubable qualities. 
 " June 12, 1714 (within a fortnight of his expulsion 
 from office). The Dragon was with us on Saturday 
 night last, after having sent us really a most excellent 
 copy of verses. I really believe when he lays down 
 the staff, he will prove a very good poet. I remember 
 the first part of his verses was complaining of ill 
 usage — 
 
 " He that cares not to rule, will be sure to obey, 
 
 When summoned by Arbuthnot, Pope, Parnell, or Gay." 
 
 To the charms of literary society, the statesman, 
 perhaps, gave up too much of the public time ; and 
 when the exigencies of the state demanded the utmost 
 energy and most continued application, he enjoyed his 
 jest with the wits of that Augustan era, and slumbered 
 on amid the downy pleasures of social intercourse and 
 learned leisure. His gay, good-humoured, insouciant 
 temperament, amid scenes of difficulty, and doubt, and 
 danger, excited the admiration of Swift, who, stoical 
 himself, yet envied his epicurean disposition. "He 
 is as merry, easy, and disengaged as a young heir at 
 twenty-one." The diarist notes down, December, 1711. 
 " He was very pleasant, as he is always, yet I fancied 
 he was a little touched with the present posture of 
 affairs. Lord Trevor was hinting as if he wished a
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 137 
 
 ballad got up against Dismal (the Earl of Nottingham), 
 and I will get up one against to-morrow." 
 
 Next day, when a majority of six in the Lords had 
 declared against the court, he adds, in a panic, " I 
 told Lord T. I should have the advantage of him, for 
 he would lose his head, and I should only be hanged, 
 and so carry my body entire to the grave. Lord 
 Treasurer fell a-rallying me. Says he 'you had better 
 keep company with me than with such a fellow as Lewis, 
 who has not the soul of a chicken, nor the heart of a 
 mite.'" A few days later, he continues, ''Things do not 
 mend, but Lord T. only says, ■ Pho, pho, all will be 
 well.' " At length came forth the Extraordinary Ga- 
 zette to relieve his panic-stricken followers of all fear, 
 and Oxford was again permitted to float down the 
 stream of events without disturbing the current. None 
 knew the art better, " desipere in loco," to throw 
 aside his state robes for the morning gown and slip- 
 pers of a sauntering lover of literature, to close the 
 doors against matters of business, and snatch a few 
 hours of festive ease, to spell signs, and cap crambo 
 verses with Swift, or bask in the hay-field with Pope. 
 The bantering, affectionate tone in which his friends 
 mention him, when writing to each other, is worth a 
 volume of laboured eulogy to prove the social amia- 
 bility of the man, that in private life he was made to 
 be loved. 
 
 He subdued to a melting mood the rugged, sus- 
 picious, nature of Swift ; attached the playful good- 
 ness of Arbuthnot ; drew close to his side the philoso- 
 phic simplicity of Wren; won over, without a bribe, 
 the captious jealousy of Pope, and detained in friend- 
 ship that synod of wits who all claimed affinity with 
 the "genus irritabile vatum," Prior, and Parnell, and
 
 138 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Gay. To the honour of literary friendships, be it re- 
 membered, that they all clung to the dismissed and 
 menaced minister in the autumn of his days and in 
 powerless retirement, with as much devotion as they 
 had ever evinced in the meridian sunshine of the 
 court. The exiled Clarendon declared, on his expul- 
 sion from office, that he had no friend to brag of; but 
 Lord Oxford withdrew from public life with that 
 household company which nothing but his attaching 
 qualities could have retained ; those " troops of 
 friends" who surrounded his old age, and shielded 
 him from disgrace. Their testimony to his worth is 
 the more unexceptionable, because he never weighed 
 genius in a goldsmith's balance, or purchased their 
 adherence by a bribe. It has been whispered, indeed, 
 that he was a better companion than patron to liter- 
 ary men ; and his conduct to Rowe, and even to 
 Pope, has been glanced at in support of the imputation. 
 We are told by the gossiping Spence that Rowe, 
 a violent whig, who had been under-secretary, applied 
 to the Earl of Oxford for some public employment. 
 Oxford enjoined him to study Spanish, k and when, 
 some time afterwards, he came again, and said that 
 he had mastered it, dismissed him with this congratula- 
 tion : u Then, sir, I envy you the pleasure of reading 
 Don Quixote in the original !" " This story, " adds 
 Dr. Johnson, 1 " is sufficiently attested ; but why Oxford, 
 who desired to be thought a favourer of literature, 
 should thus insult a man of acknowledged merit, or 
 how Rowe, who was so keen a whig that he did not 
 willingly converse with men of the opposite party, 
 could ask preferment from Oxford, it is not now pos- 
 sible to discover. Pope, who told the story, did not 
 
 k Spence's Anecdotes. ' Life of Rowe.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 139 
 
 say on what occasion the advice was given; and 
 though he owned Rowe's disappointment, doubted 
 whether any injury was intended him, but thought it 
 rather ' Lord Oxford's odd way.' " 
 
 There is another solution of this otherwise inex- 
 plicable rudeness. Rowe might have been designed 
 for a diplomatic mission,, some secret service in the 
 peninsula, then rife with intrigues, the time for which 
 had passed away before he completed his studies, or 
 obtained a mastery of the language. The earl, who 
 loved mystery in his heart, probably wished under 
 this off-hand sally to conceal the cause of change, and 
 cared not to explain that the mission had become 
 abortive. Any conjecture seems more probable than 
 that a gentleman should have passed a contemptuous 
 slight on a poet and a scholar. He is blamed, but 
 surely with little reason, for not extending more 
 active patronage to Pope. When he resolved to 
 solicit a subscription to a version of the Iliad, Lord 
 Oxford, it is said m , "lamented that such a genius 
 should be wasted upon a work not original, but pro- 
 posed no means by which he might live without it." 
 The remark was as just as complimentary to the poet ; 
 and why should posterity fancy neglect, when the 
 author, himself so sensitive, imagined none ? His 
 injudicious friends complain of the treasurer often 
 expressing concern that Pope's religion rendered him 
 incapable of a place, but never speaking one word of 
 a pension. For this offer he was solely indebted to 
 the whig ministers, Lord Halifax and Craggs. And 
 Dr. Croly (in his edition of Pope) makes an indignant 
 comment. "The narrative is amusing, as an instance 
 of the early propensity of the tories to admire, and 
 
 m Spence's Anecdotes,
 
 140 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the whigs to remunerate ! of course this state of 
 things has never occurred again ! " Yet the instant 
 rejection of this offer by the independent bard, proved 
 that he sought no patronage of the purse, and there 
 might be a delicacy more grateful to his feelings, in 
 abstaining from an offer which lessened his sense of 
 self-respect. The " wicked wasp of Twickenham," 11 
 as he was happily named by Lady Mary Montague, 
 would not have buzzed so innocuously, have sheathed 
 his sting, and deposited the sweetest honey, had there 
 been good cause to suspect coldness or neglect. The 
 dedication of Parnell's Poems to Lord Oxford, the 
 noblest offering that was ever paid by genius to one who 
 knew its value and could retain its friendship, derives 
 its chief effect from the conviction that no taint of sordid 
 interest could have sullied that pure flow of inspiration. 
 It was in 1 72 1 , long after the ex-minister had withdrawn 
 from place and power, that Pope published a selection 
 from Dr. Parnell's works, and inscribed them to the 
 earl in a copy of verses, such as few patrons had ever 
 the honour to receive. He accompanied them by a letter, 
 in which he says, " This is the only dedication I ever 
 writ, and shall be the only one whether you accept of 
 it or not j for I will not bow the knee to a less man 
 than my Lord Oxford, and I expect to see no greater 
 in my time." His generous Muse 
 
 Thro' fortune's cloud one truly great can see, 
 Nor fears to tell that Mortimer is he. 
 
 It is true that Lord Oxford was not fond of pen- 
 sioning literature on the public purse. Arbuthnot 
 taunts Swift with his patron's stinginess . " Sure 
 you are a very ill husband, for you had the complete 
 
 n Lady Montague's Letters, vol. i. ° Swift's Correspondence.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 141 
 
 £1000, and sixpence of another £1000 given by the 
 Dragon." Prior also laughs at his patron's putting off 
 the evil clay of payment : — 
 
 " Dear Robert," quoth Saint John, whose mind, 
 In bounteous deed no mean can bind, 
 " Let that be wrought which Matt doth say." 
 " Yea," quoth the erle, " but not to-day." 
 
 But that the poet's fleece was not dewless, we 
 have abundant testimony. He made Mr. Granville 
 secretary at war ; invested Prior, though a vintner's 
 son, with the dignity of plenipotentiary to Paris ; be- 
 deaned Swift, and would have clothed him in lawn but 
 for the insuperable objection of the queen; pensioned 
 De Foe, and respected the protection which letters 
 threw around those of the opposite faction, Congreve, 
 and Steele. When setting forth his own active 
 exertions in behalf of literary men, Swift wTites to 
 Pope, 1720: — "Lord Oxford knows how often I 
 pressed him in favour of Mr. Addison, Mr. Congreve, 
 Mr. Rowe, and Mr. Steele, although I freely confess 
 that his lordship's kindness to them was altogether 
 owing to his generous notions, and the esteem he had 
 for their parts., of which I could only pretend to be a 
 remembrancer. For I can never forget the answer he 
 gave to the late Lord Halifax, who, upon the first 
 change of the ministry, interceded with him to spare 
 Mr. Congreve ; it was by repeating these two lines of 
 Virgil : — 
 
 " Non obtusa adeo gestamus pectora Poeni, 
 Nee tarn aversus equos Tyria Sol jung-it ab urbe." 
 
 " Our hearts are not so cold, nor flames the fire 
 Of Sol so distant from the race of Tyre !" 
 
 It was in those times an usual subject of raillery
 
 142 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 towards me, among the ministers, that I never came 
 to them without a whig in my sleeve." 
 
 Lord Oxford's good-humoured readiness to be 
 reconciled to his traducer Steele, and to take him 
 again into favour, appears from Swift's Journal. " Mr. 
 Harley reproached me the last time I saw him that to 
 please me he had promised and appointed to see him, 
 but that Steele never came." The provocation that 
 thoughtless wit had given in his Tatlers was very 
 great, and could only be forgiven for their sly humour 
 and agreeable satire. At the time when Harley was 
 smoothing the way for his return to office, a Tatler 
 attacked his foibles in the following clever sketch p . 
 
 "There is Polypragmon makes it the whole busi- 
 nes of his life to be thought a cunning fellow, and 
 thinks it a much greater character to be terrible than 
 agreeable. He pretends to much more ill than he 
 performs, and hugs himself in his closet, that, though 
 he is locked up there, and doing nothing, the world 
 does not know but that he is doing mischief. To 
 favour the suspicion, he gives half looks and shrugs, 
 to let you understand that you do not know what he 
 means. He is also wonderfully adverbial in his 
 expressions, and breaks off with, perhaps, a nod of 
 the head, upon matters of the most indifferent 
 nature." 
 
 Just before the denouement, a letter was inserted 
 professing to come from poor old Downes the 
 prompter (Duke of Leeds), craving advice whether 
 he should come again into the sub-administration of 
 stage-affairs''. 
 
 " I have known men within my remembrance 
 
 " Tatler, January 29, 1710. 
 i Tatler, April, 1710.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 143 
 
 arrive to the highest dignities of the theatre, who 
 made their entrance in the quality of mutes, joint- 
 stools, flower-pots, and tapestry hangings ! I have 
 from my youth been bred up behind the curtain, and 
 been a prompter from the time of the Restoration. 
 A gentleman of the inns of court, and a deep intriguer, 
 has worked himself into the sole management, and 
 imposed on the audience harlequins, French dancers, 
 and Roman singers, to the extirpation of the good 
 old British actors. He is tolerated by reason of his 
 dexterous insinuations, which prevailed upon a few 
 deluded women, especially the vizard masks, to 
 believe that the stage was in danger. He has picked 
 a tolerable good set of grave faces for counsellors, to 
 appear in the famous scene of ' Venice preserved,' 
 when the danger is over. The actors had a great mind 
 to play the ' Tempest,' but there is not a man of them 
 capable of acting, with a good grace, so much as the 
 part of Trinculo. The play with which they design 
 to open, is ' The Duke and no Duke,' and they are so 
 put to it, that the master himself is to act the con- 
 queror, and they have no one for the general but 
 honest George Powell !" 
 
 These biting jests would have exposed Steele to 
 ostracism by the preceding government, but Harley, 
 far from imitating the peevish folly of Godolphin, 
 made himself merry with the clever hits at his 
 expense, and which gave so little quarter to Lady 
 Masham, the Duke of Leeds, and Duke of Ormond. 
 Steele's raillery seemed heightened by ingratitude ; for 
 Harley, when secretary, had raised the emoluments of 
 the office of gazetteer, the post which enabled the 
 satirist to call himself " lowest minister of state," 
 from 150/. to 300/. a-vear, and had disclaimed all
 
 144 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 personal obligation, saying when Steele came to make 
 his bow, " Do not thank me, thank Mr. Mainwaring." 
 But the sturdy patriot resigned the appointment, 
 together with another which he held under govern- 
 ment, that he might not be encumbered with any 
 burden of gratitude, but declaim against their mea- 
 sures freely. Constant to his party, he opposed with 
 all the vigour of his talent Lord Oxford's baneful 
 domination, but, as a generous antagonist, withheld 
 not his tribute of admiration from the patron of 
 literature on his fall. With the noblest feelings of a 
 gentleman, he stood aloof, when his motives might 
 have been open to the construction of selfish interest, 
 but hastened to relieve himself of his kindly feelings, 
 when he knew that the offering would be welcome to 
 a decayed minister, and could not be misunderstood. 
 
 " I transgressed, my lord, against you, when you 
 could make twelve peers in one day. I ask your par- 
 don when you are a private man ; and, as I told you 
 when I resigned the stamp-office, I wished you all 
 prosperity consistent with the public good, so now I 
 congratulate you upon the pleasure you must needs 
 have, in looking back upon the true fortitude with 
 which you have passed through the dangers arising 
 irom the rage of the people and the envy of the rest 
 of the world. If to have judged rightly of men's 
 passions and prejudices, vices and virtues, interests 
 and inclinations, and to have waited with skill and 
 courage for proper seasons and incidents to make use 
 of them, can administer pleasure to a man of sense 
 and spirit, your lordship has abundant cause of satis- 
 faction/ " 
 
 Another name, still greater than Steele's, has been 
 
 r Steele s Preface.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 145 
 
 often cited in this vindication of Harley's memory, 
 that of his faithful ally, Jonathan Swift. It is impos- 
 sible to read his delightful descriptive verses, letters, 
 and diary, without imbibing some share of personal 
 interest in his patron. What rhymes ever flowed in 
 more easy charming metre than the dean's account of 
 their daily drive, rivalling the bard of Brundusium, 
 and depicting a still more amiable Mecrenas. He 
 makes his reader a companion in the ride, as he tells 
 how the grave minister 
 
 " Would take me in his coach to chat, 
 And question me of this and that, 
 As ' What's o'clock,' and ' How's the wind ?' 
 ' Whose chariot's that we left behind ?' 
 Or gravely try to read the lines 
 Writ underneath the country signs ; 
 Or, ' Have you nothing new to-day, 
 From Pope, from Parnell, or from Gay ?' " 
 
 Warton, in his chatty notes s , records that another 
 of the amusements in their excursions consisted in 
 counting the poultry on the road, and whichever 
 reckoned thirty-one first, or saw a cat, or an old 
 woman, won the game. Bolingbroke, overtaking them 
 one day on their road to Windsor, got into Lord 
 Oxford's coach, and began some political conversa- 
 tion. Lord Oxford interrupted: "Swift, I am up; 
 there's a cat !" Bolingbroke w T as disgusted with this 
 levity; "he was not i'the vein," and went again into 
 his own carriage. ' ' This/' says Warton, ' ' was Nugari, 
 etdiscincti ludere with a vengeance;" but Lord Oxford 
 loved the motto, ' Vive la hagatelleT and lived accord- 
 ing to it. 
 
 We know nothing more delightful in literary 
 annals than the careless, easy, quizzing, familiar, 
 
 8 Warton's Edition of Pope. 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 confidential intimacy with which he won the heart of 
 the cynical dean. The rise and progress of their 
 friendship must he told, however, in his own words, 
 or we should fail to do full justice to the treasurer's 
 social worth. Swift was sent up to London just 
 previously to the dissolution of the whig ministry on a 
 mission from the Irish bishops, respecting tenths and 
 first, fruits. He commences his journal to Stella, 
 with the important notification that it was shaving 
 day, and notes down, " October 4, 1710. To-day I 
 was brought privately to Mr. Harley, who received 
 me with the greatest kindness and respect imaginable." 
 His entries a few days later show how quickly their 
 friendship ripened. " October 7th. After being four 
 hours with him, Harley set me down at St. James's 
 Coffee House in a hackney-coach, and I must tell you 
 a great piece of refinement of Harley. He charged 
 me to come to him often. I told him I was loath to 
 trouble him in so much business as he had, and 
 desired I might have leave to come at his levee, which 
 he immediately refused, and said that was not a 
 place for friends to come to." 
 
 In this honeymoon of their friendship, Swift wrote 
 to Archbishop King a character of his patron, which, 
 though highly coloured, marks his habit of acute 
 observation: "The treasurer is much the greatest 
 minister I ever knew : regular in life, with a true sense 
 of religion, an excellent scholar, and a good divine ; of 
 a very mild and affable disposition, intrepid in his 
 notions, and indefatigable in business, an utter des- 
 piser of money for himself, yet frugal, perhaps to 
 extremity, for the public. In private company, he is 
 wholly disengaged, and very facetious, like one who 
 has no business at all." The nice tact and gentle-
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 147 
 
 manly address with which he contrived, as if unwit- 
 tingly, to flatter the self-love of his guest, is exquisitely 
 characteristic of the adroit courtier. "I dined at 
 Mr. Harley's. Prior and Lord Peterborough began 
 to talk of a paper of verses, called ' Sid Harriet.' 
 Harley repeated part, and then pulled them out and 
 gave them to a gentleman at table to read through ; 
 they had all read them often. Lord Peterborough 
 would let nobody read them but himself; so he did, 
 and Mr. Harley bobbed me at every line to take notice 
 of the beauties." 
 
 His savoir faire failed him once, when mistaking 
 the haughty and eccentric independence of his friend, 
 whose niggardliness in trifles could not escape obser- 
 vation, he presented him with a £50 bank note. The 
 bill was indignantly returned, and Harley's winning- 
 arts with difficulty averted a complete rupture. " He 
 promises to make me easy, if I will but come and see 
 him, but I will not, and he shall do it by message, or I 
 will cast him off. He did something which he intended 
 for a favour, and I have taken it quite otherwise, dis- 
 liking both the thing and the manner, and it has 
 heartily vexed me." His proud stomach was at 
 length appeased, and Swift appeared at the treasury 
 with a moody brow, which the premier's reception 
 quickly cleared away. " He told me he had a quarrel 
 with me. I said, I had another with him, and we 
 returned to our friendship ; and I should think he 
 loves me as well as a great minister can love a man 
 in so short a time." How heartily his amity was 
 returned by the cynic appears from the few hurried, 
 pathetic, sentences, in which, bewildered with the 
 shock, he notes down his intelligence of Guiscard's 
 attempt at murder. 
 
 L2
 
 148 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 " O dear M. D— my heart is almost broken ! 
 You will hear the thing before this comes to you. It 
 is of Harley's being stabbed this afternoon. — I took a 
 chair to Mr. Harley's, who was asleep, and they hope 
 no danger, but he has been out of order, and was so 
 when he came abroad to-day, and it may put him in a 
 fever. I am in mortal pain for him. I have now at nine 
 sent again, and they tell me he is in a fair way. Pray 
 pardon my distraction, I now think of all his kindness 
 to me. The poor creature lies stabbed in his bed by 
 a desperate, French, popish villain. Good night, and 
 God preserve you both, and pity me ! I want it." 
 A few days later, the journal continues — " The par- 
 liament cannot go on till he is well, and are forced to 
 adjourn their money business, which none but he can 
 help them in." 
 
 He had formed connections in the city with John 
 Lambert, a wealthy French merchant. The whigs 
 had sold out of the funds, to embarrass the ministry. 
 As soon as " the poor creature " could escape from his 
 room and physicians, the faithful chronicler becomes 
 amazed at his approaching greatness. " I believe he 
 must be lord treasurer, yet he makes only one dif- 
 ficulty, which is hard to answer ; he must be made a 
 lord, and his estate is not large enough, and he is too 
 generous to make it larger ; and, if the ministry should 
 change soon by any accident, he will be left in the 
 suds. — Another difficulty is that, if he be made a 
 peer, they will want him prodigiously in the House 
 of Commons, of which is the great mover, and, after 
 him, the secretary, and nobody else of any weight. 
 He never comes to court at all : somebody asked me 
 the reason. ' Why/ said I, ' the Lord of Oxford only 
 knows !' He always goes to the queen by the back
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 149 
 
 stairs — He is now Earl of Oxford, and Earl Mortimer, 
 and Baron of Wigmore Castle. My Lord Oxford 
 can't yet abide to be called my lord, and, when I 
 called him my lord, he called me Dr. Thomas Swift, 
 which he always does, when he has a mind to teaze 
 me. By a second hand (he was grown wary with his 
 original misadventure) he proposed my being his chap- 
 lain, which I, by second hand, declined, but we had 
 no talk of it, for I will be no man's chaplain alive." 
 
 Again, 29th May : " My Lord Oxford had the staff 
 given him this morning, so now I must call him Lord 
 Oxford no more, but lord treasurer. I hope he will 
 stick there, this is twice he has changed his name this 
 week. I heard to-day in the city that he will very 
 soon have the garter." But no change came over the 
 spirit of his friendship, except to bind closer its bands 
 of intimacy, and to give fuller scope to their merry 
 gibes and bantering jests, to display Swift's opportunities 
 of access in the presence of an envious throng, and to 
 sport fantastic tricks. A familiarity with the great 
 men of state went closely to the proud heart of the 
 morbidly vain dean. " I called at the lord treasurer's ; 
 it was his levee day, but I went up to his bed-cham- 
 ber, and said what I had to say. I came down, and 
 peeped at the chamber door, one hundred fools were 
 waiting, and two streets were full of coaches." Though 
 he has not recorded the circumstance himself, Walter 
 Scott mentions his whim of publicly sending the 
 prime minister into the House of Commons, to call 
 out the first secretary of state, only to let him know 
 he would not dine with him, if he dined late.* Oxford 
 retaliated by having the dean knocked up out of bed 
 
 1 Walter Scott's Life of Swift.
 
 150 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 at eleven o'clock, upon pretence of earnest business, 
 and then laughing at his simplicity. 
 
 In a letter of thanks, which Swift wrote to General 
 Hill, Governor of Dunkirk, for the present of a curious 
 gold-studded snuff-box, he gives a laughable version 
 of their jests at each other's cost. "My lord trea- 
 surer, who is the most malicious person in the world, 
 says you advised a goose to be drawn at the bottom of 
 my box, as a reflexion on the clergy, and that I should 
 resent it. But I am not angry at all, and as his lord- 
 ship observes, by halves, for the goose there is drawn 
 pecking at a snail, just as I do at him, to make him 
 mend his pace in relation to the public, although it be 
 hitherto in vain; and Dr. Arbuthnot, who is a scholar, 
 says you meant it as a compliment for us both ; that 
 I am the goose, who saved the capitol by my cackling, 
 and that his lordship is represented by the snail, 
 because he preserved his country by delays." 
 
 The cudgelling of each other in sport went on 
 merrily, as we learn from numerous entries in the 
 diary, to the exclusion of grave topics: "Lord trea- 
 surer rallied me sufficiently upon my refusing to take 
 him into our club. I took an opportunity to speak to 
 him about the queen, but he cut me short with this 
 saying, Laissez faire a don Antoine, which is a French 
 proverb expressing, ' leave that to me ! ' Lord treasurer 
 calls me now Dr. Martin, because a martin is a sort 
 of a swallow, and so is a swift." From this nick- 
 name the celebrated Martinus Scriblerus was com- 
 pounded. 
 
 " When he and I came last Monday from Windsor, 
 we were reading all the signs on the road. He is a 
 pure triller ; tell the Bishop of Clogher so. I made
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 151 
 
 him make two lines in verse for the Bell and Dragon, 
 and they were rare bad ones." To these wretched 
 lines, far more than to the supposed resemblance of 
 his tortuous character, may probably be traced the 
 origin of his popular bye-name the Dragon. Meantime 
 the selfishness of Dean Swift began to take alarm that 
 so much conviviality and good fellowship should have 
 produced no golden fruit. A trace of pouting dis- 
 pleasure may be observed in his record of their fami- 
 liarities when at the full. "I dined with lord treasurer, 
 who chid me for being absent three days. Mighty 
 
 kind with a p : less of civility and more of interest. 
 
 Lord treasurer chides me, if I stay away two days 
 together, What will this come to? Nothing! My 
 grandmother used to say 
 
 " More of your lining 
 And less of your dining." 
 
 Lord treasurer calls Saturday, the day ministers dine 
 with him ' whipping day,' and we do indeed usually 
 rally him about his faults on that day." " I dined to- 
 day with lord treasurer ; this makes four days together, 
 and he has invited me again to-morrow ; but I abso- 
 lutely refused him." " After dining six days running 
 with lord treasurer, I stole away at night, whilst lord 
 treasurer was talking with some one else, and so am 
 at liberty to-morrow." " I just drank a dish of chocolate 
 with lord treasurer ; I fancy I shall have reason to be 
 angry with him very soon, but what care I ? I could 
 not keep myself awake after supper (the doctor was 
 in a gloomy mood and perhaps would not) ; I did all 
 I was able to disguise it, and thought I came off clear, 
 but, at parting, he told me, I had got my nap already. 
 It is now one o'clock, but he loves sitting up late."
 
 152 HISTORY OF THE ' 
 
 Of his other foibles, parsimony and dilatoriness, 
 the dean takes en passant, a keen, oblique view: "I 
 was playing at one-and-thirty with the lord treasurer 
 and his family the other night. He gave us all twelve 
 pence a piece to begin with ; it put me in mind of Sir 
 "William Temple." It should be noticed in defence of 
 Lord Oxford, that he had a decided horror of 
 gaming, and never passed by White's chocolate 
 house, the common rendezvous for sharpers and their 
 victims, without bestowing a curse upon that famous 
 academy, as the bane of half the English nobility. 
 The dean's scoffs at his procrastinatory foibles were 
 undeniable. " Lord treasurer engaged me to dine 
 with him again to-day, and I had ready what he 
 wanted, but he would not see it, but put me off till 
 to-morrow. I have great designs if I can compass 
 them, but delay is rooted at Eltee's heart." In pro- 
 moting his friend's advancement, the premier was 
 neither sordid nor tardy. He would have himself 
 promoted him to the espiscopal bench, but the queen 
 had been persuaded that he was barely a christian, 
 and too light in his discourse for a dignified divine. 
 In vain had Swift's secret vanity been gratified with 
 the hope of preaching at court, and recorded in secret 
 triumph his cherished anticipations. 
 
 <: Harley and St. John are resolved I must preach 
 before the queen : all the puppies will throng to hear 
 me, and be plaguily balked, for I shall preach plain, 
 honest stuff." Alas ! so far from preaching homely 
 sense in St. James's chapel, he was not permitted to 
 have an audience of the queen, and was never even 
 presented. It was only by a desperate effort, after all 
 other preferment had been given away, that Oxford 
 at length succeeded in coercing the grant of an
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 153 
 
 Irish deanery, competence, and banishment for his 
 friend. 
 
 "Lord treasurer told Mr. Lewis," writes the dis- 
 consolate suitor, " that the warrant for the deanery 
 should be determined to-night, and so he will say 
 one hundred nights." For once his patron deceived 
 him in his promptitude, the next day the diarist has to 
 record : " I dined with the lord treasurer and his 
 Saturday party, as usual, and was so ' be-dean'd.' " But 
 the Saturday merry meetings were numbered. Boling- 
 broke now drove on for the sole dictatorship with 
 headlong violence, and the new dean was summoned 
 from taking possession to reconcile those differences, 
 which had become irreconcileable. Finding entreaty, 
 remonstrance, warning, alike fruitless, he withdrew 
 to the country in moody displeasure,, and thence 
 addressed to the treasurer the following high-minded 
 letter. 
 
 "July 1, 1714. I always loved you so much the 
 worse for your station; for in your public character 
 you have often angered me to the heart, but as a 
 private man never once. So that if I only look 
 towards myself, I could wish you a private man to- 
 morrow j for I have nothing to ask, at least, nothing 
 that you will give, which is the same thing, and then 
 you would see whether I should not with much more 
 willingness attend you in a retirement, whenever you 
 please to give me leave, than ever I did at London, or 
 Westminster. 1 will add one thing more, which is 
 the highest compliment I can make, that I never was 
 afraid of offending you, nor am in any pain for the 
 manner I write to you. I have said enough; so now, 
 like one at your levee, having made my bow, I shrink 
 back into the crowd, and am, &c, J. S,"
 
 154 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 A few weeks later, having learned from sure intel- 
 ligence that the treasurer must forthwith yield up his 
 staff, Swift wrote to repeat his offer. The generous 
 proposal and its hearty acceptance confer equal honour 
 on both. '• July 25,1714. As I am wholly ignorant, 
 so I have none of your composure of mind. If you 
 resign in a few days, as I am told you design to do, 
 you may possibly retire to Herefordshire, where I 
 should readily attend you, if you so soon withdraw, or 
 after a few month's stay in Ireland. I will return 
 at the beginning of winter, if you please to com- 
 mand me." 
 
 Lord Oxford promptly accepted this arrangement. 
 " If I tell my dear friend the value I put on his un- 
 deserved friendship, it will look like suspecting you, 
 or myself. To-morrow morning, I shall be a private 
 person. When I have settled my domestic affairs 
 here, I go to Wimple, thence alone to Herefordshire. 
 If I have not tired you tite a tete, fling away so much 
 time upon one who loves you, and I believe, in 
 the mass of souls, ours are placed near each other." 
 Swift with his peculiar faculty of marking a strong 
 fact in a few simple words, has written on the back 
 of this letter. " Just before the loss of his staff." 
 
 There was one bright, tranquil spot, set apart to 
 friendship, even in that stormy day of resignation, 
 darkened as it was with gusts of jealousy and pee- 
 vishness, and passion. In his letter to Vanessa, 
 (Miss Van Homrigh,) explaining why he followed the 
 footsteps of the disgraced, instead of the triumphant 
 minister, the cynical dean proves that he had a heart, 
 though encrusted too largely with selfishness and 
 pride. " August 1, 1714. I am writ to earnestly by 
 somebody to come to town, and join with these people
 
 HOUSE OF COMiMONS. 155 
 
 now in power, but I will not do it. Say nothing of 
 this, but guess the person. I told Lord Oxford, I 
 would go with him when he was out, and now he begs 
 it of me, and I cannot refuse him. I meddle not with 
 his faults as he was a minister of state, but you know 
 his personal kindness to me was excessive. He dis- 
 tinguished and chose me above all other men, while 
 he was great; and his letter to me t'other day, was 
 the most moving imaginable. Perhaps Lord Boling- 
 broke may get the staff, but I cannot rely on his love 
 to me." 
 
 This confidential letter furnishes an important 
 testimony to the worth of the ex-minister. Lord 
 Bolingbroke has written his own story with the most 
 persuasive eloquence. Lord Oxford has not left a 
 line. Adopting the author's ex-parte version, it has 
 been long the fashion to regard him as all sincerity 
 and openness, the other a mere compound of artifice 
 and guile, and yet, we have it recorded by one who 
 had the closest means of observation, and was pre- 
 eminently an acute observer, that he placed more 
 reliance on Oxford, and, though courted even to 
 adulation by his rival, that he preferred him for his 
 friend. Long afterwards, when Lord Oxford had been 
 dead for years, and Bolingbroke, in an active corre- 
 spondence, continued to blacken his memory, the 
 dean, it is true, in his wish to pacify that malignant 
 nobleman, says (his letter bears date 1729), "It is you 
 were my hero ; but the other never was ; yet if he 
 were, it was your own fault, who taught me to love 
 him, and often vindicated him, in the beginning of 
 your ministry, from my accusation." He does not 
 venture to say " you were my friend," but merely 
 acknowledges him as the idol of his admiration.
 
 156 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Walter Scott, with his usual acuteness, explains in a 
 note the dean's apparent insincerity. " To those 
 who look narrowly into Swift's writings, it will, 
 perhaps, appear, that he preferred Lord Oxford as 
 a private friend, yet believed that much of the 
 ruin of Queen Anne's administration was owing, on 
 the one hand, to his indolence, and, on the other, 
 to his jealousy of Bolingbroke, whose active spirit 
 was more fitted to meet the events of that critical 
 period." 
 
 Lord Oxford survived his release from the Tower 
 six years ; and, though he did not shrink from his 
 public duties, or absent himself from the House of 
 Lords, passed the greater part of his time in com- 
 parative retirement at his country-seat, accumulating 
 those rare literary treasures which form his best title 
 to grateful remembrance with posterity. He was an 
 excellent scholar, conversant with the dead languages, 
 fond of repeating hard Greek verses, and (a rare 
 accomplishment at that day even for a minister) 
 familiar with French. It has been often asserted that 
 he was ignorant of this language, but, if we may 
 believe an unexceptionable witness, the report is 
 incorrect. Vernon, in his letter to the Duke of 
 Shrewsbury, May 26, 1704, informs him, "the 
 foreign ministers find Harley understands French 
 perfectly well, though it is not yet as easy for him to 
 speak it as it is Latin." 
 
 To such an excellent linguist and patron of lite- 
 rature, Swift's proposals for correcting the English 
 tongue were addressed with peculiar propriety : " I 
 lately writ a letter," he tells Archbishop King, " of 
 about thirty pages to lord treasurer, by way of pro- 
 posal for an academy, to correct, and enlarge, and
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 157 
 
 ascertain the English language, and he and I have 
 named about twenty persons of both parties to be 
 members. I will shortly print the letter, and hope 
 something will come of it." Had not Lord Oxford's 
 administration been vexed with discord, and abruptly 
 terminated, something would have come of it, in spite 
 of Lord Chesterfield's sly inuendo u . "The plan to 
 fix a standard for the English language was proposed 
 to Oxford, without success, precision and perspicuity 
 not being in general the favourite objects of ministers, 
 and, perhaps, still less so of that minister than any 
 other." 
 
 With the exception of a clever pamphlet, entitled, 
 " A vindication of the Commons in the last session 
 of Parliament," 1701, and some statistical papers, 
 Lord Oxford never challenged criticism as an author. 
 A strange report, which, were there the slightest 
 foundation for it, would have added an imperishable 
 chaplet to his fame, was picked up by the late Lord 
 Byron in his travels. " Do you know," he asks, in 
 one of his gossiping letters, "Clarke's Naufragia? 
 I am told that he asserts the first volume of Robinson 
 Crusoe was written by the first Earl of Oxford in the 
 Tower, and given by him to De Foe." What a splendid 
 additional chapter would this have afforded to that 
 barren work, Walpole's Royal and Noble Authors ; 
 but there is no voucher to warrant so improbable a 
 fiction. 
 
 Though disentitled to the merits of authorship, 
 Lord Oxford, by his zeal, taste, and munificence, 
 collected vast materials for future historians, and can 
 claim the proud distinction of having accumulated 
 the noblest library ever formed in England. He had 
 
 n Lord Chesterfield's Characters.
 
 158 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 such an accurate knowledge of his immense collection, 
 amounting at his death to more than 100,000 
 volumes, that he could, without a catalogue, refer 
 instantly to any one of his books or manuscripts 
 that a visitor might wish to consult. He commenced 
 forming the Harleian collection about the year 1705. 
 Thoresby w speaks, with a gratitude worthy the scholar, 
 of the literary treasures which his care and taste had then 
 accumulated, and of the cost at which our modern 
 Mecsenas imported them. " Went to the late secretary 
 Harley, a gentleman of great curiosity, who received 
 me very courteously: he has made a most noble 
 collection of manuscripts, which have cost him a 
 prodigious sum of money, and he allows his library- 
 keeper £100 per annum." 
 
 Excellent antiquarian as Thoresby was, he writes 
 his surprise to Dr. Richardson Ct at finding so prodi- 
 gious a number of original bulls, charters, and manu- 
 scripts, as were purchased at vast rates daily by Mr. 
 Harley." That the printed books should have been 
 dispersed on his son's death was a national loss. 
 Though many collectors of valuable libraries and 
 rare works have risen up since, e. g., the Duke of 
 Roxburgh, Earl Spencer, and other munificent littera- 
 teurs, perhaps none have laid out larger sums than 
 the late member for the University of Oxford, Mr. 
 Heber, who declared before he went abroad that his 
 library had then cost £92,000, and which cost is 
 supposed to have been at least doubled before his 
 decease x . The sums expended by Lord Oxford in 
 this liberal pursuit, if we make an allowance for the 
 difference in the value of money, were almost as 
 great. He died amidst his books at Wimple, May 2 1 , 
 
 " Thoresby 's Diary, x Dibdin's Life.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 159 
 
 1724, in his sixty-fourth year. The lover of lite- 
 rature, who revels in the treasures which his bounty 
 has amassed for the British Museum, may invert the 
 remark of Hume upon Sir Robert Walpole, and say, 
 " As a Briton I may not admire Harley, but as a 
 scholar I adore him."
 
 160 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The worthy Evelyn notes down in his diary for 
 1705, speaking of Queen Anne's second parliament, 
 which met in October of that year, " The parliament 
 have chosen one Mr. Smith speaker. There had 
 never been so great an assembly of members on the 
 first day of sitting, being more than 450. The votes 
 both of the old as well as the new fell to those called 
 Low Churchmen, contrary to all expectation." The 
 good old tory felt mortified, no doubt, at the defeat 
 of his friend Bromley, and wrote with a tinge of 
 prejudice, but the epithet " one Mr. Smith" does not 
 vie in absurdity with the " one Prior," the phrase of 
 Burnet, the " one Mr. Walpole" of Swift, or the 
 " Millon, Mr. John" of Johnson's index-maker. This 
 disparaging pronoun is often dangerous to the fair- 
 ness or prescience of the party hazarding it, but the 
 future celebrity of Mr. Smith was never so distin- 
 guished as to make its use in his instance absurdly 
 inapplicable. 
 
 Descended from an old family in Hampshire, he 
 was, from the commencement of his parliamentary 
 career, a stanch and steady whig, and had the 
 reputation with his party of being a man of clear 
 parts. So early as the Convention Parliament, we
 
 HISTORY OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 161 
 
 find him noted by opposite factions as the leading 
 whipper-in of his party. A truculent Jacobite pam- 
 phlet, " Querela Temporum," describes that party as 
 " either professed and open dissenters, or the more 
 dangerous church fanatics, who keep in our com- 
 munion no otherwise than as spies, who ridicule us, 
 and do us all the ill offices that are in their power. 
 Of such principles, most iniquitous to the church, 
 are the attorney and solicitor-generals, and almost all 
 the king's counsel, as Williams, and Hawles ; and with 
 Russel are joined in the commission of the admiralty 
 rigid fanatics. Such are Montajnie and Smith, two 
 of the lords commissioners for the treasury, inde- 
 fatigable sticklers for the whig party." He appears to 
 have struck in early for a share of the spoils, and to 
 have been threatened with refunding:. Vernon writes 
 
 O 
 
 December, 1699, " They talk (i. e., the tories) as if 
 they would renew their attacks upon particular per- 
 sons, upon the lord chancellor for the Windsor lands, 
 and Mr. Smith for begging the reversion of the Welsh 
 estates that were given to the king by Sir J. Williams' 
 will." 
 
 Mackey, in his curious portraits of the chief men 
 of his day, describing their personal appearance for 
 the information of the Princess Sophia of Hanover, 
 notices that "Smith had a good address, was of the 
 middle stature, and fair complexion — a gentleman of 
 good estate in Hampshire, of much honour, a lover of 
 the constitution of his country ; a very agreeable com- 
 panion in conversation, a bold orator in the house, 
 when the interest of his country is at stake." Swift 
 adds in the margin one of his short biting notes, 
 " I thought him a heavy man ;" but the shade which 
 his comment throws on the panegyric in the text 
 
 VOL. I. m
 
 162 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 appears to have been dictated by party pique. Having 
 filled with ability the offices of a commissioner of the 
 treasury and chancellor of the exchequer in the reign 
 of King William, he was chosen by the whigs as their 
 candidate for the chair, on the retirement of Harley. 
 Shortly before the day of election, Spencer Compton 
 wrote to Walpole a sad report of their perplexities a : 
 " Lord Hartington continues ill of the gout, and Mr. 
 Smith has a denuxion on his eyes, and if Mr. Wal- 
 pole should be absent, the poor whigs must lose any 
 advantage that may offer itself for want of a leader." 
 Mr. Smith recovered time enough, however, to attend 
 in his place,, and to carry his election over Mr. 
 Bromley, the court candidate, by a majority of 43 ; 
 the numbers being, for Mr. Smith 248, for Mr. 
 Bromley 205 b . No election, we are assured, had ever 
 been disputed with such heat as this was on both 
 sides ; so that it was just to form a judgment upon it 
 of the temper of the House. Nearly two hours were 
 occupied (a long discussion for those days of short 
 debate) in canvassing the merits of the rival can- 
 didates. 
 
 Antagonist pamphleteers hurried into the contro- 
 versy, and with their "sweet voices" more embroiled 
 the fray. The following portrait of the whig candidate is 
 drawn in Pistol's vein: " He may serve for one of his 
 Grace of Canterbury's watermen, for ' to look one 
 way and row another' is their business : an Englishman 
 with a Scotch heart, an Irish pair of heels, and a 
 Spanish countenance. He goes to church, because 
 the queen does. He is a state hermaphrodite — an 
 ambidexter. Jacob Tonson, with his two left legs, 
 makes not such an awkward figure as lie does. " 
 
 ■ Coxc's Life of Sir R. Walpole. b Burnet.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 1G3 
 
 The chair proved a less uneasy seat to Mr. Smith 
 than to any of his predecessors ; for the Duke of 
 Marlborough was triumphantly pursuing his unchecked 
 career of glory, and the victory of Ramilies stifled all 
 the murmurs of faction. Even the two houses of 
 convocation agreed, the only time in their annals, with 
 but two dissentient voices, in a congratulatory 
 address. All the supplies for the fleet and army, to 
 an amount more than usually large, were voted in less 
 than a week, and enabled the speaker to say, with 
 much neatness of expression, when presenting the 
 money bills to the queen c , " That, as the glorious vic- 
 tory obtained by the Duke of Marlborough at Rami- 
 lies was so surprising, that the battle was fought before 
 it could be thought the armies were in the field ; so 
 it was no less surprising, that the Commons had 
 granted supplies to her majesty, before her enemies 
 could well know that her parliament was sitting." 
 
 Mr. Smith had also the good fortune to assist as a 
 commissioner in forming and signing the treaty of 
 union with Scotland: his signature follows that of the 
 peers. He presided over the first parliament of Great 
 Britain, but voluntarily abdicated his power with its 
 dissolution, on the 1st of April, 1708, yielding up the 
 chair at his own request to Sir Richard Onslow. The 
 Duke of Somerset complained in the summer of the 
 court not having consulted with the whole body of 
 the whigs about so important a point as the choice of 
 a speaker, but only with Mr. Smith, whose opinion, 
 said the haughty peer, no man valued, and Mr. 
 Compton, who, he believed was one of Harley's 
 party. 
 
 Mr. Smith was returned for the pocket borough 
 
 c Parliamentary History, vol. vi. 
 
 M 2
 
 164 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 of Andover in the new parliament, and appointed 
 chancellor of the exchequer. In the following year, 
 he was chosen one of the managers of Sacheverell's 
 absurd impeachment. The overwhelming odium which 
 that protracted trial brought down on himself and 
 brother managers, afforded the queen an opportunity 
 she had longed for, to free herself from a detested 
 ministry, and Mr. Smith was doomed to witness the 
 scorn which embittered the dismissal of the lord 
 treasurer. A letter, we are told d , was sent Lord 
 Godolphin by the groom of the queen's stables — no 
 very dignified messenger assuredly — to desire he would 
 break his staff, the easiest method of ceasing to be 
 minister, both to her majesty and himself. The chan- 
 cellor of the exchequer happening to come in a little 
 after, the lord treasurer broke his staff, and flung the 
 pieces in the chimney, desiring Mr. Smith to be a 
 witness that he had obeyed her majesty's commands. 
 He afterwards commissioned his friend to take a letter 
 and message to the queen, which he duly delivered, 
 and at the same time surrendered his own office. It 
 was at once accepted, as Harley had been for some 
 time manoeuvring to succeed. 
 
 The whigs had intended to propose Mr. Smith 
 again for the chair, on the assembling of the new par- 
 liament; but, ascertaining the vast superiority in the 
 opposite ranks (nearly two hundred of their own party 
 had been unseated by the cry of " The church in dan- 
 ger"), withdrew their candidate. He subsided into 
 the less influential but more lucrative office of one 
 of the tellers of the exchequer, and, maintaining his 
 principles, acquainted the House with an important 
 fact in 1713, that "the debts of the civil list, then 
 
 d Swift to Avclibishop King.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 165 
 
 stated at £400,000, had not amounted to half that 
 sum two months before the estimates were made. 
 The deficiency had arisen from the payment of arrears 
 due to the queen-dowager, and from the excess of 
 secret service money." That a whig subaltern, who 
 could tell such dangerous secrets must have held a 
 slippery grasp of office, under a high-flying tory 
 government, was too obvious to escape Swift's sarcastic 
 notice, and is amusingly glanced at in Toland's Invi- 
 tation to Dismal 6 (Lord Nottingham) in 1712 — 
 
 " Wine can clear up Godolphin's cloudy face, 
 And fill Jack Smith with hopes to keep his place." 
 
 He contrived to retain his snug berth, however, 
 till the accession of George I. dispelled all danger of 
 removal; and, amid the crowd of candidates for place, 
 was content to exchange ambitious hopes for lucrative 
 security. Continuing stedfast to his principles and 
 early connections, he joined Walpole in 1717 in oppo- 
 sition to the Stanhope cabinet; in 1722, opposed the 
 bill for suspending the Habeas Corpus Act for one 
 year, and warmly withstood the proposal of closing for 
 the future the House of Lords against commoners. 
 Though his contemporaries generally speak of the 
 ex-speaker in a good-humoured, half-contemptuous 
 way, as if no one greatly regarded or disliked him, he 
 appears to have been, through a very long parlia- 
 mentary career, a thorough-paced and useful partizan, 
 indifferently honest, and would have left an unstained 
 name in political annals, but for his speeches in favour 
 of Sir John Fenwick's attainder, a cruel and unjust 
 proceeding, defended by no state necessity, and for 
 which few will believe that Mr. Smith did " heartily," 
 as he states, " and according to his conscience, vote." 
 
 e Swift's Poems.
 
 166 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 The Christian reader will reject with scorn his patent 
 sophism, that "there have been extraordinary things 
 done, even by God himself, for the preserving a com- 
 munity ;" for if presumptuous man might draw his 
 own fancied analogies from the counsels of the Inscru- 
 table in his peculiar Jewish theocracy, to what crime 
 and profaneness would not his daring precedents 
 lead! 
 
 He left an only daughter, the Honourable Mrs. 
 Smith, who is mentioned in the Suffolk Correspond- 
 ence as one of the ladies of the bed-chamber to Queen 
 Caroline. 
 
 The place held by the first commoner of England 
 at that period was attended with less fatigue, but, at 
 the same time, with less honour and deference, than 
 has been bestowed of later years on the fortunate pos- 
 sessor. Without any change of administration, or 
 visible alteration in the relative strength of parties in 
 the House, the late speaker, on the meeting of a new 
 Parliament, though sure of re-election, would prefer to 
 join the ranks of his brother members, and leave the 
 precarious dignity open to a fresh aspirant. Accord- 
 ingly, in November, 1708, Mr. Smith, at his own 
 suggestion, soliciting the safer patronage of the 
 chancellorship of the exchequer, gave way to his 
 friend and brother politician, Sir Richard Onslow, and 
 took his place by the side of another ex-speaker, Sir 
 Thomas Littleton, on the ministerial benches. Some 
 discontented whigs would have preferred Sir Peter 
 King, as a man of more stirring talent. 
 
 " The candidate they are for," writes Mainwaring, f 
 u has ten times the talent of the other," but they were 
 too wary to leave, by their dissensions, an opening for 
 ' To the Duchess of Marlborough.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 3 67 
 
 the tory, Sir Thomas Hanmer, to slip in. Nothing 
 occurred to mar the unanimity of Sir Richard's election, 
 but a piece of practical waggery on the part of Major- 
 General Mordaunt. Lord William iPowlet had in set 
 phrase proposed Sir Richard Onslow, as a worthy man 
 entirely zealous for the government, and very acceptable 
 to the whigs, and Sir William Strickland had with all 
 due gravity seconded the motion, when General Mor- 
 daunt suggested, by way of irony, that they should choose 
 Mr. Jodrell, the clerk of the House, who, having been 
 assistant to good speakers, to indifferent ones, and to 
 the worst, seemed to be as well qualified for that sta- 
 tion, as any body. But at last he supported the Lord 
 Powlet's motion, commended Sir Richard's experience 
 and integrity, and added " That, being possessed of a 
 good estate, he did not lie open to the temptations 
 that might bias persons who had their fortunes to 
 make, against the interest of their country." s The 
 tories, upon a surmise that the court or whig party 
 would have been divided between Sir Richard Onslow 
 and Sir Peter King, Recorder of London, had designed 
 to put up Sir Thomas Hanmer, but being disap- 
 pointed in that expectation, deemed it prudent to 
 concur with the rest. 
 
 Sir Richard Onslow prayed the lords commission- 
 ers to make a better choice, in the usual terms of 
 hypocritical self-abasement. h " My lords, the Com- 
 mons of Great Britain, assembled by virtue. of the 
 Queen's royal writ, and in obedience to her commands, 
 have elected their speaker. Being made the unworthy 
 subject of that choice, I am obliged to tender myself 
 for approbation. May my most humble intercession 
 to your lordships to disapprove this choice obtain 
 g Parliamentary History, vol. vi. h Journals, vol. xiv.
 
 168 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 pardon, proceeding not so much from form as a sense 
 of my own inabilities." Sir Richard, when his request 
 had been refused, as he knew it would be, harangued 
 the House on his election, informing them in terms of 
 false rhetoric, that he was by birth entitled to liberty 
 and property, and by education taught so to value the 
 constitution and government of England, as by the 
 several laws established, both in church and state, that 
 he would rather choose to expose himself to Egyptian 
 bondage than be a prostitute in this his native free 
 country; that he should esteem himself very happy, 
 could he prevail with them to enter upon the despatch 
 of public business more early in the morning, and with 
 that decency and good order as becomes so great a 
 senate. The honest, plain-spoken country gentleman 
 moves as awkwardly through these rhetorical evolu- 
 tions as the rough Sir Thomas Blount, described 1 to 
 have ambled before the Queen, tripping his way min- 
 cingly to be knighted, " in yellow roses and crimson 
 stockings," instead of advancing stoutly like a man and 
 a soldier. 
 
 Sir Richard Onslow was the descendant of an old 
 Shropshire family, which took its name from the 
 manor of OndeslowJ, and is now distinguished as the 
 only family in England that has had the honour of 
 returning three speakers to the House of Commons. 
 An ancestor was speaker and solicitor-general in the 
 eighth year of Queen Elizabeth . His grandfather, also 
 Sir Richard, took part in the civil wars with the Par- 
 liament, the principles of whiggery descending from 
 sire to son, but fell under the suspicion of sending 
 money privately to the king after his imprisonment. 
 He was charged in a pamphlet by one George Withers, 
 1 Kcnilworth. j Bray's History of Surrey.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 169 
 
 with promoting the cause of the disaffected, to which 
 he brought ample resources, his libeller alleging that 
 Sir Richard had entire supremacy in the county of 
 Surrey, disposing of elections, preferring deputy- 
 lieutenants, making and unmaking justices ' of the 
 peace, committee-men, colonels, and the whole staff 
 of inferior officers, marshals, collectors, and treasurers, 
 exactly as he pleased. This county dictator proved 
 his influence in a way the pamphleteer would least 
 approve, by complaining of the book to the House as 
 a breach of privilege. They appointed a committee 
 to examine the work, and, upon their report that the 
 matter of 'scandalum magnatum' was proved, resolved 
 that the rash author should pay Sir Richard £500 
 damages, and that his book should be burned, the 
 common hangman, as usual, being deputed to perform 
 that innocent ceremony. 
 
 Sir Richard was born in 1654, and had conse- 
 quently attained the mature age of fifty-four, when 
 appointed to the chair; gravity of deportment, and 
 experience in the forms of the House, appear to have 
 been considered such indispensable requisites in the 
 choice of an influential country gentleman, or leading 
 lawyer, for the speaker, that the majority of his pre- 
 decessors had, in like manner, passed their grand 
 climacteric. With the exception of the haughty 
 Seymour, who vaulted into the coveted seat of 
 honour when under thirty years of age, and Harley 
 who was thirty-eight at the time of his election, all 
 had acquired the gravity, if not wisdom, of age, and 
 had painfully worked their way through committees 
 and public business up to the chair. The worthy 
 baronet, chosen in 1708 to preside over the debates for 
 two years, forms no exception to this excellent arrange-
 
 170 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 merit. He had been in the confidence of King William, 
 and had received in 1693 the sum of £1000 for his 
 majesty's immediate service. He was chairman of the 
 committee which reported several valuable resolutions 
 limiting the vexatious and unreasonable privileges of 
 members. He also sat as chairman of the committee 
 appointed in 1707 to investigate the frequent miscar- 
 riages at sea, which then alarmed the nation, partly 
 through treachery, and partly through want of conduct. 
 Several merchants were heard at the bar, and, on 
 charging the managers of the navy with fraud and 
 ignorance, were called to order by several members, 
 who thought that their remarks pressed too hardly on 
 Admiral Churchill, a member, but were desired by the 
 chairman to proceed. 
 
 A commissioner of the navy himself, he reminded 
 the House, 1 ' that " gentlemen should be tender of the 
 honour of gentlemen," but would not connive at corrupt 
 abuse, and induced the committee to pass some 
 excellent resolutions against certain officers of the 
 navy, who had exacted exorbitant sums of money 
 from the merchants for convoys. An active member 
 of the last parliament of Charles II. , and representing 
 his native county Surrey in all the parliaments of 
 William and Anne, with one exception, he com- 
 manded great respect in the house, and had the con- 
 duct of several important measures entrusted to his 
 care, amongst others the preparing a bill for the 
 resumption of all grants by the crown since 1684 — 
 too sweeping a scheme to be carried — and the bringing 
 in a bill, which was more successful, and has been 
 attended with salutary consequences even to the 
 present day, that no member shall be chosen for a 
 
 k Parliamentary History, vol. v.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 171 
 
 county or city in England or Wales, but those who 
 have a sufficient real estate. 
 
 Upon Sir Richard Onslow's fitness for the office 
 of speaker we have conflicting testimony, but, relying 
 on the Parliamentary annals, entertain no doubt that 
 the favourable representation of Burnet is most con- 
 sistent with the truth. " He was chosen speaker 
 without the least opposition ; he was a worthy man 
 entirely zealous for the government; he was very 
 acceptable to the whigs, and the tories felt that they 
 had so little strength in this parliament, that they 
 resolved to be silent, and to wait for such advantages 
 as the circumstances of affairs might give them." 
 
 The note of Lord Dartmouth, a zealous torv, to 
 this friendly sketch of the whig bishop, is an amusing 
 instance of the defeature made by party, how the par- 
 tizan can " spell backwards*' one of opposite politics. 
 " He was a very trifling, vain man, of a ridiculous 
 figure, full of party zeal, by which he expected to go 
 shares in the company's merits, though he brought 
 little to the common stock, besides being descended 
 from one of Oliver's lords, which introduced him at 
 last into the House of Lords, notwithstanding the 
 contemptible denomination of ' stiff Dick,' usually 
 given him by the whole set, except Bishop Burnet 
 and a few zealous non-conformists, who looked upon 
 him as a man greatly gifted." The political con- 
 duct of an active party-leader must have been free 
 from much stain, when a fault of demeanour is thus 
 invidiously instanced as the characteristic deformity. 
 
 " Stiff Dick" appears to have been of a choleric 
 temperament, being twice restrained x by order of the 
 House from prosecuting affairs of honour with Sir E, 
 1 Journals x. and xiii.
 
 172 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Seymour and Mr. Oglethorpe. Nor did lie, when 
 dropping into his well-cushioned seat, find it a bed of 
 roses. We read in one of Lord Shaftesbury's letters," 1 
 November 1708: "The late speaker beset the new 
 one; and he will have, I fear, a hard task, if this be 
 not an easy session as our great news and glorious 
 success abroad is like to make it," Of his attention to 
 minute forms, which sat not ungracefully on the 
 speaker, his distinguished nephew, who inherited the 
 same particularity, has given the following narrative. n 
 '*' When the speaker, Sir Richard Onslow, went up 
 with the House to demand judgment against Dr. 
 Sacheverell, as the mace was going into the House of 
 Lords before the speaker, the black rod endeavoured 
 to hinder it, by putting his black rod across the door; 
 on which the speaker said, * If he did not immediately 
 take away the black rod, he would return to the House 
 of Commons.' The black rod desired him to stay a 
 little, and he would acquaint the lords. The door was 
 shut, and Mr. Speaker and the house staid without. 
 After a little time the door was opened, and Mr. 
 Speaker with the mace went in. As Mr. Speaker 
 was going to the bar, the black rod attempted to 
 interpose himself between the speaker and the 
 mace; upon which the speaker said aloud; 'My 
 lords, if you do not immediately order your black rod 
 to go away, I will immediately return to the House of 
 Commons.' Then Lord Chancellor Cowper directed 
 the black rod to go from thence. Then Mr. Speaker 
 with the mace went up to the bar. The black rod was 
 then ordered to bring the prisoner, and the black rod 
 was going to put him on the right hand of Mr. Speaker, 
 
 m Cooper, (second Lord Shaftesbury's) Letters. 
 " Note by Arthur Onslow in Hatsell.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 173 
 
 who upon that said, ' If you don't order the black rod 
 to go with the prisoner on the left hand of me, at 
 some distance, I will return to the House of Com- 
 mons.' Upon which the Lord Chancellor directed the 
 black rod so to do, and then Mr. Speaker demanded 
 the judgment, and the Lord Chancellor accordingly 
 pronounced sentence upon the prisoner, kneeling at 
 the bar." 
 
 In the meagre and tantalizing reports of the pro- 
 ceedings of the House, which the narrow jealousy then 
 entertained of reporters has permitted to be handed 
 down to us, nothing is recorded of Sir Richard Onslow's 
 conduct as speaker, more memorable, than his giving, 
 with grave and dignified propriety, the thanks of the 
 House to Major-General Webb, for his eminent ser- 
 vices at Wynnendale, and being the bearer of a pre- 
 mature address to the queen, that she would have 
 such indulgence to the hearty desires of her subjects, 
 as to entertain thoughts of a second marriage. The 
 address was presented by the lord chancellor and 
 speaker to the queen, on behalf of both houses, exactly 
 three months after the death of Prince George of Den- 
 mark — rather too short an interval for grief, according 
 to the more decent observance of modern times, — and 
 is couched in terms not dissimilar to those en- 
 treaties to marry, with which her too zealous par- 
 liament-men were wont to importune Queen Eliza- 
 beth. 
 
 "Being truly and deeply sensible of the many 
 and great blessings we have enjoyed, during the whole 
 course of your majesty's most glorious reign, w T e do 
 most humbly conceive we should be inexcusably 
 wanting to ourselves and the whole kingdom, if we 
 should neglect to use our most zealous endeavours
 
 174 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 that those blessings may be derived down to future 
 ages; and, therefore, with hearts full of the most pro- 
 found respect and duty to your royal person, we most 
 humbly beseech your majesty graciously to consider 
 the universal desires and most humble supplications 
 of your faithful subjects, that your majesty would not 
 so far indulge your just grief as to decline the 
 thoughts of a second marriage. This would be an 
 unspeakable joy to your people, who would join their 
 most fervent prayers to Almighty God to bless your 
 majesty with royal issue; all of them concurring in this 
 opinion, that no greater happiness can be desired for 
 your kingdoms than that they and their children may 
 long continue under the gentle and gracious govern- 
 ment of your majesty and your posterity." 
 
 The queen, who was then in her forty-fifth year, 
 and according to her discarded favourite, the Duchess 
 of Marlborough, consulted her heart less than her 
 stomach, made an evasive reply. " The frequent 
 marks of duty and affection to my person and 
 government, which I receive from both Houses of 
 parliament, must needs be very acceptable to me. 
 The provision I have made for the protestant succes- 
 sion will always be a proof how much I have at my 
 heart the future happiness of the kingdom. The 
 subject of this address is of such a nature, that I am 
 persuaded you do not expect a particular answer." 
 
 With more propriety and good feeling than her 
 subjects exhibited, at least, in the equivocal compli- 
 ment of their representatives, she declined all thoughts 
 of a second marriage ; and, that the memory of her 
 deceased consort might not be too readily forgotten, 
 protracted the royal mourning to what was considered 
 
 ° Conduct of the Duchess of Marlborough.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 175 
 
 by her nation of shopkeepers a most inconvenient 
 length, and against a repetition of which a special 
 act of parliament provided. The absurd impeach- 
 ment of Dr. Sacheverell brought the parliament, over 
 which Sir Richard Onslow presided, to an untimely 
 end. At the general election in November 1710, 
 270 changes took place among the representatives 
 of the different constituencies, and the whig party 
 dared not expose their weakness by proposing his 
 re-election. For the first and only time in his par- 
 liamentary life, he was deprived of his quasi-here- 
 ditary seat for his native county. 
 
 Swift seized the opportunity of their complete rout 
 to desert from the ranks of whiggism. In his journal 
 to Stella, October 13, 1709, he writes, "I have done 
 with the whigs, and they have, I hope, done with this 
 kingdom for our time. They were sure of the four 
 members for London, and they have lost three in the 
 four. (They lost all four.) Sir Richard Onslow, we 
 hear, has lost for Surrey, and they are overthrown in 
 most places." Thus signally defeated, the ex-speaker 
 joined his cashiered predecessors, Littleton and Smith, 
 in the front rows of opposition, and exposed the 
 measures of the new ministry with keenness and 
 asperity. When secretary St. John in 1712 com- 
 plained that the insinuations of Hampden upon the 
 dilatory negotiations for peace highly reflected on 
 her majesty and her ministers, and that some mem- 
 bers had been sent to the Tower for less offences, 
 Sir Richard Onslow made a spirited reply ,p "That to 
 suppose her majesty or her ministers to have any 
 influence on the deliberations of that House was in- 
 jurious to her, and a violation of their privileges." 
 
 p Parliamentary History, vol. vi.
 
 176 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 During the violent intrigues, which immediately 
 preceded and accelerated the queen's death, Sir 
 Richard Onslow was sent over by the whig associa- 
 tion to the Duke of Marlborough in Flanders, to 
 hasten his return, which was so well-timed as to coin- 
 cide with the day of her death, Sunday, August 1. 
 Sunday though it was, the House immediately met, 
 pursuant to the act which regulated the succession, 
 for the exigency of the crisis brooked not an hour's 
 delay. The speaker, Sir Thomas Hanmer, being ab- 
 sent, secretary Bromley moved that the House should 
 adjourn to the Wednesday following, but Sir Richard 
 Onslow resisted the motion, as time was too precious 
 to be lost at so critical a juncture, and carried an 
 amendment, (ministers' standing majority of two hun- 
 dred had in twenty-four hours melted away) that the 
 House should adjourn to the next morning. When 
 the secretary moved the address of condolence, and 
 expatiated on the great loss the nation had sustained, 
 Sir Richard remarked " that the force of the address 
 ought to consist, not in condolence only, but in con- 
 gratulation, and in assuring the king of their firm 
 resolution to support his undoubted title to the crown." 
 The address was modified according to his wish. 
 
 The zeal of the faithful whig soon met with its 
 appropriate reward. Immediately after the landing of 
 George I. at Greenwich, he was appointed one of 
 the lords of the treasury and chancellor of the ex- 
 chequer. A leading member of the House, he was 
 named as chief deputy by the Duke of Devonshire, 
 high-steward, to administer the oaths on the as- 
 sembling of parliament, 1 ! and, on the naming a com- 
 mittee of secrecy, which consisted of twenty-one, was 
 
 ' Journals, vol. xv.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 1/7 
 
 honoured with the greatest number of votes, 258, 
 one higher than the next favourite, Sir Robert Wal- 
 pole. But age and infirmity overtook the chancellor 
 of the exchequer in the midst of his dignities. Re- 
 signing office in 1715, he was made one of the 
 tellers of the exchequer during life, in the following 
 year called up to the House of Lords by the title 
 of Baron Onslow of Onslow, in the county of Salop, 
 and died in December 1717. He was succeeded 
 in his title and estates by his son Thomas Lord 
 Onslow, who rather improved upon, than degene- 
 rated from, the hereditary talents of the family, and 
 displayed considerable power of repartee in debate. 
 A nobleman having asserted in 1 72 1 in a warm dis- 
 cussion upon the disastrous South Sea project, that 
 he verily believed the present calamity was a judg- 
 ment of God upon the nation for the blasphemy and 
 profaneness it had been guilty of, Lord Onslow re- 
 torted that the noble lord must, on his own doctrine, 
 have been a very great sinner, for he had lost so 
 considerably by the South Sea ! ' The first Lord On- 
 slow was uncle to the celebrated Arthur Onslow, 
 " clarum ac venerabile nomen" ' the greatest among the 
 great who have presided over this national assembly 
 of gentlemen. 
 
 The tory parliament of 1710 found an admirable 
 president in Mr. W. Bromley, member for the Univer- 
 sity of Oxford, who carried his appointment by ac- 
 clamation. This excellent specimen of the English 
 country gentleman, both in his prejudices and virtues, 
 was the eldest son of Sir William Bromley, of Bag- 
 gington in Warwickshire, knight of the Bath, and 
 heir of a large landed estate. Educated in the or- 
 thodox bowers of Oxford, Mr. Bromley is thus drily 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 chronicled in the annals of honest Anthony Wood. r 
 "Matriculated 1679, retatis 15 — went home and mar- 
 ried — buried his wife — travell'd — was at Rome in 1 688, 
 and heard there of the Prince of Orange's invasion, 
 before it was heard in England. Chosen knight for 
 Warwickshire for the parliament of March 1689." He 
 made a tour of the continent immediately on taking 
 his degree, and published an account of his travels, a 
 proceeding at that period of some risk and rarity. 
 The title-page shews that he considered printing an 
 act of condescension. " Remarks on the Grande Tour 
 of France and Italy lately performed by a person of 
 quality, 1692." 
 
 The following short extracts evince the liberality 
 and sound sense of the young tourist, who, good tory 
 as he was, appears to have been an advocate for the 
 ballot, and a candid historian of all he saw. His 
 book commences with almost ludicrous simplicity. 
 " Going from London in the Dover coach, I baited at 
 Dartford, a little market town in the county of Kent, 
 and lodged at Rochester, an episcopal seat in the 
 same county." We may pass over the home tour to 
 admire with the author what he saw and heard on 
 the continent. '• At the Medical College at Mont- 
 pelier, when they are made doctors, they swear 
 themselves not to be illegitimate, nor ever to have 
 exercised any mechanical trade, as if one illegitimate 
 or mechanic would be a disgrace to that honourable 
 profession." " In the Doge's palace at Genoa, I ob- 
 served their ballotting boxes, an excellent method for 
 freedom in voting, being impossible the suffrage of 
 any particular person should be known. Every body 
 has a ball like a white thread button given him, and 
 r Athense Oxonienses.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 179 
 
 putting his hand with it into the common mouth of 
 the box, can, without any discovery, cast his ball on 
 either side the partition that is made in the box : the 
 one half is coloured with or and the other argent ; 
 this negative, and that affirmative." 
 
 " S A little west of St. John Lateran church is the 
 Scala Sancta, the stairs our Saviour went up into the 
 judgment hall; they are of white marble; on one of 
 them, it is generally believed, some of our Saviour's 
 blood dropped after his scourging; it is covered with a 
 brass grate, through which a hole is wore in the step 
 by devout rubbing of beads, &c, but no stain that I 
 could perceive, though the Roman Catholics saw it 
 plainly ! Discoursing of these stairs, how they had 
 been preserved and brought hither, Cardinal Howard 
 ingenuously confessed to me that they were not the 
 true stairs our Lord went up into the judgment hall. 
 He said the error was not discovered for some time 
 after they were fixed here, and the people possessed 
 with an opinion they were the true stairs ; and then 
 it was not thought advisable to undeceive them, their 
 devotion being, however, very commendable. All go 
 up them on their knees, and the devout say an ' Ave 
 Maria,' and kiss each step; they descend by others 
 on each side." 
 
 These shrewd remarks of an intelligent observer 
 would not betray much superstition to a candid 
 reader ; but the following unlucky passages were 
 deemed at the time proof " strong as holy writ" 
 that the author must have been a papist and Jacobite 
 at heart : "In the evening I was admitted to the 
 honour of kissing the pope's slipper, who, though he 
 knew me to be protestant, gave me his blessing and 
 
 ' Bromley's Grand Tour. 
 
 N 2
 
 180 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 said nothing about religion!" "In the church of 
 Loretto, near the Madonna, are two angels ; that on 
 the right hand is all of pure gold on a pedestal of silver, 
 with a heart also of gold in its hand, close set with 
 pearls and diamonds; the great diamond in the middle 
 weighs forty-two grains. On the top of the heart 
 is a lamp of gold always to burn ; for the queen of 
 England, who gave this angel, also gave two hundred 
 crowns for her lamp to burn for ever, which is the 
 usual sum to found one. Betwixt the angel's legs 
 are the arms of England, and over them a crown of 
 gold beset with rubies. The angel in gold cost fifty 
 thousand crowns. The virgin sent the queen, in 
 return, one of her vests of silk handsomely embroi- 
 dered, not very rich nor valuable in itself, but coming 
 from thence, and having her benediction, made it 
 very acceptable. . . St. John Lateran is a great 
 structure, and so ancient that it is called the mother 
 of all the churches in the world. I saw in the cloys- 
 ters a large marble stone supported by four pillars, 
 said to be the measure of the just height of our 
 Saviour, and no man was ever exactly the same. I 
 wanted about my hand's breadth." 
 
 " In the gallery at Florence, among the pictures, 
 but not by the first hands, are our King Charles II. 
 and his queen; King James and his queen; and the 
 Prince and Princess of Orange." 
 
 The obloquy to which this little work exposed 
 him with men of opposite politics, might have recalled 
 to his mind the malicious wish of Job, " Oh that 
 mine adversary had written a book !" Pie withdrew 
 the copies that remained from the booksellers' hands 
 soon after publication ; but a second edition was 
 published without the author's permission, upon an
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 181 
 
 occasion when it was most likely to prove a source of 
 annoyance and injury, when he was first proposed for 
 speaker in 1705. There was added a table of con- 
 tents, turning Mr. Bromley's observations into ridi- 
 cule ; a device not without humour, attributed 
 erroneously at the time to Mr. Walpole. 
 
 " A table of the principal matters contained in 
 this book : — 
 
 " Bologne, the first city on the French shore, lies 
 on the coast. 
 
 " Crosses and crucifixes on the road in France, 
 prove it not England. 
 
 " Eight pictures take up less room than sixteen of 
 the same size. 
 
 11 How asses are received and entertained at the 
 villas near Marseilles. 
 
 " February an ill season to see a garden in. 
 
 " Forty coaches waiting at a church door. 
 
 " The author cannot perceive the stains of five 
 drops of blood that fell from a picture of the virgin 
 Mary, which was wounded in the eye by an unlucky 
 boy. 
 
 " The author kissed the pope's slipper, and had 
 his blessing though known to be a protestant ; but 
 not a word of religion. 
 
 " Dr. — made a house in Denmark remove out 
 of its place, before the king, without any visible help, 
 and made a statue to walk, and move both legs and 
 body, which last, he privately told the author, was 
 done chiefly by mercury. 
 
 " A white parrot with a green cap, kept at Rome 
 150 years, but wants confirmation. 
 
 " Jews at Leghorn not obliged to wear red hats." 
 &c, &c.
 
 182 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 The late Dr. Parr had collected in his valuable 
 library Bromley's own copy, enriched with the follow- 
 ing curious autograph on the flyleaf. 4 " This edition 
 of these travels is a specimen of the good-nature 
 and good manners of the whigs, and, I have reason to 
 believe, of one in the ministry, very conversant in this 
 sort of calumny, for the sake of publishing the table 
 of the principal matters, &c, to expose one, whom 
 the gentlemen of the Church of England designed to 
 be Speaker of the House of Commons in the Parlia- 
 ment that met October 25, 1705. When, notwith- 
 standing the whigs and court joining to keep me out 
 of the chair, and the great violence towards the 
 members, turning out some and threatening others, 
 to influence their votes, I had the honour (and I 
 shall ever esteem it a greater honour than my compe- 
 titor's success) to have the suffrages of 205 disin- 
 terested gentlemen for me, such a number as never 
 lost such a question before, and such as with the 
 addition of those that by force, and contrary to their 
 inclinations, with the greatest reluctancy voted against 
 me, must have prevailed for me. 
 
 "This printing my book was a very malicious 
 proceeding ; my words and meaning being plainly 
 perverted in several places, which, if they had been 
 improper, and any observations trifling or imper- 
 tinent, an allowance was due for my being very 
 young when they were made. But the performances 
 of others, not entitled to such allowances, may be in 
 like manner exposed, as appears by the like tables 
 published for the travels of Bishop Burnet and Mr* 
 Addison." 
 
 It is no slight praise to say that his work will not 
 
 ' Bibliothcca Farriana.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 183 
 
 bear a disadvantageous comparison with the tour of 
 Mr. Addison to which it refers, from the title-page to 
 which the following-matter for small mirth was extracted. 
 
 " A table of all the accurate and new discoveries 
 of the most learned and ingenious Mr. Addison's 
 book of travels: — 
 
 "Bridges at Venice are without any fence, which 
 would be a great inconvenience to a city less sober. 
 P. 87. 
 
 " There are, indeed, many extraordinary ruins at 
 Naples and Rome, but the author believes a traveller 
 would not be so much astonished at them, did he find 
 any works of the same kind in his own country. 
 
 " The holiday clothes of the people at Rome go 
 from father to son, and are seldom worn out till the 
 second or third generation, so that it is a common 
 thing to see a countryman in the doublet and breeches 
 of his great-grandfather." 
 
 But, however superior Mr. Bromley's book of 
 travels might be to captious criticism, his mention of 
 the Prince of Orange, at a time when the higher title 
 was so much discussed, discloses the reluctance of a 
 jacobite to acknowledge William as " his lawful and 
 rightful " king. Returned for Warwickshire in the 
 second parliament of King William, he declined volun- 
 tarily, together with ninety-one other members, to sign 
 the association, in which these words were insisted on. 
 The squire, according to his pet name in Swift, embo- 
 dying the humours and feelings of the old English 
 gentry, looked with cold distrust upon the liberal 
 king and his liberal advisers. When he refused to 
 pass the place bill, Bromley spoke with force and 
 freedom. "The preamble of the bill declared former 
 corruptions and suspicion of the like now; the bill
 
 184 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 offers a remedy, but we are denied it, which speaks 
 this language ; ' that the king will have us still cor- 
 rupt.' We have done well for religion, but all in vain 
 if we enjoy not our liberties ! " 
 
 Mr. Bromley's attack on the memory of the king 
 was still more unjust. " The Duke of Marlborough," 
 he said, "has signally retrieved the ancient honour 
 and glory of the English nation." Retrieved forsooth ! 
 well might the poet u resent this solemn taunt on a 
 departed hero, and ironically predict the coming of the 
 golden age — 
 
 " Now all our fictions, all our fears shall cease, 
 And tories rule the promised land in peace ; 
 Commanders shall be praised at William's cost, 
 And honour be retrieved before 'tis lost ! '' 
 
 But a sudden change was about to come o'er the spi- 
 rit of the tories to the duke. That great man and 
 great intriguer, persuaded by the duchess and his 
 own wavering ambition, deserted to the whig camp, 
 and neither Blenheim nor Ramilies had sufficient 
 virtue, with ardent politicians, to expiate the sin of 
 his desertion. The resentment of a powerful party, 
 with Bromley at their head, pursued him even to 
 those tented fields, nor ceased till they had mildewed 
 all his triumphs, and branded the hero of a hundred 
 victories, the earl, duke, prince, with a charge of 
 peculation. Amongst other virulent observations 
 against the termagant duchess, Mr. Bromley com- 
 pared her to Alice Peers, in King Edward's time ; and 
 when the thanks of the House were presented to 
 M ajor-General Webb for his services, he embraced the 
 opportunity of invidiously remarking " that he did 
 not disapprove the custom, which of late years had 
 
 " Walsh.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 185 
 
 been introduced, of returning thanks to such generals 
 as had performed eminent services, especially when 
 they received those compliments as modestly as the 
 worthy member to whom they were now given had 
 done. But it was with grief he observed that a cer- 
 tain commander, on whom not only the thanks of the 
 House but also great rewards had been bestowed, 
 appeared yet to be unsatisfied ! " 
 
 Marlborough had attributed the merit of this 
 achievement at Wynnendale to General Cadogan, and 
 was loudly censured for thus attempting to depre- 
 ciate the worth of a deserving officer. How deeply 
 the duke chafed at these attacks, appears from his 
 own correspondence and that of his satellites. Main- 
 waring had predicted in a letter to the duchess (1708) 
 that he would escape such annoyances. v " No envy 
 of faction can reach a man that has gained three such 
 battles, and, if he brings home a peace next winter, it 
 will be as impossible for his enemies to hurt him, as 
 for the wind to blow down Mr. Bromley's thick walls." 
 But when his augury proved untrue, the comments of 
 detractors appear to have been noticed by the duke 
 with more petulance than might have been expected 
 from a commander proverbially famed for good tem- 
 per; but, like the supposed patience of Sir Isaac New- 
 ton on the burning of his manuscripts, the charm of 
 equanimity under great provocation is broken, when 
 examined and shewn to rest merely in delusive 
 tradition. 
 
 In December, 1708, the Duke writes home, " Mr. 
 Bromley's and other gentlemen's good-nature, joined 
 with the trouble I have here, makes me quite weary of 
 serving." In May, 1709, he writes in the prospect of 
 
 T Coxe's Marlborough.
 
 186 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 immediate peace : " I think this matter is brought to 
 so happy a conclusion, that even Mr. Bromley will 
 hardly be able to rind fault with this peace." To 
 Godolphin he confided his griefs still more openly. 
 " I don't wonder at Mr. Bromley's factious and ill-na- 
 tured proceeding, since his anger proceeds from know- 
 ing that I will always serve my country to the best of 
 my understanding, and that I shall never desire his 
 friendship ; but what mortifies me is, that gentlemen 
 who do approve of my services could be silent." 
 Lord Godolphin had w r ritten previously, " I wish as 
 you do, that the whole House of Commons took 
 their turns at the citadel of Tournay. I am apt to 
 believe they would be much tamer creatures when they 
 came back again." 
 
 But the enemies whom his tergiversation had pro- 
 voked were not tamed till, instead of annual addresses 
 of thanks, they had disgraced the duke w T ith crimina- 
 tory resolutions, wounding his feelings most sensibly, 
 for they touched his pocket as well as his pride, and 
 compelled him to become a voluntary exile. Next to 
 the duke and the conduct of the war, the game which 
 the high church party hunted with most ardour, 
 appears to have been dissenters and schism. The 
 confessed predilections of William for a comprehensive 
 communion alarmed the fears of the friends of the 
 establishment, and the whole of his reign was marked 
 by struggles to maintain her rights — of Queen Anne's 
 to strengthen her supremacy. The occasional con- 
 formity of dissenters was the most fertile source of 
 conflict during the earlier part of her reign. The 
 House of Commons, in which the high church party 
 predominated, made repeated attempts to carry through 
 an act for preventing all persons who had taken the
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 187 
 
 sacrament, as a test for office of trust, and who again 
 frequented any dissenting place of worship, from con- 
 tinuing to hold their employments. Such a hill was 
 sent up to the Lords in 1702, and rejected by them 
 with indignation. 
 
 A renewed bill was introduced into the Commons 
 in 1703, by Mr. Bromley, seconded by St. John, and 
 carried after a long and warm debate, the House not 
 rising till five. It was lost in the Lords again. The 
 queen wrote to the Duchess of Marlborough in De- 
 cember — it forms a portion of the correspondence 
 under the affected title of her unhappy Morley to Mrs. 
 Freeman. — " To ease your mind, I must tell you 
 Mr. Bromley will be disappointed, for the Prince (of 
 Denmark) does not intend to go to the House when 
 the bill against occasional conformity is brought in." 
 The queen adds this ominous remark to her favourite : 
 " I can't forbear saying that I see nothing like perse- 
 cution in this bill." 
 
 Nothing daunted by defeat, the church party made 
 a third attempt, in 1 704, to carry their favourite mea- 
 sure. Aware that there was no chance of the bill 
 passing by itself through the Lords, they resolved, 
 after long consultation, not without much scruple and 
 reluctance, to attempt the tacking of it to the land-tax 
 bill. Mr. Bromley was chosen to lead the storming 
 party in their unconstitutional adventure. He urged, 
 " that the practice of occasional conformity was such 
 a scandalous hypocrisy, as was no way to be excused 
 upon any pretence whatsoever. That it was con- 
 demned even by the better sort of dissenters them- 
 selves. That the employing persons of a different 
 religion from that established by law had never been 
 practised by any wise government, and was not allowed
 
 188 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 even in Holland. That the sacramental test was 
 appointed by the wisdom of the legislature, to preserve 
 the established church, which church seemed in as 
 much danger from the dissenters at this time, as it 
 was from papists when the act was passed. That this 
 law being so necessary, and having been twice refused 
 in the House of Lords, the only way to have it pass 
 was to tack it to a money bill. That it had been an 
 ancient practice to tack bills that were for the good of 
 the subject to money bills, it being reasonable that, 
 while grievous taxes were laid upon the subject for 
 the support of the crown, the crown should in return 
 pass such laws as were for the benefit of the people." 
 It was well contended, against such fallacious doctrine, 
 that the Lords had passed a solemn resolution never 
 to admit of a tack to a money bill; that such tacking 
 would deprive that House of their negative voice, as 
 they could not reject one part of a money bill and 
 accept the rest, and that the certain loss of the sup- 
 plies would endanger the continuance of the war. 
 Several high churchmen yielded to the force of 
 these objections, and the tack was rejected by a major- 
 ity of 251 voices against 134. Deprived of this facti- 
 tious aid, the bill against occasional conformity was 
 sent up to the Upper House, debated there in the pre- 
 sence of the queen, and thrown out by a majority of 
 thirty-one, the greater number of the bishops voting 
 against it, as the episcopal bench was then chiefly 
 filled with low church divines. 
 
 Walter Scott w , in his edition of the Somers' Tracts, 
 justly rebukes this factious endeavour of Mr. Bromley 
 and his friends, observing, " If the House of Com- 
 mons, to their legitimate and constitutional right of 
 w Somers* Tracts, vol. ix.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 189 
 
 exclusively proposing supplies, were entitled to qua- 
 lify their grants, by tacking any favourite measure of a 
 different description to their money bills, the whole 
 power of the state would be thereby engrossed into 
 their own hands, and this country would become a 
 virtual republic." The voice of the nation was loudly 
 raised against the scheme ; and the minority in favour 
 of the tack became so odious, that nearly fifty were 
 unseated at the next election, Bromley's martyrs. 
 As a curious test of the politics of the respective 
 counties, it may be observed that the members for 
 Oxfordshire, Cheshire, and Warwickshire, with the 
 boroughs, were tackers ; those for Gloucestershire, 
 Huntingdonshire, and Bedfordshire, anti-tackers to a 
 man. But, however unpopular with the country, 
 Bromley lost no favour among his Oxford constitu- 
 ents, and received their hearty thanks. Unanimously 
 elected their burgess in 1701, he continued to 
 represent their wishes and feelings for twenty-six 
 years, till his voluntary resignation in 1727, when 
 he retired from public life, and Lord Cornbury was 
 elected his successor. In 1711 he headed a deputa- 
 tion from the university, to present the thanks of 
 convocation to Lord Nottingham " for his most noble 
 defence of the Church of England, contained in his 
 answer to Mr. Whiston's letter concerning the eternity 
 of the Son of God and of the Holy Ghost," and also 
 to the Bishop of Chester, for having asserted the 
 rights, privileges, and dignities belonging to university 
 degrees, in his book entitled "The Bishop of Chester's 
 case relating to the wardenship of Manchester Col- 
 lege." Both the spiritual and lay peer had been 
 strenuous advocates for the tack. 
 
 But the Church of England was at length triumph-
 
 190 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 ant. The absurd impeachment of Dr. Sacheverell 
 had roused the prejudices of all, from the queen on 
 the throne to the beggar at her gate, in favour of the 
 clergy, whom they fancied to be assailed in the doc- 
 tor's person; and when a parliament, strongly attached 
 to the church, met in November, 1710, its faithful 
 champion was placed at their head x . Sir Thomas 
 Hanmer proposed Mr. Bromley, "eminent for his true 
 and unaffected zeal for the protestant succession in 
 the house of Hanover, and his firm adherence to the 
 Church of England as by law established ; and one, 
 who by a long service in parliament, had acquired 
 great experience in the rules and orders of the house, 
 and had also given the world an equal experience of 
 himself." 
 
 Swift gives the following eccentric description y : — 
 " November 25. I was to-day to see the parliament 
 meet, but only saw a great crowd, and Ford and I 
 went to see the tombs at Westminster, and sauntered 
 so long, I was forced to go to an eating-house for my 
 dinner. Bromley is chosen speaker, nemine contra- 
 clicente. Do you understand these two words ? And 
 Pompey, Colonel Hill's black, designs to stand 
 speaker for the footmen. I am engaged to use my 
 interest for him, and have spoken to Patrick to get 
 him some votes." 
 
 Naturally grave and solemn, the speaker presided 
 with dignity and effect over the strong debates of a 
 most eventful period, upwards of three years. The 
 House testified their esteem for his private worth by 
 adjourning six days on the sad occasion of the death 
 of his only son, " out of respect," as it is written in 
 the journals, " to the father, and to give him time 
 1 Journals, vol. xv. y Journal to Stella.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 191 
 
 both to perform the funeral rites and to indulge his 
 just affliction." This reciprocal good feeling unluckily- 
 met with a rough shock at the very close of his speak- 
 ership. A month before the prorogation of parlia- 
 ment, in 1713, the treaty of commerce with France 
 underwent strenuous discussion, and General Stan- 
 hope, to show the impolicy of it, quoted the preamble 
 of an act of parliament made in the thirteenth year of 
 Charles II. 's reign, that runs thus: " Forasmuch as it 
 has been by long experience found that the importing 
 of French wines, brandy, linen, silk, salt, and paper, 
 and other commodities of the growth, product, or 
 manufactures of the territories and dominions of the 
 French king, has much exhausted the treasure of this 
 nation, lessened the value of the native commodities and 
 manufactures thereof, and caused great detriment to 
 this kingdom in general: Be it therefore enacted, 
 &c." 
 
 The speaker supposing that Mr. Stanhope had 
 made a mistake, said, " There was no such thing in 
 that act. But General Stanhope insisted that the 
 clerk should read the said act, and his quotation 
 appearing to be right, he and other members ani- 
 madverted with some vehemence on the speaker's 
 blunder." This little incident, it has been truly 
 remarked by a late noble historian 2 , most strongly 
 shows the mutual animosities and rancour of the 
 times. In the house any rude interruption from the 
 speaker, or any harsh invective against him, are 
 perhaps the very furthest extremity to which its party- 
 spirit ever runs. Soon after the recess, the speaker 
 was readily tempted by the offer of a seat in the 
 cabinet, as secretary of state, to quit his uneasy post. 
 z Lord Mahon's History of England, vol. i.
 
 192 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 By the desire of Harley, who was anxious to reconcile 
 the wavering Sir Thomas Hanmer to his ministry, he 
 opened a negotiation with the baronet in the following 
 letter, to induce him to become his successor : — 
 
 " Sir, 
 
 ■■ ■ I have undertaken to convey the enclosed to 
 you, which I am told expresses lord treasurer's 
 earnest desires that you would come soon to town to 
 concert the proper measures for supporting our 
 common interest. Some resolutions will be necessary, 
 previous to the approaching elections, in which you 
 ought to be consulted. I am sure I shall not be 
 willing to come into any without you, and therefore 
 wish that you may be prevailed upon to come up. 
 In the mean time, [ must acquaint you I am unex- 
 pectedly pressed to take that post, which I know you 
 would fill to much greater advantage, and which, 
 besides other objections, having been privy to the 
 applications made to you, I can never think of without 
 your consent and approbation, and an assurance of 
 the continuance of your friendship to me in the 
 discharge of it. Though I have no direction to 
 mention it to you, yet I cannot forbear letting you 
 know, I find it is much desired (and I am satisfied 
 nothing would be more acceptable to our friends) that 
 you would take the chair of the next House of 
 Commons, or to have you chancellor of the exchequer, 
 as will be most agreeable to you. But these things 
 may be discoursed and considered when we meet, 
 which I shall hope to hear will be in a few days, 
 because it will be for the service of the public as well 
 as greatly to the ease of my mind, who want such an
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 193 
 
 adviser under one of the greatest difficulties that ever 
 affected, Sir, 
 
 " Your most faithful and obedient servant, 
 
 Having accomplished his object, Secretary Bromley 
 essayed a new piece of diplomacy in the following 
 curious letter, in which he would fain have palmed off 
 on the speaker elect, but with very different degrees 
 of earnestness, both a chaplain and his two carriage 
 horses. 
 
 " Sir, " Whitehall, September 22, 1713. 
 
 " I hope I shall have your pardon for the 
 liberty I am going to take. It is, at the importunity 
 of the dean and several other of our Christ Church 
 friends, to recommend to you, if you are not otherwise 
 determined in your thoughts, Dr. Pelham to be your 
 chaplain as speaker of the next House of Commons. 
 It is with reluctancy I own I do this, because you 
 know men very well, and can best judge who is fittest 
 to be made the object of your favour in this par- 
 ticular. You'll smile at the transition from a chaplain 
 to coach-horses. I have a pair that drew my great 
 coach, and believe you cannot be better fitted, and I 
 offer them to you before I dispose of them, one 
 especially is a very fine horse, and better than sixteen 
 hands high, you shall have him or them on reasonable 
 terms. Our elections are now almost over, and from 
 them it is plain we shall have an House of Commons 
 with a vast majority of gentlemen of the same prin- 
 ciples as in the last. The queen I can assure you is 
 in a very good state of health, she is on her legs 
 
 Lord Bolingbroke's Correspondence, by Park. 
 VOL. I. O
 
 191 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 again, every day abroad in her chaise and sometimes 
 hunts. The town is very empty, and the clamour of 
 the faction is that Dunkirke is not yet demolished. 
 " I am, with the greatest truth, Sir, 
 
 " Your most faithful humble servant, 
 
 "W. BV 
 
 This courtier-like backing of a friend did not 
 succeed : we know not whether his more energetic 
 recommendation prevailed in disposing of the carriage 
 horses ! 
 
 It may be inferred from the warm praises of 
 Bolingbroke, that he rather sided with that dangerous 
 intriguer than with the treasurer in the negotiations 
 for peace, and would probably have gone as far as 
 Harcourt, if not Sir William Wyndham, in restoring, 
 upon conditions, the Pretender. But for his horror of 
 popery, Bromley would have rejoiced to see the Stuart 
 reinstated on the throne of his ancestors ; nor can we 
 wonder at an old tory gentleman looking with strong 
 distaste to the settlement of the crown upon a German 
 family, unacquainted alike with our language, our 
 manners, and laws. He conformed with the minis- 
 terial fashion of writing to the Princess Sophia, but 
 his letter was comparatively cold and formal . 
 
 " Madam, 
 
 11 Since my son goes with Mr. Harley to 
 Hanover, I beg your highness will permit me to do 
 myself the honour to assure you of my sincere and 
 unfeigned regards for your interest and those of your 
 serene family, on which the future happiness of my 
 
 b Life of Sir Thomas Hanmer by Bunbury. 
 c Bolingbroke Correspondence.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 195 
 
 country depends. This opinion will always engage 
 me to be with the most profound respect, 
 
 " Madam, &c, 
 " Whitehall, Feb. 12, 1713-14." "W. B." 
 
 The lead of the House slipped from the tory 
 baronet immediately on the death of the queen. He 
 was not permitted to name the term of adjournment ; 
 his address was deemed too lugubrious by the merry 
 mourners, who regarded the treasury bench as their 
 own in perpetuity, and an amendment, in which con- 
 gratulation took the place of condolence, was adopted ; 
 the rumours of his retaining office as teller, or chan- 
 cellor, of the exchequer d , died away, and the dismissed 
 secretary escaped in safety to participate in the general 
 proscription of his party. He had pressed the expul- 
 sion of Walpole as an imperative measure, and that 
 minister in his turn would not listen to any terms of 
 accommodation with the fallen statesman. 
 
 For some years he came out on field-days in the 
 House with a set oration against the government, and 
 emphatically denounced whig tyranny, Hanoverian 
 alliances, a standing army, the septennial act ; but, 
 finding all opposition futile, he withdrew to that 
 retirement for which we may conjecture from his 
 sobriquet of " the Squire" that he was well qualified, 
 and died at his seat at Baggington, in the summer of 
 1732, in his sixty-ninth year, a not unfavourable 
 specimen of the good old English gentleman. 
 
 d Barillon. 
 
 O 2
 
 106 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The pedigree of the Hanmers of Hanmer, begins 
 about the reign of Henry III. a The family is distin- 
 guished in the marches of North Wales, by their con- 
 nections with Glyndur and the Tudyrs. In the reign 
 of Charles I., Sir Thomas Hanmer, the second 
 baronet of the family, attended on the person of the 
 king as cup-bearer. The speaker, descended from this 
 illustrious ancestry, was born the Gth of September, 
 1677 at Bettisfield Park, the seat of his grandfather, 
 and educated at Westminster and Oxford, under Dr. 
 Robert Friend. Tall and handsome in his person, 
 graceful and dignified in his manners, a stately model 
 of Sir Charles Grandison, he captivated Isabella, 
 widow of Charles the first Duke of Grafton, and was 
 married to her, about ten years his senior, at the early 
 age of twenty-one. 
 
 A description of this lady has been given by two 
 close observers at different periods of her life, and the 
 contrast of opinion painfully marks the distinction 
 between youth and age. In his diary of August 
 1st, 167T, Evelyn notes down. "I was at the 
 marriage r Lord Arlington's only daughter — a sweet 
 child if ev • there was any — to the Duke of Grafton. 
 
 « Life by Sir II. Bunbury.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 197 
 
 The Archbishop officiated. I took no great joy at 
 the thing for many reasons." The editor subjoins 
 in a note, " She was then only five years old!" The 
 poor child thus early affianced was actually married 
 seven years later. Under the date of November 6th, 
 1679, Evelyn records : " Was this morning at the re- 
 marriage of the Duchess of Grafton to the duke, she 
 being now twelve. This sweetest, hopefullest, most 
 beautiful child, and most virtuous too, was sacrificed 
 to a boy that had been rudely bred, without anything 
 to encourage them but his majesty's pleasure. I pray 
 God the sweet child find it to her advantage, who, if 
 my augury deceive me not, will in a few years be such 
 a paragon as were fit to make the wife of the greatest 
 prince in Europe." Years rolled on: this paragon 
 became a widow, condescended to marry again a plain 
 country gentleman, and encountered Swift, who gives 
 the following not very complimentary notice of the 
 lady in his diary: "I dined to-day with Sir Thomas 
 Hanmer; his wife the Duchess of Grafton dined with 
 us. She w r ears a great high head-dress, a fontange, and 
 looks like a mad woman in it /" The private account- 
 book of this grand dame is preserved in the late 
 memoir of his ancestor by Sir Henry Bunbury, and 
 contains several curious entries. For example, "May 
 1712. Lost to Sir Thomas (her husband) at cards £7. 
 ]0s.Gd. TotheMobb,5s. For Brandy 55." The last 
 item unluckily increases with the advance of age. 
 Her young husband after contesting Flintshire without 
 success in 1697, was more fortunate in 1701, and, 
 being chosen both for Thetford in Norfolk and Flint- 
 shire, took his seat in the House as repi 3ntative of 
 that county in his 25th year. 
 
 With some rare exceptions he abstained from
 
 198 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 taking an active part in debate, till the triumph of 
 the tory party in 1710, when his character, rank, and 
 talents, placed him by the side of Bromley, as their 
 joint leader. Once indeed he had departed from his 
 habitual prudence, and, seconded by Bromley, had 
 moved that the next successor to the throne should 
 be brought over ; but the measure proved so obnoxious 
 to the queen, who described it as planting her coffin 
 full in her view, that the wary baronet shrunk from 
 mooting anew such hazardous propositions. He 
 drew up a bill, salutary in itself, and acceptable to the 
 country-gentlemen., for qualifying justices of the peace, 
 that no county magistrate should act without possess- 
 ing a landed estate of at least £ 100 a-year in value. 
 The evil of indigent persons being thrust into the 
 commission on accouut of their subservient party 
 politics, who trafficked penalties, and bartered the 
 duties of the office for money, was checked by this 
 statute,, but not wholly removed. Some thirty years 
 later, we read in the Orford Correspondence of a strong 
 solicitation from Sir Robert Walpole in behalf of a 
 friend, that the chancellor would insert his name in 
 the commission for Middlesex; and the chancellor's 
 excuse that, as he filled the situation of organist for 
 a salary at a parish-church, he was scarcely of the 
 proper station ! 
 
 After proposing his friend Bromley to be speaker 
 of the congenial parliament which met in Novembe 
 1710, he was chosen chairman of the committee for 
 drawing up a representation of the state of the nation 
 to the queen, enlarging on all the false steps of the late 
 ministry in the conduct of the war; an elaborate and 
 stringent memorial, which was presented to her 
 majesty by the whole House. Better qualified to
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 199 
 
 recite a king's speech off-hand, than to compose a 
 state document that could he read, the chairman 
 readily accepted the secret services of Swift, who had 
 been recommended to his notice by the lord treasurer 
 to season a tiresome manifesto, and enliven dull facts 
 with poignant satire. The mystery with which the 
 progress of their joint labours is glanced at by the 
 principal craftsman may be detected through its thin 
 disguise in Swift's journal, and is amusingly charac- 
 teristic. " February 20th. The secretary Bolingbroke 
 I suppose was helping him about it to-day. I believe 
 it will be a pepperer.'' " February 21st. I was engaged 
 at seven to go to Sir Thomas Hanmer, who desired I 
 would see him at that hour. His business w T as that I 
 would help him to draw T up the representation, which 
 I consented to do ; but I do not know whether I shall 
 succeed, because it is a little out of my w r ay." 
 " February 22nd. I was with Hanmer this morning, 
 and there was the secretary and chancellor of the 
 exchequer, (Henry Boyle,) very busy with him, lay- 
 ing their heads together about the representation." 
 "March 5th. The representation is printed. I have not 
 seen it yet, it is plaguy severe, they say." This dis- 
 guise is maintained by Swift in his history of the four 
 last years of Queen Anne. " This representation, sup- 
 posed to be the work of Sir Thomas Hanmer's pen, is 
 written with much energy and spirit, and will be a 
 very useful and authentic record for the assistance of 
 those w r ho shall at any time undertake to write the 
 history of the present timesV' Had Swift's owm share 
 in the document been withdrawn, it might have slept 
 undisturbed with others of its race in the State Paper 
 Office. We learn from the Bolingbroke correspond- 
 
 b Parliamentary History, vol. vi.
 
 200 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 ence how assiduously his friendship was courted by 
 ministers. On his visiting Paris in 1712, the secre- 
 tary St. John indited a letter. " If I have the honour 
 of a line from you, pray give me an account of Mat's 
 (Prior's) private life. Once I was in the gentleman's 
 secret, but his last despatch contains in almost a ream 
 of paper nothing but solemn accounts of business, 
 such as made me expect to find Joe Warden instead 
 of Matt Prior at the last line of the voluminous epistle. 
 We hear much of a certain Chloe, who has supplanted 
 the nut-brown maid." The presence of the tory baronet 
 in parliament was too important to the ministry to 
 permit a long absence on the continent. " Sir 
 Thomas Hanmer, having in a manner asked whether 
 the queen approved or not of his going into Italy, I 
 sent him word by her majesty's order, that she hoped 
 she should have had his aid in this session, which 
 certainly will be a very nice and difficult one to 
 manage. " The tractable courtier returned accordingly 
 in good time to England. " He comes to you," writes 
 Prior, " in very good humour and very much satisfied, 
 as well with what he has seen done on our part as 
 with the civilities which he has received from this 
 nation, in which you know they never fail." Swift, 
 on the contrary, asserts that the baronet was much out 
 of humour, full of doubts and fears. There was some 
 intention at this time of making him secretary of 
 state in the room of Lord Dartmouth, but the design 
 proved abortive. 
 
 However decided an enemy to the continuance of 
 the war, and firm friend to the Peace of Utrecht, Sir 
 Thomas was too independent a member to concur in 
 all the measures of government. Originally favourable 
 
 c Bolingbroke to the Duke of Shrewsbury.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. ' 201 
 
 to the bill for settling our commerce with France, 
 according to the 8th and 9th articles of the Treaty, 
 he was convinced by the petitions of the merchants and 
 the arguments of commercial men that an open trade 
 would be prejudicial ; and made an elaborate speech 
 against the bill, declaring that, " while he had the 
 honour to sit in that House, he would never be blindly 
 led by any ministry, neither on the other hand was he 
 biassed by what must weigh with some men — the fear 
 of losing his election : but that the principles upon 
 which he acted were the interest of his country, and 
 the conviction of his judgment." This dignified 
 address is said to have made a great impression on 
 many of the members, and to have mainly contributed 
 to the rejection of the bill, which was carried against 
 ministers by a narrow majority — 194 to 185. There 
 were illuminations and public rejoicings in almost all 
 the leading towns, even in London and Westminster ; d 
 and Hanmer became for the hour the idol of the mob, 
 uniting in his favour the party cries both of high 
 church and free trade. 
 
 By the immediate friends of ministers his imputed 
 tergiversation was visited with mixed feelings of won- 
 der and displeasure. The question of Vanessa to 
 Swift, " Are you not prodigiously surprised at Sir 
 Thomas Hanmer and Lord Anglesea?" was echoed 
 through the clubs and coffee-houses, and ascribed by 
 some to his disappointment at not being offered the 
 seals, by others to a secret communication from the 
 treasurer, who preferred the immediate overthrow of 
 the scheme in the Commons to a vexatious discussion 
 and final rejection in the Lords. The courtiers could 
 freely guess any motive but the strange conceit, that a 
 
 d Bover's Annals of Queen Anne.
 
 202 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 country gentleman of that age would vote and speak 
 independently and from conviction. Their coldness 
 continued till the dissolution of parliament, a few 
 months afterwards, when a partial reconciliation was 
 patched up between Hanmer and the ministry by his 
 consenting to take the chair of the House of Com- 
 mons, when the new parliament should be assembled. 
 On the 14th of February, 1714, he was unanimously 
 elected speaker, and his old friend Mr. Secretary 
 Bromley congratulated the House and the public, in 
 not very felicitous diction, upon the good choice they 
 had made of one who brought with him abilities, 
 not. only to fill, but to adorn the chair. An amusing 
 incident served to diversify the set apologies and 
 formal self-abasement of the embryo speaker. The 
 celebrated Richard Steele had found for the first time 
 his way into the House, and could not resist this 
 tempting opportunity of making a civil speech. But 
 he bore the brand of whig authorship upon him, in an 
 assembly crowded with country gentlemen, and mem- 
 bers of the October Club, and experienced at their 
 hands a reception to which his own naive description 
 can alone do full justice. " After two or three gentle- 
 men had proposed Sir Thomas Hanmer for speaker of 
 the House of Commons, Mr. Steele took upon him to 
 say he had the same honourable sentiments of that 
 gentleman in the following words : e 
 
 4 Mr. Jodrell, 
 
 1 At the close of the last parliament, her majesty 
 was graciously pleased to declare from the throne, that 
 the late rejected bill of commerce between Great Britain 
 and Fiance should be offered to this House. That 
 
 " Steele's Vindication of himself.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 203 
 
 declaration was certainly made that every gentleman 
 who should have the honour to be returned hither 
 might make himself master of that important question. 
 It is demonstration that was a most pernicious bill, 
 and no man can have a greater merit in this House, 
 than his, by whose weight and authority that per- 
 nicious bill was thrown out. I rise up to do him 
 honour, and distinguish myself by giving him my 
 vote for that his inestimable service to his country.' 
 
 " It will be impossible for the reader to conceive 
 how this speech of his was received, except he has 
 happened to have been at a cock-match, and has seen 
 the triumph and exultation which is raised, when a 
 volatile, whose fall was some way gainful to part of 
 the company, has been necked. At the mention 
 of the bill of commerce, the cry began ; at calling it 
 pernicious, it increased ; at the words,, ' Doing him 
 honour,' it grew insupportably loud ; but, having no 
 reason for being confounded for other people's folly or 
 absurdity, Mr. Steele bore the insolence well enough 
 to speak out what he intended. He had hardiness 
 enough to do it, from a resolution which he had 
 taken to govern himself by, when he went into the 
 House, which was, to prefer the fame of an honest 
 man to that of an orator. I must confess I stand in 
 some amazement to find where the ridicule lay in the 
 words ' I rise up to do him honour,' the natural mean- 
 ing of which I take to be, shewing him respect, and 
 not implying that it is an honour to him, it is I who 
 do him that respect ; however, were it taken in the 
 latter sense, in which Mr. Steele really did not intend 
 it, I do not see the absurdity there would be in it ; he 
 does not deserve to sit in that House who does not 
 believe his esteem an addition to the person's reputa-
 
 204 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 tion on whom he bestows it ; for the good opinion of 
 an honest man is an honour to the greatest man living. 
 At the same time, Mr. Steele does not attribute this 
 particular outrage to the House, any further than 
 they ought to have suppressed it, and severely ob- 
 served upon it, by turning out the offenders, who, it is 
 supposed, were a parcel of rustics who crowded in 
 with the members, before the election of the speaker, 
 from a received error, that there is no authority in the 
 House till he is chosen. As he came out of the 
 House, he could hear nothing but those loud critics, 
 talking to one another, ' Oh, it is not so easy a thing 
 to speak in the House ' — ( He fancies because he can 
 scribble' — and the like deep animadversions !" 
 
 Poor Steele deserved a better greeting, for his 
 remarks were rather based on good-nature than pre- 
 sumption, and appear to have been misunderstood ; 
 his phrase, "To rise up to do one honour," being a 
 scholar-like rendering of the ' assurgere alicui ' of the 
 Latin tongue. But he was too obnoxious a partizan 
 writer to meet with a fair hearing, or to be permitted to 
 continue a member. The petition against his return 
 being too late in the list to promise his enemies a 
 speedy removal, he was arraigned three weeks after- 
 wards for writing a libel (" The Crisis ") that he never 
 wrote, but of which he had too much spirit, having 
 once adopted it, to repudiate the authorship, and was 
 expelled the House. The day after his expulsion, 
 Steele wrote to Sir Thomas Hanmer, under feelings of 
 strong excitement, the following singular note : — 
 
 "March 19, 1713-4. 
 " The vote which passed upon me last night 
 has, as far as common fame can do it, made me a
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 205 
 
 seditious man. It is some comfort to me that my 
 adversaries were reduced to the lamentable shift of 
 saying that, though what I said were true, I should 
 be an offender in saying it. This is a monstrous 
 position, for hell is the only place which can be de- 
 stroyed by truth. My reputation, which is dearer to 
 me than my life, is wounded by this vote, and I know 
 no way to heal it, but by appealing to the laws of my 
 country, that they may have their due effect in the 
 protection of innocence. I humbly desire proper ques- 
 tions may be put to bring about resolutions of this 
 kind, to wit, ' That Mr. Steele who is expelled this 
 
 House for may be prosecuted at law for his said 
 
 offence, and that no non pros, or nolle prosequi may be 
 admitted in his case. That Mr. Steele is or is not 
 capable of being re-elected into this present parlia- 
 ment."^ To this' splenetic effusion the speaker made 
 the following sensible reply : — 
 
 " Sir, 
 
 " I could not think it proper for me to commu- 
 nicate any letter to the House without knowing what 
 it contained, or from whom it came : and I opened 
 one which was brought to me in that manner last 
 night, and, finding it subscribed by you, I would ac- 
 knowledge to yourself the having received it, since 
 that is all I can do upon it. The resolutions which 
 you desire that the House would pass can by no 
 means regularly be proposed to them, since all debate 
 upon that subject is closed and at an end, and though 
 the opportunity for it were still subsisting, yet I 
 believe, upon your second thoughts, you will agree in 
 opinion, that when any man's actions or writings are 
 
 f Sir Henry Bunbury's Life.
 
 206 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 under the consideration of such an assembly, it can 
 never come properly from the person himself who is 
 in question, to direct or propose what the judgment 
 shall he, or how far the punishment shall extend. I 
 will not pretend to advise you, but as you insist upon 
 the laws of your country, as the rules by which 
 every subject ought to be guided and tried, I would 
 remind you of another obligation equally strong upon 
 us all, which is to submit to the legal jurisdictions 
 established in our country, for the application and 
 execution of those laws ; of those jurisdictions there is 
 none more known, or more necessary, than that before 
 which you have stood ; and, since the penalty inflicted 
 is no more than the divesting you of that honour and 
 those privileges which your seat in that place gave 
 you, the sentence was passed, 1 will not content my- 
 self with saying, by the most proper, but by the only 
 judges on earth capable of giving it. In this case 
 there is no appeal, nor is it in the nature or course of 
 justice to allow of any from a superior to an inferior 
 court. I hope you will be persuaded to lay aside all 
 thoughts of any thing that looks like it ; at least it 
 cannot pass through my hands, though in any thing 
 consistent with my duty I should be glad to shew 
 myself, &c." 
 
 The next day Steele wrote a handsome and manly 
 letter, acknowledging his error, and remarking, "You 
 have added the authority of reason to an implicit 
 reliance on your character in convincing your most 
 humble servant, Richard Steele." 
 
 This correspondence was no sooner closed than 
 the speaker had to communicate to the House a letter 
 from some Irish adventurer, of a less honourable cha- 
 racter. He stated that the day before he had received
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 207 
 
 a letter, signed by one John Quin, with a petition 
 inclosed, drawn in a form to be presented to the House, 
 in which letter was contained a scandalous offer of a 
 sum of money to be paid to him upon passing such 
 an act of parliament as was desired in the said 
 petition 5 . 
 
 The letter being read, John Quin was ordered to 
 be sent for immediately in the custody of the ser- 
 jeant-at-arms, and was afterwards examined. Next 
 day, the luckless intriguer presented a petition to the 
 House, acknowledging his offence, as committed by 
 him through inadvertency and ignorance, being a 
 stranger, and unacquainted with the method of obtain- 
 ing acts of parliament, begging pardon of Mr. 
 Speaker and the House for his offence, and praying to 
 be discharged out of custody. It was ordered, that 
 he be brought up on Monday morning next to the bar 
 of the House, where, having upon his knees received 
 a reprimand from the speaker, he was ordered out of 
 custody, paying his fees. The corrupt notions of 
 ignorant individuals linger through many a generation. 
 About a century later, a similar communication was 
 addressed to Mr. Addington by a scheming tinman of 
 Plymouth, who offered the speaker £2000 down for 
 some office in the dock-yard, and was justly requited 
 for his impudence by an ex-officio prosecution, and six 
 months' imprisonment in Newgate h . 
 
 The precarious session of 1714, in which the 
 chances of the Stuart and Hanoverian dynasties hung 
 equally poised, gave Sir Thomas Hanmer an oppor- 
 tunity, which he cheerfully embraced, of bearing 
 witness to his regard for the Protestant succession. 
 Alarmed at the intrigues notoriously going on between 
 
 s Parliamentary History, vol. vi. »» Life of Lord Erskine.
 
 208 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Bolingbroke and the Pretender, the country party- 
 started a question, that the succession in the house of 
 Hanover was in danger under her majesty's govern- 
 ment. Ministers sought to cushion the inconvenient 
 topic by moving the previous question ; but the 
 speaker, to the high displeasure of the Jacobites, 
 baffled this attempt in a memorable speech, declaring 
 "That he was sorry to see that endeavours were used to 
 waive that question and stop their mouths; but he 
 was of opinion this was the proper, and perhaps the 
 only, time for patriots to speak ; that a great deal of 
 pains were taken to screen some persons, and in order 
 to that to make them overlook the dangers that 
 threatened the queen, the nation, and the Protestant 
 succession. That, for his own part, he had all the 
 honour and respect imaginable for her majesty's 
 ministers ; but that he owed still more to his country 
 than to any minister. That, in this debate, so much 
 had been said to prove the succession to be in danger, 
 and so little to make out the contrary, that he could 
 not but believe the first." 
 
 This speech, we are assured, told with great effect 
 on the independent members, who, after a long and 
 warm debate, swelled the minority to 208 against 256. 
 Swift, in his sarcastic answer to some humorous 
 lines of Lord Oxford's, shows how unacceptable the 
 speaker's interference had been to the premier and 
 his friends: — 
 
 " A pox, too, on Hanmer, 
 Who prates like his gran 'mere, 
 And all his old friends v/ould rebuke: 
 In spite of the Carle, 
 Give us but our Earl (Oxford), 
 The devil may take their Duke (Marlborough).'' 
 
 Sir Thomas Hanmer, indeed, with the majority of
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 209 
 
 the country gentlemen, was too firm a friend to the 
 Church of England to acquiesce in a Papist on the 
 throne, yet too much attached to the principles of 
 hereditary monarchy to take satisfaction in the change 
 of dynasty, especially when slights and insults were 
 gratuitously bestowed. The first disgust of the 
 ex-speaker with George I. is traced to a singular 
 origin. One Hill, a ci-devant diplomatist, paymaster 
 of the forces, &c, was candidate for the bishopric of 
 Ely, which fell vacant at the time of Queen Anne's 
 death. He had worn the habit and led the life of a 
 layman for thirty years ; yet his pretensions were 
 actively supported, though fortunately in vain, by Sir 
 Thomas Hanmer, Bothmar, and, worst of all, " pudet 
 hsec opprobria fari," by the Archbishop of York. The 
 failure of this impudent suit is said to have increased 
 Hanmer's estrangement from the court 1 . But, inde- 
 pendently of this abortive job, he had better reasons 
 for displeasure. From the moment of the king's 
 landing at Greenwich, the Whimsicals, or Hanoverian 
 tories, had been as completely denied a glimpse of 
 favour, as if they had vowed allegiance to the court 
 of James. On the low church party alone, whom 
 they detested, were scattered the rays of the sove- 
 reign's bounty; upon the whigs exclusively fell the 
 soft dews of patronage. 
 
 An amusing survey of the change is afforded in 
 the following good-humoured letter of Prior to Sir 
 Thomas, dated from the embassy at Paris, January 
 3rd (new style), 1714-5:— 
 
 " The vicissitudes of three months in your en- 
 chanted island are sufficient to render all reflection 
 upon them ridiculous. Take in the two preceding 
 
 1 Life by Sir H. Bunbury. 
 vol. i. r
 
 210 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 months, and judge if I know more of London than of 
 
 Mexico, when I compare your letter (it bore date 
 
 Sept.) with the present state of things, what shall I 
 
 say to anybody that inquires about England ? and how 
 
 shall I answer in relation to the public, otherwise than 
 
 that all my friends are put out of their employments ? 
 
 As to myself, what signifies it to complain ; after thirty 
 
 months spent here in a great deal of business, which I 
 
 sustained as well as I could, and a great deal of pomp, 
 
 which I hated as much as any man could, in a 
 
 perpetual uncertainty and a various change of orders 
 
 and masters : having had assurances from the king 
 
 himself, that he was satisfied with my service, in 
 
 one word, after having upon this great conjuncture 
 
 of his majesty coming to the crown, given all advice 
 
 to the lords regents, and transacted all in this court 
 
 that lay incumbent upon an honest man and a British 
 
 minister, I find myself divested of my commission at 
 
 the customs, my expenses here objected to at the 
 
 treasury, and my person neither in very good health 
 
 nor good heart, detained a kind of political prisoner, 
 
 my affairs descanted on and judged by every French 
 
 marquis, or councillier, duchesse, or bourgeoise, 
 
 according to the measure of their capacity and the 
 
 extent of their compassion. Instead of furnishing the 
 
 closet, I take it for granted I must sell the house, in 
 
 all cases Cambridge is not very far from Milden- 
 
 lmll. 
 
 " P.S. — Cloe's place being " quamdiu se bene ges- 
 serit," the gypsey behaves herself so obstinately well 
 that I am afraid she will hold it for life." 
 
 The poor ambassador-poet seems to have been so 
 bewildered by his misfortunes as to have fancied in his 
 P.S. that he was writing to Bolingbroke, instead of
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 211 
 
 the grave and correct baronet. Disappointed and 
 indignant, Hanmer maintained a moody silence during 
 the two years that followed the accession, and was only 
 encouraged by the flattering overtures of the Prince of 
 Wales, in 1/17, to resume a forward part in the House 
 of Commons. 
 
 The open rupture between George I. and his son 
 took place in the November of that year, just when 
 parliament was re-assembling ; and a few days after- 
 wards, a supply being moved for the maintenance of 
 the army, Sir Thomas Hanmer led the opposition, and, 
 by the aid of Walpole, then exasperated against the 
 ministry of Stanhope and Sunderland, divided 158 
 against 172. But the hope of office was soon over- 
 clouded. The royal quarrels were adjusted. Wal- 
 pole again stormed the cabinet, and maintained his 
 place unshaken, even after the death of George I. 
 With this event perished the last forlorn chance of the 
 restoration of his friends to the cabinet ; and Sir 
 Thomas Hanmer, declining the nattering requisition of 
 his constituents in Suffolk, withdrew from public life. 
 His prospect of rural felicity was not enhanced by his 
 second marriage with the daughter of a wealthy country 
 gentleman, Thomas Folkes, Esq., of Suffolk. There 
 was a great disparity in years between the young lady 
 and her cold, though courteous, bridegroom ; and the 
 result of a union, prompted by vanity on the one 
 hand, and self-interest on the other, proved, as might 
 have been anticipated, most unhappy. At the end of 
 a few years, the young wife eloped with her husband's 
 cousin, the Honourable Thomas Hervey, a man full of 
 talents, but giddy and wild. A lover of literature, 
 though a rake, and the friend of Dr. Johnson, he 
 published a strange little book entitled "Letters to 
 
 P 2
 
 212 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Sir Thomas Hanmer," and fell at last into complete 
 insanity. From a flaw in the marriage settlement, Sir 
 Thomas retained possession of a good portion of the 
 estates to which his wife was heiress, and transmitted 
 them, on his death, to his own relations, thus solacing 
 his lonely state "with the gentlemanly old vice" of 
 avarice. 
 
 He found worthier recreations for declining age at 
 his seat at Mildenhall, in gardening and literature. 
 His garden was celebrated for the goodness of its 
 grapes. Hampers, filled with this delicious fruit, 
 used to be sent every year, carried on men's shoulders 
 to London, nearly seventy miles distant, as the gallant 
 baronet's offering to Queen Caroline. k It affords to 
 the horticulturist a curious proof of the scarcity of 
 good grapes in England little more than a century 
 ago. "My notion of gardening," writes the worthy 
 baronet to Pope, with characteristic pomp, is, "that 
 it is only sweeping nature." From some of the letters 
 addressed to this sententious writer, it may be pre- 
 sumed that Sir Thomas had the reputation of under- 
 standing, or the ambition of being thought to under- 
 stand, the higher subjects of science. Among his 
 correspondence was found this extraordinary epistle 
 from the celebrated and half- crazed William Whiston, 
 " November 24, 1718. If we make and use such a map 
 for the inclination of the dipping needle as Dr. Halley 
 has made for the variation of the horizontal needle, we 
 obtain the longitude. "Will. Whiston. You will please 
 to note the day when you receive this letter." It was 
 indorsed accordingly with all possible gravity, " Re- 
 ceived November 25th, 1718." Nothing came of this 
 strange effusion, dictated by an eccentricity that verged 
 k Life by Sir H. Bunbury.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 213 
 
 on madness, eight years after its erratic author had 
 been deprived of his professorship, when he was earn- 
 ing a scanty and precarious subsistence by teaching 
 mathematics. 
 
 A nostrum equally valueless was addressed, in 
 1 744, to the literary baronet by Dr. Berkeley, the 
 good Bishop of Cloyne : " How ill soever a physician's 
 air may become one of my profession, certainly, if I 
 may conclude from parallel cases, there is room to 
 entertain good hopes of yourself, both giddiness and 
 relaxed fibres having been to my knowledge much 
 relieved by tar-water." The complaint the bishop's 
 patient was labouring under, no healing virtue in water 
 could cure ; — a gradual decay. 
 
 The following extract from a tedious letter to the 
 ex-speaker, by his kinsman, Roger North, — a better 
 gossip than philosopher, — is curious to show what 
 were the enlarged opinions of a fellow of the Royal 
 Society in 1718. It is evident that he disliked the 
 then novel doctrines of Newton in science almost as 
 heartily as the heresies of the whigs in politics. The 
 burden of his epistle w r as to oppose two propositions 
 of Sir Thomas's, and to show that neither could be 
 true. 1. That smoke naturally riseth ; 2. That fire, 
 by rarefaction, draws a current of air. " The fact is 
 against you, for it cannot be showed that smoke, in 
 any instance, moves otherwise, up, down, or laterally, 
 but as the air carries it, and to that it is always obse- 
 quious. It were well if smoke naturally rose, for 
 many a smoky chimney would mend upon it. It 
 must be condensation, and not rarefaction, that draws 
 air. To ease your enquiry, what is the cause of the 
 furious currents of air, where fires are artificially
 
 214 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 disposed for it, I answer in a word, — the immense 
 quantity of effluvia from them ! " This learned Theban 
 calls the doctrine of attraction "much pretended of 
 late, chimerical, and trifling ; as, if I should say the 
 smoke is attracted by the soot in the chimney, the 
 jest would not be digested. However, the system of 
 the planets is no better accounted for!" 
 
 With his former fellow-labourer in political litera- 
 ture, Swift, Sir Thomas Hanmer appears in later 
 life to have maintained a very slight intercourse. 
 Their sole bond of friendship was thinly woven of 
 politics, and snapt at once, when the speaker broke 
 off from the Oxford ministry, under a real or affected 
 dread for the safety of the Protestant succession. In 
 the Swift correspondence there occurs but one formal 
 letter, in reply to a solicitation from the dean respect- 
 ing the prosecution of Waters, addressed " Sir," and 
 suggesting with characteristic prudence, "Oct. 1720. 
 If the thing is done, it will be best that the means 
 should be a secret by which it is brought about ; and 
 for this reason you will excuse me if I avoid putting 
 my name to the outside of my letter, lest it should 
 excite the curiosity of the post-office." 
 
 It was only two years before his death, in 1 744, that 
 the wary baronet ventured to encounter the sarcasm of 
 hostile wits, and fairly committed himself to print in a 
 splendid edition of Shakspeare, published at the Oxford 
 University press. In a well-written but somewhat 
 j:>ompous preface, he accounts for the spirit of conde- 
 scending scrutiny with which " One of the great 
 admirers of this incomparable author hath made it the 
 amusement of his leisure hours, for many years past, 
 to look over his writings with a critical eye, to note
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 215 
 
 the obscurities and absurdities introduced into the 
 text, and, according to the best of his judgment, to 
 restore the genuine sense and purity of it. 
 
 " Since other nations have taken care to dignify 
 the works of their most celebrated poets with the 
 fairest impressions, beautified with the ornaments of 
 sculpture, well may our Shakspeare be thought to 
 deserve no less consideration ; and, as a fresh acknow- 
 ledgment hath lately been paid to his merit, and a 
 high regard to his name and memory, by erecting his 
 statue at the public expense, so it is desired that this 
 new edition of his works, which hath cost some atten- 
 tion and care, may be looked upon as another small 
 monument, designed and dedicated to his honour." 
 
 The statue thus pompously set up, with the 
 baronet's own name graven on the pedestal, formed a 
 tempting target for the shafts of satirical wit. Horace 
 Walpole, in one of his gossiping letters 1 , tells Sir 
 Horace Mann of a singular emendation, which Sir 
 Thomas Hanmer had made in the text of "Othello." 
 For the passage in which Cassio complains of " being 
 
 damned in a fair wife," reading — " d d in a fair 
 
 * phiz.' " The writer was hoaxing his correspondent, 
 but has caught, in his unpoetical fiction, the prevail- 
 ing humour of the day. Pope, with a jealous fear for 
 his own edition of Shakspeare, has niched the rival 
 editor into his " Dunciad." In the procession to do 
 homage to the Goddess of Dulness, he introduces Han- 
 mer under the name of " Montalto," together with 
 his humbler assistant, the plodding Theobald m : — 
 
 " There moved ^Montalto with supcrioi' air, 
 His stretched out arm displayed a volume fair ; 
 
 1 Walpole's Letters to Sir Horace Maun. 
 m Pope's Dunciad, part iv.
 
 216 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Courtiers and patriots in two ranks divide, 
 Through both he passed, and bowed from side to side ; 
 But, as in graceful act, with awful eye, 
 Composed he stood, bold Benson thrust him by ; 
 The decent knight retired, with sober rage, 
 Withdrew his hand, and closed the pompous page." 
 
 According to the traditional reports of the village, 
 this portrait of the stately " Montalto " bore a faithful 
 resemblance to the baronet's procession on the Sun- 
 day to and from the parish church, as he paced at 
 the head of his servants through bowing ranks of 
 tenantry, who stood, hat in hand, while the great man 
 went by. On a difference of opinion with Warburton, 
 as to some point of conjectural criticism, that irritable 
 churchman demanded back his letters, which abounded 
 in valuable criticisms on the text of Shakspeare, and 
 recovered them, not without difficulty, as the baronet 
 asserted his right to retain all the documents for 
 which he had paid postage ! To this unhappy strife 
 about the doctrine of lien may be ascribed much of 
 the acrimony of Warburton's strictures ; and his de- 
 preciating spirit seems to have infected Dr. Johnson, 
 who was at that time publishing observations on the 
 tragedy of "Macbeth." " I found," said the doctor, 
 with malicious archness, " that the editor's apprehen- 
 sion is of a cast so different from mine, that he 
 appears to find no difficulty in most of those passages 
 which I have represented as unintelligible, and has, 
 therefore, passed smoothly over them, without any 
 attempt to alter or explain them." His further notice 
 was in the same tone of lofty contempt. " Most of 
 the other emendations which he has endeavoured, 
 whether with good or bad fortune, are too trivial to 
 deserve mention ; for, surely, the weapons of criticism 
 ought to be blunted against an editor who can imagine
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 217 
 
 that he is restoring poetry, while he is amusing him- 
 self with alterations like these : — for 
 
 ♦' This is the sergeant, 
 
 " Who like a good and hardy soldier fought ; 
 
 " This is the sergeant, who 
 
 For 
 
 " Like a right good and hardy soldier fought ; 
 
 Dismay 'd not this 
 
 " Our captains Macbeth and Banquo ? yes; 
 
 " Dismay 'd not this 
 
 " Our captains brave Macbeth and Banquo ? yes ; 
 
 such harmless industry may surely be forgiven, if it 
 cannot be praised ; may he therefore never want a 
 monosyllable, who can use it with such wonderful 
 dexterity, 
 
 ' Rumpatur, quisquis rumpitur, invidia !' 
 
 The rest of this edition I have not read, but, from the 
 little I have seen, think it not dangerous to declare, 
 that in my opinion its pomp recommends it more than 
 its accuracy. There is no distinction made between 
 the ancient reading and the innovations of the editor ; 
 there is no reason given for any of the alterations 
 which are made ; the emendations of former critics are 
 adopted without any acknowledgment, and few of the 
 difficulties are removed which have hitherto embar- 
 rassed the readers of Shakspeare. 
 
 " I would not, however, be thought to insult the 
 editor, nor to censure him with too much petulance 
 for having failed in little things, of whom I have been 
 told that he excels in greater ; but I may, without 
 indecency, observe that no man should attempt to 
 teach others what he has never learned himself; and 
 that those who, like Themistocles, have studied the 
 arts of policy, and can teach a small state how to grow
 
 218 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 great, should like him disdain to lahour in trifles, 
 and consider petty accomplishments as below their 
 ambition." 
 
 Eleven years later, in 1756, when Dr. Johnson 
 published his own edition of Shakspeare, the great 
 censor would seem to have felt some compunctious 
 visitings, and to have made an amende honorable to 
 the memory of the Oxford tory. 
 
 " Our author fell then into the hands of Sir Thomas 
 Hanmer, the Oxford editor, a man in my opinion 
 eminently qualified by nature for such studies. He 
 had, what is the first requisite to emendatory criticism, 
 that intuition by which the poet's intention is imme- 
 diately discovered, and that dexterity of intellect 
 which despatches its work by the easiest means. He 
 had, undoubtedly, read much ; his acquaintance with 
 customs, opinions, and traditions, seems to have been 
 large, and he is often learned without show. He sel- 
 dom passes what he does not understand, without an 
 attempt to find, or to make, a meaning, and sometimes 
 hastily makes what a little more attention would 
 have found. He is solicitous to reduce to grammar 
 what he could not be sure that his author intended to 
 be grammatical. Shakspeare regarded more the series 
 of ideas than of words, and his language, not being 
 designed for the reader's desk, was all that he desired 
 it to be, if it conveyed his meaning to the audience. 
 
 "Hanmer's care of the metre has been too violently 
 censured. He found the measure reformed in so 
 many passages by the silent labours of some editors, 
 with the silent acquiescence of the rest, that he thought 
 himself allowed to extend a little further the license, 
 which had already been carried so far, without repre- 
 hension y and of his corrections in general it must be
 
 HOUSE 0E COMMONS. 219 
 
 confessed, that they are often just, and made com- 
 monly with the least possible violation of the text. 
 
 "But, by inserting his emendations, whether in- 
 vented or borrowed, into the page, without any notice 
 of varying copies, he has appropriated the labour of 
 his predecessors, and made his own edition of little 
 authority. His confidence, indeed, both in himself and 
 others was too great ; he supposes all to be right that 
 was done by Pope and Theobald ; he seems not to 
 suspect a critic of fallibility; and it was but reasonable 
 that he should claim what he so liberally granted. 
 As he never writes without careful inquiry and diligent 
 consideration, I have preserved all his notes,, and believe 
 that every reader will wish for more." 
 
 The history of the quarrels into which the pro- 
 posals for publishing this splendid edition of Shak- 
 speare involved Hanmer with Warburton, who had 
 entertained a similar design, but who appears to 
 have made but little progress towards the execution 
 of such a work, is too curious not to deserve a more 
 particular mention". " The angry critic found his 
 labours anticipated, and he charged Sir Thomas, 
 in the coarsest manner, with having pilfered and 
 made use of his notes. Both the assertion and the 
 violence served to attach a good deal of temporary 
 interest to this controversy, which is, even now, not 
 unamusing. The literary baronet addressed the fol- 
 lowing letter on the subject to Dr. Smith, Provost 
 of Queen's College, Oxford : — 
 
 " Mild enh ally near Newmarket, Suffolk, 
 " Dear Sir, October 28th, 1742. 
 
 " There seems to arise some difficulties with 
 
 " D'Israeli's Quarrels of Authors. 
 Biographia Britanmca, Art. Hanmer.
 
 220 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 respect to the design of printing a new edition of 
 Shakspeare, and I beg it may be laid aside, if you are 
 not fully satisfied that some advantage may arise from 
 it to the university, for I have no end in view to myself 
 to make me desire it. I am satisfied there is no edi- 
 tion coming, or likely to come, from Warburton, but 
 is a report raised to support some little purpose or 
 other, of which I see there are many on foot. I have 
 reason to know that Warburton is very angry for a 
 cause, of which I have no reason to be ashamed or he 
 to be proud. My acquaintance with him began upon 
 an application from himself, and at his request, the 
 present Bishop of Salisbury introduced him to me for 
 this purpose only, as was then declared, that, as he had 
 many observations upon Shakspeare then lying by 
 him, over and above those printed in Theobald's book, 
 he much desired to communicate them to me, that I 
 might judge whether any of them were worthy to be 
 added to those emendations, which he understood I 
 had long been making upon that author. 
 
 " I received his offer with all the civility I could, 
 upon which a long correspondence began by letters, in 
 which he explained his sense upon many passages, 
 which sometimes I thought just, but mostly wild and 
 out of the way. Afterwards, he made a journey hither 
 on purpose to see my books ; he staid about a week 
 with me, and had the inspection of them, and, all this 
 while I had no suspicion of any other design in all the 
 pains he took but to perfect a correct text in Shak- 
 speare, of which he seemed very fond. But not long 
 afterwards the views of interest began to shew them- 
 selves, several hints were dropped of the advantage he 
 might receive from publishing the work thus corrected ; 
 but as I had no thought at all of making it public, so
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 221 
 
 I was more averse to yield it in such a manner as was 
 likely to produce a paltry edition ; by making it the 
 means only of getting a greater sum of money by it. 
 Upon this he flew into a great rage, and there is an end 
 of the story, with which I have thought it best to make 
 you acquainted, that, as you mention the working of his 
 friends, you may judge the better of what you see and 
 hear from them, and may make what use you please of 
 the truth of facts which I have now laid before you. 
 
 "As to my own particular, I have no aim to pursue 
 in this affair : I propose neither honour, reward, or 
 thanks, and should be very well pleased to have the 
 books continue upon the shelf in my own private 
 closet. If it is thought they may be of use or plea- 
 sure to the public, I am willing to part with them out 
 of my hands, and to add, for the honour of Shak- 
 speare, some decorations and embellishments, at my 
 own expense. It will be an unexpected pleasure to 
 me, if they can be made in any degree profitable to 
 the university, to which I shall always retain a grati- 
 tude, a regard, and a reverence ; but, that I may end 
 as I began, I beg the favour of you, if, upon more 
 mature consideration among yourselves, you see reason 
 to discourage you from proceeding in this affair, that 
 you will give it over, and not look upon yourselves to 
 be the more obliged to prosecute it, from any steps 
 already taken with, " Sir, 
 
 " Your most humble and obedient servant, 
 
 " Thomas Hanmer." 
 
 The bishop's strictures on this charge, which was 
 to have been printed in the " Biographia Britannica," 
 if the sheet had not been cancelled, do not exhibit 
 much episcopal meekness.
 
 222 history of the 
 
 " Sir Thomas Hanmer's letter from Mildenliall to 
 Oxford is one continued falsehood from beginning to 
 end ! It is false that my acquaintance began upon an 
 application from me to him. It began on an applica- 
 tion of the present Bishop of London to me, in behalf 
 of Sir Thomas Hanmer, and, as I understood it, at Sir 
 Thomas Hanmer's desire. The thing speaks for itself. 
 It was publicly known that I had written notes on 
 Shakspeare, because part of them were printed ; few 
 people knew that Sir Thomas had ; I certainly did 
 not know ; nor, indeed, whether he was living or dead. 
 The falsehood is still viler, because it skulks only under 
 an insinuation, that I made a journey to him to Mil- 
 denliall without invitation, whereas it was his earnest 
 and repeated request, as appears by his letters, which 
 I have still by me. It is false that the views of interest 
 began to show themselves in me to this disinterested 
 gentleman. My resentment at Sir Thomas Hanmer's 
 behaviour began on the following occasion. 
 
 " A bookseller in London, of the best reputation, 
 had wrote me word that Sir Thomas Hanmer had 
 been with him, to propose his printing an edition of 
 Shakspeare, on the following conditions : — Of its 
 being pompously printed with cuts (as it afterwards 
 was at Oxford), at the expense of the said bookseller, 
 who, besides, should pay one hundred guineas, or 
 some such sum, to a friend of his (Sir Thomas's), 
 who had transcribed the glossary for him. But the 
 bookseller, understanding that he had made use of 
 many of my notes, and that I knew nothing of the 
 project, thought fit to send me this account. On 
 which I wrote to Sir Thomas, upbraiding him with 
 his behaviour, and demanding out of his hands all 
 the letters 1 had written to him on the subject, which
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 223 
 
 lit* unwillingly complied with, after cavilling about the 
 right of property in those letters, for -which he had 
 (he said) paid the postage ! When the bookseller 
 would not deal with him upon those terms, he applied 
 to the University of Oxford, and was at the expense 
 of his purse in procuring cuts for his edition, and at 
 the expense of his reputation in employing a number 
 of my emendations on the text without my knowledge 
 or consent ; and this behaviour was what occasioned 
 Mr. Pope's perpetuating the memory of the Oxford 
 edition of Shakspeare in the Dunciad. 
 
 " W. Warburton. 
 " Gloucester, Jan. 29th, 1761." 
 
 " The reader," Sir Henry Bunbury well remarks, 
 " will observe that this coarse and furious answer did 
 not issue from the pen of the polemical bishop till 
 fifteen years after the death of Hanmer, when no reply 
 could be made, no documents could be produced, to 
 establish the good faith of the deceased baronet. But 
 looking back at the end of ninety years to the evi- 
 dence which remains, I feel myself convinced that 
 Warburton's posthumous charges were false and 
 calumnious." 
 
 In his latter days, Sir Thomas Hanmer was much 
 esteemed and highly respected, and he would have 
 gone to his grave happy, as well as honoured, if it 
 had not been for the error before alluded to, in form- 
 ing his second marriage. He and his young wife had 
 been ill suited to each other — "joined, not matched," 
 and his annoyances were not ended by her elopement 
 and death. The book published by Mr. Hervey 
 (which tended to cast a good deal of painful ridicule 
 on the old baronet), and the litigated claims of Lady 
 Hanmer's child, embittered the last years of his life.
 
 224 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 The correspondence with Warburton was not his sole 
 epistolary vexation. The honourable Mr. Hervey, 
 having procured from his runaway wife all the right 
 she could give him to an estate at Barton, wrote the 
 following extraordinary letter to Sir Thomas after her 
 death, on learning that he was about to sell the timber 
 on the estate :- — 
 
 " Sir, — Having had an intimation at your door, 
 that it would be of little use to me to multiply my 
 visits, I thought it necessary to give you this trouble. 
 As to your pretended quarrel to me, on my behaviour 
 to your wife, I am proud of having done nothing 
 towards you, but what any man of the strictest honour 
 might have done ; nothing towards her, but what any 
 generous and well-natured man ought to have done ; 
 and you know, as she had sense and spirit enough at 
 last to assert her freedom, you ought to thank heaven 
 that she happened to throw herself into the arms of a 
 son of Lord Bristol ! I waited on you, sir, to ask a 
 piece of justice of you, not a favour ; for of all man- 
 kind you are the last person to whom I would be 
 obliged. I am informed that you have sent orders 
 into Wales to cut down all the timber upon the estate 
 of which I have the reversion, the execution whereof 
 I hoped to respite, by remonstrating to you, that it 
 would have been a little more becoming you as a 
 gentleman to have offered me the refusal of it. 
 Nevertheless, I am still desirous to purchase the 
 wood,'' &c. 
 
 To this peculiarly cool billet from the seducer of 
 his wife, Sir Thomas wrote the following formal 
 reply :— 
 
 "Sir, — I little thought I should have been laid under 
 the necessity of denying you admittance to my house,
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 225 
 
 and of declining any correspondence with you, because 
 I imagined it impossible that you should ever seek 
 either. To hear that called a demand of justice., which 
 you now make the subject of your letter, is another 
 surprise to me, for, I think I have the common right 
 of all mankind to dispose as I please of my own, which 
 right I shall exercise without asking any person's 
 consent, and therefore my answer must be, that I am 
 inclined to deal with others for the wood I have to sell 
 rather than with you. 
 
 " I am, your humble servant, 
 
 "Thomas Hanmer." 
 
 " December 12th, 1741." 
 
 "I do not wonder," rejoined the impudent libertine, 
 " at your asserting your natural rights with so much 
 warmth, it seems you have so few to spare/' 
 
 To compensate for such abuse, the literary baronet 
 was fed with "soft dedication" all day long, and propi- 
 tiated by such flattery as the following lines in Broome's 
 epistle to Fenton — 
 
 " Unhallow'd feet o'er awful Tully tread, 
 And Hyde and Plato join the vulgar dead ; 
 And all the glorious aims that can employ 
 The soul of mortals must with Hanmer die ! " 
 
 Sir Thomas Hanmer died May 7, 1746, in his 69th 
 year, and was interred with his ancestors in the church 
 of Hanmer, in Flintshire. His epitaph, by Dr. Friend, 
 master of Westminster school, was composed in the 
 lifetime of Sir Thomas, and found in his edition of 
 Shakspeare after his death. The executors inferred 
 from this that it had received his approbation, and 
 accordingly put it on his monument. 
 
 VOL. I. Q,
 
 226 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 " Paulatim se a publicis consiliis in otium recipiens 
 Inter literarum amcenitates, 
 Inter anteactae vitae haud insuaves recordations, 
 Inter amicorum convictus et amplexus 
 Honorifice consenuit." 
 
 No dates are given — he is called with truth et orator 
 gravis et pressus ! " 
 
 This superb classical inscription was paraphrased in 
 the " Gentleman's Magazine" for May, 1747, by Dr. 
 Johnson, in the following, among other, sonorous lines : 
 
 " In life's first bloom his public toils began 
 At once commenc'd the senator and man : 
 In business dext'rous, weighty in debate, 
 Thrice ten long years he labour 'd for the state ; 
 In every speech persuasive wisdom flow'd, 
 In every act refulgent virtue glow'd ; 
 Suspended faction ceased from rage and strife, 
 To hear his eloquence and praise his life : 
 Resistless merit fix'd the senate's choice, 
 Who hail'd him speaker with united voice ; 
 Illustrious age ! how bright thy glories shone, 
 When Hanmer fill'd the chair and Anne the throne." 
 
 With Spencer Compton commenced the perma- 
 nent character of the speaker. Elected unanimously 
 on the accession of George I., he was continued during 
 his entire reign ; the weakness of opposition forbid- 
 ding all hope of obtaining a more favourable president. 
 His rank has been exalted and efficiency promoted by 
 this permanency. With one exception, made under 
 peculiar circumstances (that of Sir Fletcher Norton) 
 there has been no attempt before the Reform Bill to 
 expel even an obnoxious speaker, or anticipate the 
 vacancy which a voluntary resignation might occasion. 
 Mr. Compton was the third son of James, third Earl 
 of Northampton, and born in 1G76. p Returned to 
 
 p Memoirs of the Kit Cat Club.
 
 HOUSE OP COMMONS. 227 
 
 Parliament for Eye, when travelling on the continent, 
 in his twenty-second year, he made an early display 
 of worldly wisdom by deserting the principles of 
 his family, which had been for generations tory. He 
 was rewarded by the whigs, in 1705, with the post of 
 chairman of the committee of privileges and elections, 
 and, as a proof of addiction to their politics, was ap- 
 pointed one of the managers of Sacheverell's impeach- 
 ment. In a letter to Walpole, so early as 1704, he 
 shows himself closely identified with the secret counsels 
 of the party : " Not having heard from you since I 
 writ last, I was in hopes to see you in town by this 
 time (October 12th) ; if a letter would not be too 
 great a trouble, I should be glad to know whether you 
 design to be in town at the opening of the session. 
 It is now reported afresh that Harley will quit the 
 chair, that the court will set up the solicitor Harcourt, 
 but that the other tories will try for Mr. Bromley. I 
 do not know whether you will think this contest worth 
 your attendance, but sure some good may be struck 
 out of this division, I hope, therefore, you will not 
 disappoint your friends, who all desire your coming, but 
 none with more earnestness and sincerity than yours, 
 
 "Sp. Compton." 
 The active whig partizan, with whom he corres- 
 ponded on such terms of political friendship, was soon 
 afterwards a rival for the favour of the crown. Main- 
 wiring writes in January, 1 7 10, q "Mr. Horace Walpole 
 came to us this morning, and says it was an unfortu- 
 nate thing for his brother that he was out of town, 
 for he had found out that Mr. Smith, who, it was 
 generally thought, would have succeeded Sir Thomas 
 Littleton, would not accept the place of treasurer of the 
 
 q Coxe's Walpole. 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 navy, and he had reason to believe his brother would 
 be very glad of it, and since the person now most 
 talked of for it was Mr. Compton, he thought there 
 would be no competition between two people, whose 
 merits and late behaviour have been so different, if his 
 brother's inclinations were known." Agreeably to 
 this prediction, Walpole was chosen to the vacancy. 
 It seemed his fate through life to baffle and outstrip 
 the less able competitor, but, as in the race of the 
 hare and tortoise, to be outstripped at the goal. On 
 the accession, Walpole's hopes embraced higher objects 
 of ambition than the speakership, for which indeed his 
 recent expulsion from the House for venality formed 
 no fitting introduction. This formidable antagonist 
 removed, Mr. Compton with unanimous assent was 
 forcibly inducted into the chair. His address of 
 apology, on being presented to the king, he framed 
 according to the old-fashioned receipt of absurd self- 
 depreciation which the good sense of the age had not 
 yet made obsolete, "I have neither memory to retain, 
 judgment to collect, nor skill to guide their debates. " r 
 On announcing his majesty's approval of the Com- 
 mons' choice, the modest speaker turned a compliment 
 with better grace, "that his majesty had thus given 
 proof that he would never deny anything that can be 
 asked of him by his faithful Commons, because it will 
 be impossible for them ever to make a request that 
 could be more reasonably refused." His speech on 
 presenting the money bills deserved the compliment 
 paid to it for its rhetorical skill, of being registered on 
 the journals. It expressed " the Commons' abhorrence 
 of a popish Pretender, concerning whom nothing re- 
 mains unsuspected, but his bigotry to superstition 
 
 r Journals, vol. xvi.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 229 
 
 and his hatred to our holy religion." On occasions 
 of pomp and ceremony, the speaker appears to have 
 rounded his periods with facility and grace. When 
 appointed to return the thanks of the House to the 
 managers of the impeachment against the Earl of 
 Macclesfield for the faithful discharge of their trust, 
 the speaker enlarged upon their merits with a richness 
 of rhetoric that verged on eloquence. " Gentlemen, 
 you have maintained the charge of the Commons with 
 that force of argument, beauty of expression, and 
 strength of reason, as would have gained you the 
 highest applause in the most flourishing of the Grecian 
 republics, and I may add — But I shall not enlarge 
 further on this part of your praise, being sensible that 
 I am not able to express myself in a manner suitable 
 to the dignity of the subject ; your own tongues are 
 only equal to such an undertaking, and, were I able to 
 do it, your modesty would not permit it. You have 
 stopped the cries of orphans, and dried up the tears of 
 the widow, even those who must ever be insensible of 
 the benefits they receive, idiots, and lunatics, (and 
 such only can be insensible of them) will be partakers 
 of the fruits of your labours. " s 
 
 The whole address was framed in the same elo- 
 quent spirit, and deserves the place in the journals, in 
 which an applausive audience voted its insertion, far 
 more than the set orations of his predecessors. Of 
 another part of his functions, — the duty to maintain 
 order, — the speaker formed (one should imagine, from 
 an anecdote communicated by his successor Onslow) 
 but an inadequate notion.* "It is reported of Sir 
 Spencer Compton that he used to answer a member, 
 who called upon him to make the House quiet, for 
 • Parliamentary History, vol. viii. l Hatsell, Art. Speaker.
 
 230 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 that he had a right to be heard ; ' No, Sir ! you have 
 a right to speak, but the House have a right to judge 
 whether they will hear you.' " " In this," continues Mr. 
 Onslow, " the speaker certainly erred : the member has 
 a right to speak, and the House ought to attend to 
 him ; and it is the speaker's duty to endeavour for that 
 purpose to keep them correct ; but, where the love of 
 talking gets the better of modesty and good sense, 
 and which sometimes happens, it is a duty very dif- 
 ficult to execute in a large and popular assembly, and 
 indeed the House are very seldom inattentive to a 
 member who says any thing worth their hearing." 
 
 To the maintenance of decorum, the speaker's 
 formal and solemn manner, set off with a majestic 
 presence and sonorous voice, largely contributed ; 
 whilst they seemed to denote greater extent of know- 
 ledge and more profundity of wisdom than he could 
 in reality claim. u These useful attributes, to [which 
 might be added a strict application to business, a 
 rigid observance of state ceremonial, and a punctuality 
 to the minute of time in appointments, rendered the 
 fortunate whig an especial favourite both with the 
 king and Prince of Wales,™ who classed such useful 
 qualities among the cardinal virtues. In 1721, the 
 speaker contrived to combine the lucrative offices of 
 treasurer of Chelsea Hospital and paymaster of the 
 navy — a union of salaries which might have drawn 
 down on his head the odium of partiality and depend- 
 ence on ministers, had the contending parties been 
 equally balanced ; but the preponderance of the whigs 
 
 ■ Fox's joke on Thurlow might be applied to the speaker, — 
 " that he must have been an impostor, for that no one ever was 
 so wise as he looked." 
 
 w Coxe's Walpolo.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 231 
 
 was too decided to call forth the imputation of favour- 
 itism. Following this questionable precedent, Mr. 
 Onslow for some time united the incompatible situa- 
 tion of treasurer of the navy with that of speaker, 
 but at length resigned his appointment under the 
 crown, that he might not appear obnoxious to court 
 favour.* 
 
 Next to Lord Scarborough, none stood higher in 
 the estimation of the prince than Sir Spencer Comp- 
 ton, though his influence and counsels were exerted 
 in vain to dissuade his avaricious patron from allow- 
 ing his name to be cried in the streets during the 
 South Sea mania, as governor of the copper company J 
 The bait of the £40,000, that he gained, by the sanc- 
 tion of his name, from the luckless subscribers, was 
 stronger than all Compton's dissuasives, which may 
 possibly not have been urged beyond the courtly point 
 of objection. 2 
 
 The king's death opened a prospect of high prefer- 
 ment to the prudent favourite. When the sudden 
 news of this event was announced to the Prince of 
 Wales, on awakening from his afternoon slumber, by 
 the subtle and submissive Sir Robert Walpole., kneel- 
 ing down and kissing his hand, he answered abruptly 
 to the question — ■" whom his majesty would be pleased 
 to appoint to draw up the declaration to the privy 
 council," — " Compton!" As this was the act of the 
 prime minister, Walpole, we are told a , quitted the 
 apartment with a mortifying certainty of instant dis- 
 
 x Hatsell. r Coxe's Walpole. 
 
 z In one of Swift's letters at this period, he writes with dry 
 humour, " I make blunders now ; in writing speaker, I put an n 
 for a p (sneaker)." 
 
 a Coxe's Walpole.
 
 232 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 missal. On acquainting Compton with the king's 
 commands, he found that minister totally unprepared 
 with the forms of etiquette and methods of expres- 
 sion used on these occasions. The certainty of such 
 elevation must have presented itself to the speaker in 
 many former musings ; and yet, with singular impro- 
 vidence, he would seem to have neglected mastering 
 the first elements of his duty. But similar slothful 
 negligence, — the " crassa negligentia" of lawyers, — is 
 not infrequent with statesmen of that age. 
 
 Though George I. could not converse in English, 
 and spoke wretched Latin, not one of his ministers, 
 with the exception of Lord Carteret, thought of learn- 
 ing, from interest, the royal language which so many 
 now voluntarily undertake for pleasure b . 
 
 The speaker was accordingly compelled to submit 
 to the humiliation of soliciting the minister to prepare 
 the declaration to the privy council. Walpole at once 
 complied, and carried the document to the king, but 
 could not resist letting the queen into the secret of his 
 rival's incompetency. Queen Caroline entertained 
 the highest possible opinion of Walpole's abilities as a 
 financier. In her conversations with the late king on 
 politics at the Chapel Royal (for this was the manner 
 in which "the most religious king" performed his 
 devotions), in answer to her remark, that a want of 
 funds would compel him to disband his Hanoverian 
 troops, George 1. had replied, — " Oh no! Walpole 
 can turn stones into gold!" The lively impression 
 thus created in his favour, was strengthened by the 
 offers which he made, of carrying through the House 
 an augmentation of £130,000 to the civil list, and of 
 obtaining from parliament a jointure for the queen of 
 
 b Lord J. Russell's History of Europe.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 233 
 
 £100,000 a-year, Compton only venturing to promise 
 £60,000. Her influence over the royal mind, always 
 great, and now strenuously exerted, at length wrung 
 a promise from her consort, that, if the change could 
 be effected without any forfeiture of his word, Sir 
 Robert Walpole should not be cashiered. 
 
 The weakness and fears of the expectant premier 
 w r ere played upon with equal cleverness and despatch. 
 The queen, in Walpole's presence, repeated to Comp- 
 ton the intimation of the king's pleasure that he should 
 be placed at the head of the treasury, and Sir Robert 
 expressed his cheerful acquiescence in the arrange- 
 ment, not affecting to conceal the arduous nature of 
 the duty he w r as undertaking. The speaker yielding 
 to a sudden panic, and conscious of his rival's supe- 
 riority, shed tears, as he declared, with deep gratitude 
 for his master's kindness, his incapacity to preside 
 over the government. While this drama was thus 
 admirably acted in the closet, the door of his house 
 in St. James's-square was besieged by persons of all 
 ranks, w T ho crowded to pay their court to the new 
 minister. As Walpole returned in triumph from the 
 court to his house on the other side of the square, he 
 observed laughingly to a friend who sat in the carriage 
 with him, " Did you notice how my house is deserted, 
 and how that door is surrounded with carriages ? 
 To-morrow the scene will be changed, his door-way 
 w r ill be vacant and mine will be more frequented than 
 ever." It would have been superfluous for the his- 
 torian to state that his prophecy was fulfilled. d To 
 
 « Coxe's Walpole. 
 
 a In the Suffolk Correspondence is a letter from Swift to Patty 
 
 Blount. " How will you pass this summer for want of a squire to 
 
 Ham Common or Walpole Lodge ? for as to Richmond Lodge or 
 
 Marble Hill, they are abandoned as much as Sir Spencer Compton 1"
 
 234 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 console the ex-speaker for the absence of the venal train, 
 he was raised to the peerage by three steps of promo- 
 tion at a time, made Earl of Wilmington, and a Knight 
 of the Garter, on the restoration of that noble order. 
 But no patent or ribbon could reconcile the discarded 
 statesman to the disappointment of his ambition ; and, 
 brooding over the mortification into which he fancied 
 himself cajoled by over-sensitiveness, he caballed to 
 overthrow the premier. 
 
 " He entered," writes Horace Walpole, " into a 
 secret league with Mr. Pulteney, which Sir Robert 
 discovered by the means of Pulteney's gentleman, who 
 betrayed to him the letter he was carrying from his 
 master to Lord Wilmington. e As this was soon after 
 a treaty between them, Lord Wilmington was much 
 shocked, when the premier reproached him with it, 
 and continued so steady for the future, that, when the 
 famous motion was made against that minister, he 
 went to the House of Lords with a blister on his head, 
 after having been confined to his bed for some days 
 with a fever ! His fidelity had been confirmed by the 
 post of president of the council, but was still of an 
 unstable character. How little reliance could be placed 
 on the faith of his attachment by the trading politicians 
 of the day is amusingly shewn in the following 
 letter of Bubb Doddington, as characteristic of that 
 hoary apostle of corruption, as the most exact likeness 
 could have been. f "Remember, my very good 
 lord, how dear your over-caution fourteen years ago 
 cost your country, and then let me, with the utmost 
 humility, with the most unfeigned duty and respect, 
 with the most sincere and unaffected desire of pardon 
 
 c Lord Orford's Reminiscences. 
 1 Goxe's Walpole — Dotldington's Diary.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 235 
 
 for this great liberty, and with assurances to induce 
 you to grant it, that I will never again presume so far, 
 let me humbly and earnestly, for God's sake, for the 
 sake of your own glory, for the love of your king and 
 your country, which I know is sincere and ardent in 
 you, let me intreat your lordship to go to the king 
 without loss of time, and say to him what your own 
 honour and excellent understanding shall suggest to 
 you upon the present occasion. You, and you only, 
 have all the talents and all the requisites that this 
 critical time demands, to effectuate this great event, 
 and save your country if it be to be saved." 
 
 Place and pension were all the objects contemplated 
 in this impassioned appeal ! The noble earl was not 
 addicted to laughter, or he might have chuckled over 
 this fawning sycophantic effusion, for, at the very time 
 of reading it, he had accepted the place of first lord of 
 the treasury, and knew that Doddington was not to be 
 included in the new arrangements. The imbecility of 
 the premier, who accepted a post in his dotage, for 
 which he had owned himself disqualified in his prime, 
 was keenly ridiculed by the satirical wit, Sir Charles 
 Hanbury Williams, who compared the new cabinet to 
 a blind beggar, never stirring without his cur. 
 
 " Well skilled each different way in finding', 
 Who knows all crossings, every winding, 
 By him through all the town is led, 
 And safely guided home to bed ; 
 So fares it with our treasury board, 
 Where dark and blind sits every lord, 
 From that grave thing that wears a ribbon, 
 Quite down to that grave nothing, Gibbon." S 
 
 The satirist applies the lash still more vigorously in 
 
 g Sir C. H. Williams's Works. '
 
 236 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 " A New Ode to a great number of great men newly 
 made " : — 
 
 " See yon old dull important lord 
 Who at the long'd for money-hoard 
 
 Sits first, but does not lead ; 
 His younger brethren all things make, 
 So that the Treasury's like a snake. 
 And the tail moves the head." 
 
 The prose of Williams was more envenomed than his 
 verse. In a letter to Mr. Dodsley, January, 1742-3, 
 he thus drolls on the superannuated peer — 
 " Sir, 
 
 " Though, for the generality, the books you usher 
 into the world come forth as correct as possible, yet, 
 in your edition of Dr. Young's poem, called the ' Com- 
 plaint,' or "Night Thoughts,' part 2, there is one 
 erratum so gross and apparent, that I am surprised it 
 could escape you, — 
 
 ' A Wilmington goes slower than the sun 
 And all mankind mistake their time of day.' 
 
 Now suppose you should, to use your own phrase, 
 ' dele the sun, and lege a snail,' and in the last line 
 substitute ' but ' for * and,' the verses will run thus, — 
 
 ' A Wilmington goes slower than a snail, 
 But all mankind' 
 
 (i. e. all mankind, as well as his lordship) 
 
 ' mistake the time of day.' 
 
 Which is a genteel excuse for a superannuated per- 
 son accepting such an appointment as his lordship is 
 now in. But to return to the most material error, 
 which is that of the word ' sun.' Do you believe, Mr. 
 Dodsley, that Dr. Young really thinks it necessary to 
 keep up a character of orthodoxy among his brethren, by 
 pretending to believe literally the old story of Joshua ?
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 237 
 
 Does he not yet know, from the concurrent assent of 
 all astronomers, that the sun never stirs out of his 
 place, and how can Lord Wilmington go slower than 
 that which never moves ? I really believe he could, 
 if any man in England could ; but, having so lately 
 made himself first minister, it would be hard to put 
 his lordship so soon upon attaining any more impossi- 
 bilities. Another reason why I think this sun must 
 have been a mistake, is, that no man could think of his 
 lordship and the sun in the same line. The sun shines, 
 fixed and immoveable, in his own proper sphere. Is 
 his lordship in his sphere ? Is his lordship im- 
 moveable ? Is his lordship bright ? Does he shine ? 
 Does he dazzle ? Does he enlighten ? Does he warm ? 
 or can he create ? When he retires for some short 
 time from mortal eyes to Chiswick, do men wish to 
 see his face again ? Do they wait impatiently his com- 
 ing out ? Don't they rather think it time he should 
 go out ? How could his lordship put any body in 
 mind of the sun ! There is another remarkable instance 
 in which he differs. The sun is less favourable to 
 England than to almost any other country. Whereas 
 his lordship's whole bent and study is to make glorious 
 and happy this already totally undone nation. For 
 what else but a heart entirely English could have per- 
 suaded an old, infirm, decayed, body and understand- 
 ing, high in nobility, rich in excess, and without issue, 
 to take upon himself the sole government of this hard- 
 ruled people ; but, for their good, what would he not, 
 — nay, what does he not submit to ! He stalks about 
 a first minister, — not like the sun, for he cannot show 
 us even the shadow of power; — condescends to preside 
 at a board where he has no influence ; to sit in a parlia- 
 ment where he has no utterance ; and most assiduously 
 attend a council where he has no opinion! "
 
 238 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 This scathing letter concludes with a misquotation 
 from the "Night Thoughts." 
 
 " Wits spare not heaven and Wilmington, nor thee,'' 
 
 and is signed "John Grub, Grub Street." 
 
 Dr. Young, whose complimentary verses had occa- 
 sioned the witty knight's onslaught, continued to feed 
 Compton with the delicacies of dedication, and in- 
 scribed to him one of his satires. The poet Thom- 
 son also prefixed the name of Wilmington to his 
 beautiful poem of Winter, without eliciting any solid 
 requital of the venal praise. At length, Aaron Hill 
 awakened the slumbering notice of the reluctant 
 patron by some verses, which he addressed to Thom- 
 son, and published in one of the newspapers, censur- 
 ing the great for their neglect of illustrious men. The 
 manner in which the poet was tardily rewarded illus- 
 trates the indifference and apathy, which had suc- 
 ceeded to the zealous patronage bestowed by states- 
 men of the last age upon genius. h " I hinted to you in 
 my last/' (we cite the poet's own modest letter,) " that 
 on Saturday morning, I was with Sir Spencer Compton. 
 A certain gentleman, without my desire, spoke to 
 him concerning me, his answer was ' I had never 
 come near him.' Then the gentleman put the 
 question, if he desired that I should wait on him : he 
 returned answer he did. On this the gentleman gave 
 me an introductory letter to him. He received me 
 in what they commonly call a civil manner, asked 
 me some common-place questions, and made me a 
 present of twenty guineas. I am very ready to 
 own, that the present was larger than my performance 
 deserved." 1 
 
 A less sum, it is not improbable, would have been 
 
 11 D'Isracli's Calamities of Authors. 
 'Dr. Johnson's Life of Thomson.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 239 
 
 more warmly welcomed, had the donor, in conferring 
 his obligation, consulted more the spirit of a gentle- 
 man. The speaker seems to have put the dedication 
 in his debtor and creditor account, and to have treated 
 the author of the Seasons with about as much patri- 
 cian hauteur, as he would have done the master 
 tradesman who had called for his bilL This frigid 
 patron, deluded into grasping at the shadow of power 
 long after he had lost the reality, persevered in attend- 
 ing a council at which his opinions and wishes were 
 constantly overruled, till his death, July 4th, 1743, 
 but died first lord of the treasury, an earl, and K.G. 
 The following extract from a letter of Lord Orford's to 
 Pelham gives a truer notion of the esteem in which 
 Lord Wilmington was held, than the blazonry on his 
 monument. " The first turn Lord Bath will take will 
 be to secure a continuance of the present treasury, 
 and make, if he can, an arrant Wilmington of you, that 
 is an arrant nobody/' A political friendship of fifty 
 years' standing could pronounce no worthier epitaph.
 
 240 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Before considering the privileges still claimed by 
 the speaker, interwoven with the dignity and inde- 
 pendence of the House of Commons, and essential to 
 the perfect discharge of their high duties, it will be 
 interesting to review those extravagant abuses of 
 power, long since obsolete, which they formerly 
 usurped. Their demand of wages — a perquisite, 
 rather than a privilege — however unsuited to modern 
 notions of propriety, was once thought by no means 
 unworthy " Goodman Burgess," and had one advan- 
 tage at least, that of securing a punctual attendance, 
 each representative being amerced of his wage for the 
 days on which he might be absent. 
 
 It would appear, from the curious collection of 
 writs de expensis made by Sir F. Palgrave, that the 
 sums demanded by knights of the shire were not 
 always uniform. Sometimes one knight receives 3s. 
 a-day wage, and his colleague, also designated miles, 
 20d. only. The writ de expensis for Thomas de 
 Luda, and Johannes de Sonninghall, in February, 
 1324, includes a charge of fourteen marks for twenty- 
 four days' attendance at the parliament, and two days' 
 coming, and two days' returning, at the rate of 3s. 4d. 
 each per diem. There is a record of the sherhT of
 
 HISTORY OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 241 
 
 Somersetshire being attached to answer for having 
 assessed the wages of one of the knights of the shire 
 at 16c?. a-day only. For this incongruity, the learned 
 collector of the writs states that no reason can be 
 assigned. It may be conjectured, indeed, though 
 with extreme diffidence, where such a diligent anti- 
 quarian is at fault, that the less payment was the 
 condition of an express agreement before election 
 between the knight and his constituents. 
 
 We read a presentment by the grand jury for the 
 wapentake of West Derby, a.d. 1320, " that the sheriff 
 of Lancashire had returned two knights without the 
 assent of the county, and had levied £20 for their 
 expenses ; whereas the county could, by their own 
 election, have found two good and sufficient men, who 
 would have gone to parliament for ten marks, or at 
 the most for £10." The counties in general appear 
 to have been very reluctant in their payments. In 
 1311, a second writ de expensis was issued to the 
 sheriff of Kent, " to make the levy, or show cause 
 why he had not executed the writ." The sheriff 
 made a return, " that at various county courts he 
 had caused the men, almost all of whom held by 
 gavelkind tenure, to assemble ; that at three succes- 
 sive county courts they had declared unanimously 
 that they were not in any manner bound to contribute 
 to the expenses of the knights of the shire, nor could 
 they, and that there were only very few freeholders in 
 the county, and from whom the expenses could not be 
 levied." 
 
 In proportion to the reluctance with which the 
 represented gave, was the eagerness with which their 
 representatives exacted the gift. Henry IV. having 
 summoned a parliament in the fourteenth year of his 
 
 VOL. I. R
 
 242 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 reign, and died before they had passed a single act, or 
 even fulfilled that law of their being, — the granting a 
 supply — the knights and burgesses petitioned his suc- 
 cessor for their writs cle expensis*. A demur was 
 made at the royal treasury, that the worthy members 
 had not entitled themselves to any wages, as nothing 
 had been done ; and the monarch gave an evasive 
 reply, tantamount to a refusal, that " if any precedent 
 could be found, allowance of their fees should be 
 made." 
 
 Thrifty boroughs and economical corporations ap- 
 pear to have been in the habit of driving hard bargains 
 with their would-be members. There has been pre- 
 served a curious indenture of agreement 15 between 
 John Strange, member for Dunwich, and his constitu- 
 ents, so far back as a.d. 1463, by which it is witnessed 
 that " John Strange granteth by these presents to be 
 one of the burgesses for Dunwich, at the parliament to 
 be holden at Westminster, for which, whether it hold 
 for longer time or short, or whether it fortune to be 
 prorogued, the said John Strange granteth no more to 
 be taken for his wages than a cade full of herrings, 
 and a half-barrel full of herrings, to be delivered on 
 Christmas next coming." Still better terms were 
 insisted on, with the progress of refinement, by the 
 cunning corporation of Westbury c . " One Thomas 
 Long, a very simple man, and unfit to serve, had crept 
 into queen Elizabeth's parliament of 1571. When 
 questioned how he came to be elected, he confessed 
 1 that he gave the mayor of Westbury and another, £4 
 for his place.' " The House was greatly shocked, in 
 those primitive days, at the notion of their member 
 
 * Coke's Institutes. b Dwarris on the Statutes. 
 
 c Sir Symonds D'Ewcs
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 243 
 
 paying, instead of being paid, for a seat, and imme- 
 diately ordered the mayor and town council to dis- 
 gorge the money, to appear to answer such things as 
 should be objected against them, and to suffer a 
 penalty of £20 for their scandalous attempt. 
 
 The origin of the custom of allowing w r ages is 
 traced by Barrington d to the great uncertainty which 
 prevailed when parliaments were young, of the place 
 where they would be held, the writ of summons being 
 fixed capriciously, at one time for York, at another 
 for Westminster. The cost of travelling made it 
 reasonable that a member should be allow r ed some 
 stipend. When a parliament met at Carlisle, as in 
 the times of Edward II., the expense of the journey 
 and the return, would more than absorb, in the vast 
 majority of instances, the customary scanty allowance : 
 4s. a-day for the knight of the county, and 2s. for any 
 citizen or burgess. The sum of 4s. a-day during the 
 session, to which there soon grew up a usage of 
 adding the charges in going and returning, equivalent 
 to 20s. at the present standard, pressed heavily in 
 those times of petty trade and slender profits on the 
 electors of poor counties and of small towns, which 
 petitioned to be exempt from this onerous representa- 
 tion. They discarded the expensive boon with as 
 much alacrity as modern boroughs have sought to 
 acquire it. Upon the larger corporate towns the 
 burden was prolonged for several centuries, and is 
 confirmed by various statutes 6 . In their unchecked 
 abuse of the public purse, the remnant of the Long 
 Parliament ventured to quadruple the statutory pro- 
 vision for members, and divided a bonus to each of 
 £4 a-w T eek. 
 
 d Barrington ou the Statutes. 
 e The last statute is 35th Henry VIII., c. 11. 
 
 R 2
 
 244 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 At length members themselves began to be ashamed 
 of being classed among stipendiaries : they would not 
 avail themselves of an odious statute, and in the pen- 
 sioner parliament, burdened with sufficient opprobrium 
 without this miserable pittance, they threw off altogether 
 the badge of degradation. In March, 1676, the pres- 
 byterian knight, Sir Harbottle Grimston, moved for 
 leave to bring in a bill to repeal the statute of wages, 
 and desired it might be in particular for Colchester, 
 the place he served for. A writ had gone down from 
 Sir John Shaw, his fellow-burgess, to receive his wages 
 for service done in parliament, and the town was in 
 confusion. The debate which ensued curiously marks 
 the rising sense of shame in some, and the dogged sel- 
 fishness of other honourable members. " e Mr. Powle 
 computed they had sat in that parliament 3000 days, 
 which would be £600, and wages might be due in pro- 
 rogations as well as adjournments. Sir Robert Sawyer 
 suggested they should give up all but the last two 
 years, for which selfish proposition, as it afterwards 
 proved, he was sharply rebuked by Mr, Boscawen, 
 who did not know why Sawyer, who had been but two 
 years, should give away his wages, that had been six- 
 teen years. Hereafter should boroughs be put out 
 of fear, they will choose their own burgesses, blue 
 aprons, and choose gentlemen no more. Mr. Love, 
 one of the members for the city, confessed with 
 much ingenuousness, ' that he had never received any 
 wages from his constituents, nor demanded any, 
 because he thought he never deserved any at their 
 hands.' 
 
 " The loss of wages," Sir John Birkenhead 
 argued, " is the only punishment the law has made for 
 the absence of parliament-men from their attendance." 
 
 e Grey's Debates.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 245 
 
 " Sir Richard Temple would have the bill go without 
 a clay for a second reading. 'Tis a reflection on the 
 House to discharge the wages by law ; it should be a 
 free-will offering. Wages have been scarce received 
 these eighty or one hundred years." " Some in the 
 House," said Waller, and the amiable poet might 
 glance at his own condition, " some are so poor, and 
 some of the boroughs so rich, that to force men not to 
 take wages would not be equal justice." The manner 
 in which the bill came to be read a second time forms 
 a striking proof of members' sensibility to shame. 
 
 " It endured a long argument," writes Marvel to 
 his constituents^ " insomuch, that when the question 
 was put for a second reading, a gentleman who had 
 disapproved of the bill, deceiving himself by the noise 
 of the negative vote, required the division of the 
 House, but so considerable a number of the affirmatives 
 went out for it, that all the rest in a manner followed 
 after them, notwithstanding their own votes, and there 
 were scarce either tellers, or men to be told, left behind, 
 so that it will have a second reading." The bill was 
 silently dropt, but a feeling of pride prevailed with the 
 great majority to waive these obnoxious and paltry, 
 and almost obsolete, claims. It is no reproach to the 
 memory of Andrew Marvel, that he should have been 
 the last who exacted the provisions of the old statute, 
 e for he preferred honest poverty to a courtier's corrupt 
 wealth, and the cold meat of yesterday to luxurious 
 viands at the expense of his country's freedom. The 
 patriot who spurned Danby's bribe of a note for 
 £1000, when that corrupt minister scaled his garret, 
 
 1 Marvel's Works, vol. i. 
 
 * Note. — The worthy burgesses were not only good paymasters, 
 but sent their members a yearly present of a barrel of ale. Writing 
 a joint letter of business to the mayor, December 1660, they say, 
 " We must first give you thanks for the kind present you ha Vc
 
 240 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 might well demand his shillings from a body of con- 
 stituents to whose interests he devoted his time, and 
 whose public rights he would not sell or barter. 
 
 This discontinuance of receiving pay according to 
 good old custom did not take place without the sup- 
 pressed murmurs, the complaints not loud but deep, 
 of all those who upheld things as they were, the lauda- 
 tores temporis acti. The gossip Pepys records in his 
 Diary, "At dinner with Pemberton, North, &c, had 
 a good deal of good discourse about parliament, their 
 number being uncertain, and always at the will of the 
 king to increase, as he saw reason to erect a new 
 borough. But all concluded, the bane of the parlia- 
 ment hath been the leaving off the old custom of the 
 places allowing wages to those that served them in 
 parliament, by which they chose men that understood 
 their business, and would attend to it, and then could 
 expect an account, but now they cannot." 
 
 Time has proved the fallacy of these regrets, and 
 the members have gained in dignity far more than 
 they have lost in pelf. At the Revolution, when all 
 chimerical schemes of improvement were afloat, a 
 pamphlet, attributed to the republican Colonel Wild- 
 man, suggested h that each senator should have for his 
 salary or maintenance £1000 a-year. " The charge," 
 he argues, " is a trifle. There is more spent in some 
 monarchies on hawks, hounds, &c." This munificent 
 proposal, which would offer too tempting a bait to 
 eloquent political adventurers, fell to the ground 
 unheeded at the time, to be revived after the lapse of 
 a century and a half, among other new fantasies of 
 popular excitement. 
 
 pleased to Bend us, which will give occasion to us to remember you 
 often, but the quantity is so great that it might make sober men for- 
 g< tful. ' h Somcrs Tracts, vol. n.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 247 
 
 The privileges of parliament, as formerly exerted, 
 grasped at a larger sphere of patronage than wealth, 
 and the most flagrant abuse usurped by both Houses 
 was that of written protections. As the persons of 
 members and of their servants were protected from 
 actions or suits, as well as from arrest, they made this 
 privilege a matter of barter, and extended it to any 
 needy friend or retainer who might require a temporary 
 shelter, granting him, however respectable in station, 
 a certificate that he was their servant. The journals 
 prove this to have been a flagrant departure from the 
 privilege originally set up. When the servant of Mr. 
 Hall (a member) was arrested in 1575, the Commons 
 found no precedent for setting at large a servant by 
 the mace, but only by writ, and every member used to 
 take a corporal oath before the lord chancellor that the 
 party for whom such writ was prayed came up with 
 him, and was his servant at the time of the arrest. 
 The House, we are told, freed the servant by the mace, 
 but, afterwards, finding that he had fraudulently pro- 
 cured this arrest, in order to be discharged of the debt 
 and execution, committed him to the Tower for a 
 month, and until he should pay £100, probably the 
 debt. 
 
 When a servant of Mr. William Cooke, a member, 
 was arrested in 1601, on his bond, and complained to 
 the speaker by letter dated " From the most loath- 
 some and unfortunate hole in the prison of Newgate," 
 Sir Robert Wroth moved to know whether Mr. Cooke 
 would affirm that man to be his servant, who stood up 
 and said, " He was one of his most necessary servants, 
 for in truth (quoth he) he is my tailor!" It must be 
 understood, that he was a menial plying needle and 
 thread for the use of the household, according to a
 
 248 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 custom far from uncommon among the families of 
 country gentlemen at that period. The sequel of 
 the complaint is curiously told in Townsend. 1 " The 
 person that arrested Mr. Cooke's man was brought in, 
 who after a sharp speech delivered by Mr. Speaker, 
 shewing that he had committed an heinous offence to 
 arrest any member of the House his servant, knowing 
 that both their persons, their servants, goods, and 
 everything they had were privileged during this great 
 council. How durst you presume to do it? To which 
 the poor old man answered upon his knees, ' that he 
 knew not that his master was of the House. I do 
 acknowledge I have offended, and humbly crave 
 pardon, and I protest upon my salvation I would not 
 have done it had I known his master had been privi- 
 leged." The House were satisfied with this abject 
 apology, and discharged him paying his fees. 
 
 In 1624 the earl marshal made a report to the 
 Upper House, from the committee of privileges, 
 appointed to enquire how far the privileges of the 
 nobility do clearly extend, and concerning the freedom 
 of their servants and followers from arrest. "These 
 are to extend to all their menial servants and those of 
 their family, and also those employed necessarily and 
 properly about their estates, as well as their persons. 
 This freedom to continue twenty days before and 
 after every session, in which time the Lords may 
 conveniently go home to their houses in the most 
 remote parts of the kingdom." " The Lords should 
 remember," is the warning language of the report, 
 " the ground of this privilege, which was only that they 
 should not be distracted by the trouble of their ser- 
 vants from attending to the serious affairs of the 
 
 Townsend's Proceedings of Parliament.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 249 
 
 kingdom ; that therefore they will not pervert their 
 privileges to the public injustice of the kingdom. " k 
 How soon the peers forgot this judicious admonition, 
 and abused the license, we learn from Clarendon. 
 
 "The Lords," he writes, and he might have 
 extended his complaint to the Commons, " gave their 
 protections ad libitum, which were commonly sold by 
 their servants to bankrupt citizens, and to such who 
 were able, but refused, to pay their just debts ; and 
 when their creditors knew that they could have no 
 relation of attendance to any man, and thereupon 
 caused them to be arrested, they produced some pro- 
 tection granted to them by some lord, whereupon they 
 were not only discharged, but their creditors, and all 
 who bore any part in the prosecution, w r ere punished 
 with great rigour, and to their great loss and damage, 
 and to the great prejudice of the city and inter- 
 ruption of the whole course of justice of the king- 
 dom. " l When pressed for a loan by both Houses 
 of Parliament, in November 1641, the Londoners ex- 
 pressed their readiness, but comparative inability from 
 this grievous imposition: "That by reason of the 
 privileges of the members of both Houses, and the 
 protections granted, especially by the Lords, a vast 
 sum of money is detained from them ; so that trade 
 cannot be driven, nor are they so able to lend money 
 for the service of the commonwealth, as they desired.''™ 
 
 So useful a weapon, both of defence and offence, 
 was sometimes cleverly turned by faithless dames and 
 cunning lacqueys against their lords and masters. 
 In 1663 the Commons passed a resolution, that no 
 wife or servant of any member of that House ought 
 
 k Lords' Journals, vol. iv. ' Life of Lord Clarendon, vol. i. 
 
 •" Parliamentary History, vol. ii.
 
 250 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 to have privilege of protection allowed in any case 
 against the husband of such wife or the master of 
 such servant. 11 These scandalous perversions of power 
 working general mischief, grew rapidly to such an 
 excess as to compel the reluctant animadversion of 
 the House. Mr. Benson, a member, having sold many 
 protections, taking as little for some as 16s. or 17s., 
 the House, ashamed apparently of their protections 
 being disposed of so cheaply, resolved " that Mr. Hugh 
 Benson is unworthy and unfit to be a member and 
 shall sit no longer." Andrew Marvel relates to his 
 constituents at Hull another instance of salutary rigour. 
 " Sir John Pretiman, who serves for Leicester, was 
 yesterday suspended from sitting in the House and 
 from all privilege till he find out Humes (a most 
 notorious fellow otherwise) whom he suggested to be 
 his menial servant, whereas he was a prisoner for debt, 
 and thus by Sir John's procurement has escaped his 
 creditors. The Serjeant was sent into the speaker's 
 chamber with the mace to bring him to receive the 
 sentence upon his knees at the bar. Hereupon the 
 House being disappointed (for in the meanwhile he 
 was escaped by the back door), ordered that door to 
 be nailed up for the future, have revived their votes 
 of 1663 against all paper protections, against protec- 
 tion to any but menial servants, and to-day, after a 
 long debate for expelling him, the House have for 
 some good reason, given him till the second Tuesday 
 after our next meeting to appear." This delay saved 
 the delinquent, but his offence was too rank to be 
 readily hushed up. 
 
 Constrained into an appearance of activity, the 
 
 » Journals, vol. vii. 
 w Marvel's Letter to the Mayor of Hull, April 9, 1G70.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 251 
 
 speaker in 1677 issued his mandate to supersede 
 and call in all paper protections. The messengers 
 found no less than 800 in London and Middlesex ! 
 As soon as it became noised abroad that some redress 
 might be anticipated by the petitioners, a case of 
 peculiar enormity was brought to the notice of the 
 indignant Commons — an instance of licentious daring 
 that would exceed belief, did not all experience teach 
 the lesson, how much abuse " doth grow with what 
 it feeds on." A petition was presented from Mrs. Cot- 
 tington, complaining that Colonel Wanklyn, a member, 
 protected Mr. Cottington, her husband, as his menial 
 servant, against the decision of a cause depending 
 between her and her husband about the validity of 
 their marriage at Turin in Italy, she being a native of 
 that country, and humbly praying the said protection 
 might be withdrawn. This Mr. Cottington, protected 
 as a menial servant, was living, it appeared, in the 
 character of a gentleman on an income of £2000 a- 
 year, equivalent to an estate of £6000 per annum 
 at the present standard of value. p 
 
 Colonel Wanklyn, when called upon to explain, 
 made a lame apology: " I did withdraw my protection 
 according to a promise I had made the speaker, but 
 the Bishop of Lincoln said, Mr. Cottington had re- 
 ceived a sentence in the Court of Arches contrary to 
 the law of God, and that the gentleman was under a 
 hard censure, and so I granted him my protection, but 
 revoked it on Thursday last!" This hypocritical pre- 
 tence of deferring to the opinion of the Bishop of Lin- 
 coln could not save the venal colonel from deserved 
 punishment. The subject of his delinquency and 
 doom afforded a regular field-day to the House ; as at 
 
 p Grey's Debates.
 
 252 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 a hunting party, the whole pack of senators, courtiers, 
 and country gentlemen, joined in full cry to run down 
 the started and stricken victim. He was ordered to 
 withdraw, and members seemed eager to prove their 
 own immaculate innocence by saying the most bitter 
 things against him. Even the corrupt Secretary Co- 
 ventry assumed a tone of austere virtue. " If you 
 give your members leave to protect persons against 
 judgments and sentences, when they think the judges 
 are in the wrong, the House of Commons will be a 
 great place ! " 
 
 The speaker read an old order, made when Sir 
 Edward Turner was in the chair: — " Resolved, that 
 all protections and written certificates under the hand 
 of any member of this House be void ; and that all 
 menial servants be protected only according to law, 
 and that this order be printed and published." Sir 
 Robert Sawyer declared that he had read the protec- 
 tion granted by Colonel Wanklyn, which was filed in 
 the exchequer, directed, " To all mayors, bailiffs, 
 sheriffs, &c," in as high a style as a proclamation, 
 neither to stir hand nor foot, and threatening what 
 penalty would ensue for breaking his privilege! Fired 
 at the notion of such high-handed injustice, Mr. Hale, 
 an honest country gentleman, expressed his abhorrence 
 with almost Spartan brevity : ' ' This man is not fit to 
 keep us company, and I humbly move that he may be 
 turned out of the House! " One friend alone in that 
 venal assembly, Mr. Secretary Williamson, rose to say 
 a single word against this peremptory motion, or to 
 suggest an apology for the humble voter for govern- 
 ment : " All orders, rules, and practices of granting 
 protections, have been overlooked in this House ; and 
 this man is unfortunate that he must fall for two errors :
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 253 
 
 Colonel Wanklyn has been a soldier and a commander, 
 and, therefore perhaps, the lawyers are against him." 
 To remove their reluctance to a vote of expulsion, Mr. 
 Waller suggested that he had seen twenty men in a 
 morning put out of the House, and Sir Richard Tem- 
 ple expressed a unanimous feeling, that, " To protect 
 a gentleman of £2,000 a year for a man's menial ser- 
 vant is an extraordinary thing!" 
 
 It was resolved, without a division, that granting 
 protections to persons, not menial servants, is against 
 the justice and honour of this House, and that Colonel 
 Wanklyn be expelled. The speaker, Sir Edward Sey- 
 mour, caught the tone of severity which is always conta- 
 gious in a large assembly, and suggested that the colonel 
 ought to receive his sentence of expulsion on his knees. 
 He was saved from this indignity, however, by the 
 interposition of a brother-soldier. "When pardons 
 are read/' said Colonel Titus, "in courts of justice, 
 the pardoned persons hear them read on their knees. 
 A sentence of condemnation ought to be received 
 standing." Sir Thomas Littleton agreed in this hu- 
 mane suggestion . " Wanklyn is none of you now; he 
 is cut off from you, and, therefore, it is not proper to 
 bring him on his knees to receive his sentence." The 
 unhappy colonel was then called in, and, having heard 
 his fate, to the scandal of his brother-officers, went 
 away weeping ! 
 
 It might have been reasonably expected, after this 
 mark of just severity, that a final stop would be put to all 
 traffic in counterfeit protections, but the evil had taken 
 too deep root to be at once abolished. Needy mem- 
 bers still continued to sell certificates, and persons in 
 respectable station would not scruple, on an emergency, 
 to produce their passports of safety, even though they
 
 254 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 might perchance be described in them under the mas- 
 querade guise of grooms or footmen. The journals 
 of the House disclose a continued prevalence of the 
 abuse. Soon after the Revolution, a petition was pre- 
 sented from Millicent Oddley, q stating " that she was in 
 custody for causing one Gregory to be arrested, in 
 regard he is a servant to the Lord Fairfax. That this 
 Gregory was tenant to the petitioner, who had nothing 
 to live on but her rent ; for the long arrears of which, 
 she had caused him to be arrested, he having lived in 
 her house about five or six years. That he was a sur- 
 geon ; that she did not therefore know he was his 
 lordship's servant, and never saw his lordship's certifi- 
 cate, but that she did, nevertheless, discharge her 
 tenant, as soon as she heard of the protection." The 
 House were graciously pleased to order that Millicent 
 Oddley should be discharged out of custody, paying 
 her fees ; and so the poor widow woman was fined and 
 imprisoned for enforcing a just debt against a fraudu- 
 lent debtor, and deprived of five years' rent, because 
 her tenant, a surgeon, claimed to be the menial servant 
 of a peer, and, shame to the privileges of peerage, had 
 his claim allowed ! 
 
 The dignified mischief was still connived at, and, 
 to enhance the evil, multiplied by forgery. In 1690 
 the House was informed, r that Captain Taylor and 
 Mr. Gibson had counterfeited a protection, under the 
 hand and seal of Philip Coningsby, Esq., a member ; 
 they were committed prisoners to the Gate-House, and 
 the sheriffs of Middlesex and secondaries of the city 
 of London ordered to attend, with an account of the 
 protections that had been entered in their respective 
 offices. 
 
 1 Journal?, vol. xi. r Journals, vol. xii.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 255 
 
 Reluctantly as the fact of disobedience to certain 
 solemn resolutions was thus obtruded on their notice, 
 the House, in vindication of its consistency, passed a 
 further order, that all protections and written certifi- 
 cates of members be declared void in law, and be 
 forthwith called in and withdrawn, and that none be 
 granted for the future; and that, if any shall be granted 
 by any member, such member shall be liable to the 
 censure of the House ; and that the privilege of mem- 
 bers for their menial servants be observed according to 
 law, and that if any menial servant shall be arrested 
 and detained, contrary to privilege, he shall, upon 
 complaint thereof made unto the speaker, be discharged 
 by order from him. 
 
 Even this order, though tending to suppress, was 
 not sufficient to cut down and extirpate the abuse. 
 The Bishop of St. Asaph w r as compelled to present a 
 petition, s that he wanted to serve Peter Price w T ith a 
 declaration in ejectment, but that he could not prevail 
 with any attorney to make out the record, in regard 
 that Hugh Verney, a member, protected the man, 
 though he was not a menial servant of his. So far 
 had spread the terror of this outstretching usurpation, 
 that even the valour of the ancient Britons quailed 
 before it! The order was again renewed in 1695, in 
 the self-same words ; a resolution was again voted, that 
 all written protections given by any member are void 
 and against the standing order of the House. A fur- 
 ther notice was proclaimed in the third year of George 
 I., when the nuisance was at length tardily abated, but 
 not before the propriety of extending protections to the 
 actual servants of members began, out of the walls of 
 St. Stephens, to be generally questioned. The sound 
 • Journals, vol. xiv.
 
 256 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 sense of Swift pronounced the claim to be manifestly- 
 absurd, remarking, in his wonted strain of bitter irony, 
 " that the sacred person of a senator's footman shall 
 be free from arrest, although he undoes the poor alewife 
 by running up a score, is a circumstance of equal wis- 
 dom and justice,, to avoid the great evil of his master's 
 lady wanting her complement of liveries behind the 
 coach." 
 
 The plea that a member could not dispense with 
 the attendance of a needy or dishonest servant would 
 not bear argument. Yet so reluctantly were even 
 unreasonable privileges relinquished, that the protec- 
 tion clothed these serving-men till the reign of George 
 III., and is even now named by the speaker, though 
 abolished by statute. * The origin of the claim is co- 
 eval with the sitting of parliament. The act of Henry 
 IV., which is the first instance of " privilege of parlia- 
 ment " being mentioned in the statute-book, directs a 
 specific penalty for any assault on the servant of any 
 member. Down to the close of the reign of Henry 
 VIII., the privileges claimed by the Commons were for 
 the Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses, and their menial 
 servants, or familiar es, present with them during their 
 attendance in London. The duration of these privile- 
 ges was confined to their coming, staying, and return- 
 ing to their houses. Their extent was, to be free from 
 any assault, or from arrest, or imprisonment, except 
 for treason, felony, or surety of the peace. 
 
 On the accession of the Stuarts, these prescriptive 
 rights began to be pushed with jealous eagerness to the 
 very verge of constitutional license, in exact proportion 
 to the excess with which James advanced his prerogative. 
 A remarkable incident of that period shows the violence 
 
 1 Hatsell.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 257 
 
 with which the usurping, because alarmed, Commons 
 sought to enforce their demands. On the 4th of June, 
 1621, the House is informed of Johnson, Sir James 
 Whitelocke's man, being arrested. ' The parties are 
 immediately called to the bar, and heard on their 
 knees in their defence, and, after a variety of proposi- 
 tions made for several degrees of punishment, it is 
 ordered upon the question, that they shall both ride 
 upon one horse, face blacked, back to back, from 
 Westminster to the Exchange, with papers on their 
 breasts with this inscription : " For arresting a servant 
 to a member of the Commons' House of Parliament," 
 and this to be done presently, 'sedente curia,' and this, 
 their judgment, was pronounced by Mr. Speaker, to 
 them at the bar accordingly.' 11 This very new and 
 extraordinary punishment was awarded, though it 
 appears from the journals and the parliamentary pro- 
 ceedings, that both these parties had acknowledged 
 their fault, and craved forgiveness of the House and 
 of Sir James Whitelocke. w The House, we may be 
 sure, would have been more temperate in its censures, 
 had it been convinced of their justice. 
 
 From this time the journals abound in complaints 
 of members for breaches of privilege committed on 
 the persons of their servants, a grievance more frequent 
 than any which affected themselves personally, as the 
 condition and habits of the serving-men rendered 
 them more liable to be involved in petty litigation. 
 Some of these complaints illustrate strongly the injus- 
 tice that was done. We read in the journals of one 
 captious member stating as a grievance that his servant's 
 cloak had been detained at a tavern to secure payment. 
 Neither the injured master, nor his brother members, 
 
 "Petyt's Miscclianea Parliaraentaria. "Hatsell. 
 VOL. I. S
 
 258 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 seemed to care whether the tradesman received part of 
 his bill or not, hut committed the unfortunate vintner 
 to the custody of the serjeant for contempt in detain- 
 ing the cloak, and, after some ten days' imprisonment 
 graciously discharged him, on paying his fees ! Ano- 
 ther master, a learned civilian, Dr. Steward, rose to 
 complain of his servant being committed to prison as 
 the father of an illegitimate child. The warrant had 
 been signed by four justices, during a vacation, but 
 was not executed before the commencement of the 
 session. It does not appear whether the commitment 
 was made for the offence " contra bonos mores," or on 
 the Act of Elizabeth, on the man refusing to pay for 
 the keep of the child, but as the case could not in 
 either alternative be construed into a breach of the 
 peace, the committee of privileges reported in his 
 favour. After a fruitless debate upon the expediency of 
 his paying all charges, the privileged individual escaped 
 scathless. Fortunately for the true honour and real 
 privileges of the House, these sins and follies date as 
 far back as the beginning of the 17th century, and 
 now only raise a smile at the over-jealous scruples of 
 our forefathers. x 
 
 The privilege claimed by members on their own 
 behalf, of being protected from all actions of law or 
 suits in equity, was supported by more specious argu- 
 ments of convenience, but wrought still greater injus- 
 tice. Assuming the fact that, during their attendance 
 in parliament, it was impossible for members to go 
 down to the assizes, and be present at the courts of 
 law, to prosecute or defend their causes ; and that it 
 
 * Many of the cases are collected in the excellent pamphlets of 
 Mr. Pemberton, Q.C., and Mr. Pickering on the abuses of the 
 privileges of the House of Commons.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 259 
 
 was not expedient their attention should be distracted 
 from the weighty business of the public, for which 
 they had been summoned, by avocations of a private 
 and less important nature, the representatives of the 
 people presumed to hold the law and its terrors at 
 defiance. This theory, like some of the Roman 
 Catholic superstitions, was founded on too sublime a 
 notion of the attributes and duties of members, on a 
 grand parliamentary fiction. Taking for granted that 
 a country gentleman, from the moment he was girded 
 with the sword as knight of the shire, would think of 
 nothing but public measures, spend his days in framing 
 new laws, and " sleep with a volume of the statutes 
 under his pillow"y, it might, perhaps, be conceded 
 that he should not be molested with domestic griev- 
 ances, or drawn aside from the public by private cares. 
 But, as the recess generally comprehended, till the 
 latter end of the eighteenth century, eight, or some- 
 times nine months of the year, even the dignity and 
 public abstraction of a member could not have been 
 compromised by his being permitted, when parliament 
 was not sitting, to "do justice and love mercy," to 
 settle disputes with his neighbours, and to pay his 
 poor debtors. 
 
 The judges disallowed the formal claim of the Com- 
 mons, when first set up, "not to be impleaded in any 
 personal action." Accordingly, in 1584, the House, 
 ascertaining that they should meet with difficulties, 
 if not a positive refusal, on applying to the courts at 
 Westminster, took the remedy into their own hands. 
 Upon the motion of Mr. Harris, that writs of super- 
 sedeas might be issued, divers members having writs 
 of nisi prius brought against them, to be tried at the 
 
 y The Rev. Sydney Smith's abstract idea of an M.P. 
 
 S 2
 
 260 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 assizes in sundry places of the realm, the speaker 
 was directed to write and enclose their commands to 
 the chancellor. As we hear of no further complaints, 
 it may be taken for granted that the chancellor 
 Wotton submitted to the speaker's warrant. 
 
 In February 1606, several letters were sent by 
 the then speaker to the judges of assize, for the stay 
 of suits in which members were interested, " as in 
 other like cases hath been usual;" and the speaker 
 expresses his reasons, " fearing lest the cause might 
 receive some prejudice by the absence of the member, 
 or withdraw his attendance from this great service, 
 which it is the principal care of his majesty and this 
 House to prevent." With this peremptory demand, 
 the dread of a visit from the serjeant-at-arms induced 
 the judges to comply. 
 
 Once acquiesced in, the right was speedily enforced 
 and multiplied. As the principle applied, members 
 obtained an indemnity from attending the courts of law 
 as witnesses. In 1601, Mr. Johnson addressed the 
 speaker, "I thought it my duty to inform you that 
 myself and divers others are served with subpoenas. 
 I do not this either that I am loath to answer, or 
 desire to delay justice, but to inform the House 
 thereof, lest, peradventure, it might be a precedent, 
 or some prejudice to the privilege of this House. " 
 After some dispute, an ancient member showed 
 divers precedents, how " that the minds of the mem- 
 bers ought to be freed as well as their bodies ;" 
 whereupon two members of this House were sent to 
 require the lord keeper to reverse that subpoena 2 . A 
 compulsory dispensation of the attendance of par- 
 liament men as jurors, " sedente curia,'' had been 
 'Townsend's Proceedings of Parliament.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 261 
 
 enforced some years before. " 15th Nov. 1597. Sir 
 John Tracy being at the common pleas bar to be put 
 upon a jury, the serjeant-at-arms was presently sent 
 with his mace to fetch him thence to attend his service 
 in the House a ." In May 1604, Sir Edward Mon- 
 tague, having informed the Speaker that he had been 
 warned to appear upon a trial at Guildhall the next 
 day, was voted to be entitled to privilege, because his 
 appearance must of necessity withdraw his presence 
 and attendance. In 1626, the great confessor for 
 privilege, Sir Edward Coke, standing de facto member, 
 though at the time sheriff for Bucks, was declared 
 entitled to his privilege of staying a suit in chancery, 
 commenced against him by the Lady Cleavre. Under 
 the auspices of that venerable patriot, the House of 
 Commons advanced and made good their claims to 
 extend the right of protection in its integrity over 
 an adjournment of five months. 
 
 Sir Edward Coke dictated the order, worth remark- 
 ing, from its comprehending every sort of privilege to 
 which a member of the House was at that time 
 thought to be entitled 15 , — "That, in case of any 
 arrest, or an)' distress of goods, serving any process, 
 summoning his land, citation or summoning his 
 person, arresting his person, suing him in any court, 
 or breaking any other privilege of this House, a 
 letter shall issue, under Mr. Speaker's hand, for 
 the party's relief therein, as if the parliament was 
 sitting, and the party refusing to obey it to be cen- 
 sured at the next session." It would be superfluous 
 to show how submissively these exemptions were 
 conceded to the House. The grievous hardship 
 inflicted upon all who, to their sorrow, might be 
 
 • Hakewell's Memorials of Proceedings. b Hatsell.
 
 262 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 involved in disputes with the privileged class, became 
 aggravated as the duration of parliaments increased j 
 and a statute of limitations, highly useful in itself, 
 fixed six years as the period within which personal 
 actions must be commenced. 
 
 As the pensioner parliament of Charles II. 
 lasted for seventeen years, witnesses died before an 
 action could be commenced, and all remedy for wrong 
 was denied by mere lapse of time. This iniquity 
 wrung from an honest burgess the frank confession 
 that ' ■ such a privilege was an invitation to bad men to 
 get within the shelter of parliament," that, by the 
 death of witnesses, parliament being longer than 
 formerly, litigants might lose their lands as well as 
 their debts. But public bodies of men have little con- 
 science and still less shame. The evil continued 
 without redress till some years after the Revolution 
 Of its alarming prevalence and extent some idea may 
 be formed by the following petitions selected out of 
 many score, embodying grievous sufferings at this 
 period by various unhappy victims. A petition of 
 Dame Elizabeth Windham, widow, set forth that peti- 
 tioner had joined with her late husband in settling an 
 estate in Somersetshire on his brother, Sir Francis 
 Windham, now a parliament man, with a proviso, 
 that the trustees in the settlement should, out of those 
 premises, raise and pay the petitioner £1000 within 
 three months after her husband's death. He had been 
 dead six years, yet she could not recover her £1000, 
 being obstructed therein by the present barcnet insist- 
 ing on his privilege as a parliament man. 
 
 The wrongs inflicted appear equally great, when 
 honourable members were plaintiffs, as the rights un- 
 
 L Journals vol. xii.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 263 
 
 redressed, when they were defendants. 4 In 1698, com- 
 plaint was made that James Greville had entered on 
 the estate of Sir Ralph Dutton, and felled a tree of 
 some value, an elm, and carried away great part thereof, 
 nay, had assaulted and beaten his steward. As a 
 matter of course, the party complained against was sent 
 for in custody of the serjeant. In his petition Mr. 
 Greville disclosed to the curious ear of the House a very 
 different version of the trespass imputed — that he had 
 never entered on Sir Ralph's estate at all, nor cut down 
 any tree of his, but a tree which grew on his own 
 manor, and was planted by his ancestors — that he had 
 never assaulted the steward, but that this person, with 
 five more, had come on his own ground, where he 
 was walking with a gun in his hand, which they en- 
 deavoured forcibly to take away, an act of violence, 
 that he resisted as he lawfully might. He complained 
 of having been put to great trouble and expense by 
 this frivolous information, and prayed that he might 
 be heard on the matters charged against him, and be 
 released from his confinement. 
 
 The case was referred to a committee of privilege, 
 who, having no power to administer an oath, heard 
 evidence of the most conflicting character, the state- 
 ments of interested parties, undeterred by terror of 
 perjury. One old man had been present when the elm 
 was planted by an ancestor of the petitioner; another 
 knew that the tree grew on the waste of Sir Ralph 
 Dutton's manor. One witness deposed that the peti- 
 tioner was qualified to keep a gun, having an estate of 
 above £100 a-year; another that the steward had a 
 warrant from the justice to take away his gun, as an 
 unqualified person. The committee, after patiently 
 
 d Journals, vol. xiii.
 
 264 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 listening to the evidence, came to a resolution, "That 
 Mr. Greville was not guilty of a breach of privilege in 
 aiding and abetting the cutting down the tree called 
 Forden Elm." The House at large, who had not heard 
 any evidence, disagreed by 113 v. 94, with this resolu- 
 tion of the committee, lest it should disparage their 
 member, but directed that Mr. Greville be discharged 
 out of the custody of the serjeant. Thus, as we may 
 reasonably infer, for cutting down his own tree on 
 his own grounds, a gentleman was imprisoned for 
 three weeks at a grievous cost, and, when discharged, 
 debarred of all remedy at law. 
 
 So confident had members become in this high- 
 handed tyranny, that some fancied they might commit 
 acts of trespass and (what Coke and the old champions 
 of parliamentary privilege had never dreamt of) 
 breaches of the peace with impunity. Sir Bourchier 
 Wray, baronet, an infant, presented a petition by his 
 guardians in 1697 e , stating that Sir William Williams, 
 with a great number of armed men, forcibly broke 
 open two capital houses of his deceased ancestor, 
 drove the servants out of possession, carried away all 
 the plate, furniture, and three sacks full of writings ; 
 broke open the houses of several of the tenants, and 
 drove the cattle off the premises, threatening to serve 
 all in like manner, who would not attorn to Mr. 
 Owen. To support this violence, he threatens to 
 insist on his privilege, which has had such an effect 
 that no justice of the peace will meddle in the matter, 
 though applied to, for fear of displeasing the House ; 
 that Mr. Owen is proceeding to cut down the timber, 
 and threatens to keep possession of the estate, in 
 defiance of the devisee." 
 
 •Journals, vol. xii.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 205 
 
 The Revolution had, however, introduced juster 
 notions respecting other men's rights, and the auda- 
 cious abuser of privilege found himself disappointed in 
 his overweening pretensions. The House granted 
 the reasonable prayer of the guardians, that they 
 might have liberty to seek relief against Mr. Owen 
 for his breach of the peace, without incurring their 
 displeasure, and resolved (strange so reasonable a pro- 
 position should have required a resolution) anew the 
 doctrine that had been established two centuries 
 before, " That no member had any privilege, in case 
 of breach of the peace, or forcible entries, or forcible 
 detainers." Acting in a similar spirit of wise and 
 liberal concession, the House adopted several resolu- 
 tions to check the exorbitance of these still fondly- 
 cherished pretensions. A committee, over which Sir 
 Richard Onslow presided, reported several resolutions^ 
 " That no member should have any privilege, except 
 personal, against any Commoner, in any suit or pro- 
 ceedings in courts of law or equity, for any longer 
 time than the House was actually sitting for despatch 
 of business ; that a Commoner have at all times 
 liberty to file any writ, or make any entry to save a 
 right, in order to prevent any bar by the statute of 
 limitations against any member. That a Commoner 
 have at all times liberty to exhibit any bill in equity 
 against any member, in order only to examine the 
 witnesses, to preserve their testimony, notwithstand- 
 ing any privilege." These resolutons, being afterwards 
 embodied in an act of parliament, reduced within 
 compass the enormity of the evil, which was after- 
 wards, with the increase of intelligence and freedom 
 
 'Journals for 169S.
 
 266 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 wholly removed, the person of the member being left 
 sacred, but all his other distinctions annulled. 
 
 The privilege of members from having their goods 
 taken in execution was, in its commencement, expressly 
 confined to such goods and chattels as it was necessary 
 the member should have with him during his attend- 
 ance in parliament, or in returning to his house : a 
 chair, on which to sit down ; a table, on which to eat 
 his meals ; a bed, to lie down upon, were certainly 
 essential to the comfort of each individual summoned 
 to the great council of the nation. But the same 
 principle did not apply to the goods left at home, in 
 the country, except so far as a distress on them might 
 be deemed to distract his thoughts. 
 
 According, however, to that expansive spirit by 
 which all their privileges grew and multiplied, the 
 personalty of members became entitled to the same 
 complete protection as the persons of members them- 
 selves. The sheriff of Hampshire, in 1606, caused a 
 distress to be levied on the goods of Sir William 
 Kingwell, which the knight had left behind him when 
 he set out for Westminster. As these goods could 
 not be brought within the claim established in Atwyll's 
 case, of goods necessary to be had with him, the 
 speaker wrote a courteous letter to the sheriff, inform- 
 ing him of these extended rights, ''That the privilege 
 of parliament, during the time of service there (haply 
 not so well known to yourself), reacheth, as well to 
 the goods as persons of any member. I am therefore 
 to advise and require you, that you forthwith procure 
 restitution of the said goods, according to the privi- 
 lege, lest that danger grow upon it, which I should be 
 loath you should undergo." 
 
 It is probable the sheriff* took the speaker's advice.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 267 
 
 An injudicious attempt was made by Charles I. to 
 justify the seizure of goods for duties owing to the 
 crown, and the officers of the customs levied a distress 
 in the warehouse of Mr. Rolles, a member, by his 
 majesty's express commands The Long Parliament 
 protested fiercely against this inroad of the king's 
 prerogative, and there certainly appeared no valid 
 distinction between the royal revenues and the rights 
 of a subject, were this privilege one that ought to have 
 prevailed against the claims of either. It was 
 reserved for the intelligence of a later age to discover 
 that a member of parliament lost no security worth 
 contending for by divesting himself of all vexatious 
 immunities — that he gained ease and freedom by 
 throwing off that irksome armour which encumbered 
 him with protection, and, in the emphatic language of 
 the dramatist, " only scalded with safety." 
 
 e Parliamentary History, vol. ii.
 
 268 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Having thus cleared away the superfluous and 
 oppressive privileges — the wood, hay, and stubble, 
 which cumbered the surface — we may proceed to 
 examine and admire those constitutional rights, upon 
 which, like pillars of adamant, the powers of the 
 House are supported ; entire immunity of person, 
 except from matter of criminal charge, and to every 
 member perfect liberty of speech. This freedom of 
 debate, " the quintessence of the four essences 51 " 
 (to use Coke's quaint phraseology), was not made one 
 of the articles of the speaker's petition to the throne 
 till the thirty-third year of the reign of Henry VIII. 
 But a century sooner, on the accession of Henry IV. 
 in 1399, Sir John Cheney preferred a general request, 
 as speaker, that the Commons might enjoy their 
 ancient privileges and liberties, not naming any in 
 particular, but glancing at this as the chief. 
 
 It forms an interesting chapter in the history of 
 St. Stephen's Chapel, to look back and see how 
 bravely this licence was battled for by our fore- 
 fathers ; how jealously it was watched and impugned 
 by the Tudors and Stuarts; with what persevering 
 
 » Coke's Reports. b Ilatsell's Precedents.
 
 HISTORY OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 2G9 
 
 art the courtiers essayed to control or abridge its 
 exercise ; and with what stubborn firmness the 
 patriots of those days insisted on maintaining, nay, 
 enlarging its foundations. The student of English 
 history will delight to trace by what painful efforts, 
 and against what determined opposition, this hardy 
 plant throve and nourished, flinging out an expanded 
 shade, till at the Revolution it struck its roots into the 
 very centre of the constitution. 
 
 The Bill of Rights did not, however, insert the 
 Commons' Magna Charta for the first time in the 
 statute book. In the fourth year of Henry IV., 
 Mr. Strode, a member, having proposed a bill in 
 parliament for the regulation of the tinners in Corn- 
 wall, was prosecuted in the stannary courts for that 
 offence; and, there being condemned in a large sum 
 of money, was imprisoned in Ladford Castle, but deli- 
 vered by a writ of privilege. This extraordinary 
 proceeding being represented by him in petition, an 
 act was passed in the same year to annul and make 
 void these several judgments and executions ; and it 
 was further enacted, "that all suits, fines, amerciaments, 
 punishments, and impositions, put and had in the said 
 record, or to any other person of this present parlia- 
 ment, or of any parliament hereafter, for any bill, 
 speaking, reasoning, or declaring of any matter con- 
 cerning the parliament, to be commenced and treated, 
 be utterly void and of none effect." By a resolution 
 of the House, November, 1667, this act was pro- 
 nounced to be only a " declaratory law of the ancient 
 and necessary rights and privileges of parliament. 
 But, however ancient, the Commons exercised their 
 right with flattering humility during the reign of the 
 butcher-king, Henry VIII. ; and were constrained to
 
 270 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 wrangle for its preservation when repeatedly threat- 
 ened by good Queen Bess. The journals show, with 
 amusing quaintness, the manner in which these strug- 
 gles were carried on. Her faithful Commons, early 
 in the reign, became loyally anxious that Elizabeth 
 should marry; and her maidenly scruples, no less 
 than royal dignity, took alarm at the notion of their 
 interference. 
 
 " d 1566, October 30th. A committee of both 
 houses is appointed to petition the queen about her 
 marriage. November 9th, Saturday. Mr. Vice- 
 Chamberlain declares her majesty's express com- 
 mandment that they shall no further proceed in their 
 suit, but satisfy themselves with her highness' pro- 
 mise of marriage. November 11, Monday. It is 
 moved whether the queen's command is not against 
 their liberties. This dispute lasts from 9 a.m. to 
 2 p.m. and is adjourned to next day. November 
 12th, Tuesday. The speaker communicates a special 
 commandment from her highness to this House, 
 ' that there shall be no further talk of the matter j 
 and if any person is not satisfied, but had reasons, let 
 hirn come before the privy council there to shew 
 them!' November 25, Monday. Mr. Speaker de- 
 clares her highness' pleasure to revoke her two 
 former commandments, which revocation is taken of 
 the House most joyfully, with most hearty prayers." 
 
 The discussion was afterwards revived, not in 
 reference to that particular service in the Book of 
 Common Prayer, but on the propriety of reforms in 
 the common prayer itself. Mr. Strickland, a mem- 
 ber, having introduced a bill for an alteration of the 
 rubric — to forbid the kneeling at receiving the com- 
 
 d Sir S. d'Ewes.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 271 
 
 munion — was the next day called before the queen's 
 council, and commanded by them " to forbear going 
 to the House till their pleasure was further known." 
 His detention was complained of; and the House 
 would not accept the apology of Mr. Treasurer, that 
 " he was in no sort stayed for any word or speech by 
 him in that place offered ; but for the exhibiting a 
 bill into the House against the prerogative of the 
 queen, which was not to be tolerated." The next 
 morning, almost as soon as the House met, Mr. 
 Strickland came in to their great joy e . 
 
 That politic princess knew well how to yield, 
 when there was danger in pressing an obnoxious 
 prerogative too far, but returned again to the charge, 
 again to be baffled by the vigilant Commons. 
 
 A bill relating to rites and ceremonies in the 
 church having been read three times, the speaker 
 declared it to be the queen's pleasure that from 
 thenceforth no bills concerning religion should be 
 preferred or received into that House, unless the same 
 had been first considered and approved of by the 
 clergy. Peter Wentvvorth, a Puritan, "the forerunner 
 of the Pyms and Hampdens in the next generation," 
 protested against this declaration in a speech tinged 
 with enthusiasm, but sublimed by a tone of patriotic 
 vigour f . ' Having opened on seven different grounds 
 the commodities that grow to the prince and the 
 
 e Parliamentary History, vol. i. 
 1 Professor Smyth has given a vivid sketch of these first stirrings 
 of freedom in one of those delightful lectures on modern history 
 with which our literature " magnas inter opes inops" has been lately 
 enriched, — lectures which, in language often most eloquent, and in a 
 narrative always interesting, reflect the calm wisdom of the moral 
 teacher upon the acquirements of the scholar, and, whilst they 
 inform our understandings, elevate the feelings, and purify the heart.
 
 272 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 whole state by free speech used in this place,' the 
 orator concludes, that " in this House, which is termed 
 a place of free speech, there is nothing so necessary 
 for the preservation of the prince and state as free 
 speech, and without this it is a scorn and mockery to 
 call it a parliament House ; for in truth it is none, 
 but a very school of flattery and dissimulation, and 
 so a fit place to serve the devil and his angels in, and 
 not to glorify God and to benefit the common- 
 wealth." 
 
 The House, out of a reverend regard to her 
 majesty's honour, stopped him before he had fully 
 finished, and sequestered the rash member for his 
 imprudence. The next day he was brought from the 
 Serjeant's custody to answer for his speech to a select 
 committee. "I do promise you all," said this 
 intrepid patriot, "if the Lord forsake me not, that I 
 will never during life hold my tongue, if any message 
 is sent, wherein God is dishonoured, the prince 
 perilled, or the liberties of the parliament impeached." 
 He was then sent to prison " for the violent and 
 wicked words yesterday pronounced by him, touching 
 the queen's majesty 5 ." In a month afterwards the 
 queen was pleased to remit her displeasure, and to 
 refer the enlargement of the party to the House. 
 But, though defeated in open assaults upon their 
 debates, Queen Elizabeth lost no opportunity of 
 letting the House know her stedfast determination to 
 confine their liberties within the narrowest possible 
 limits. When the speaker, Sir Edward Coke, demanded 
 their privileges for her last parliament, Sir John 
 Puckering, the lord keeper, replied by her command 11 , 
 " Privilege of speech is granted, but you must know 
 
 * Smyth's Lectures, vol. i. 
 u Townscnd's Proceedings of Parliament.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 273 
 
 what privilege you have, not to speak every one what 
 he listeth or what cometh into his brain, bat your 
 privilege is i Aye, or No.' Free access is granted to 
 her majesty's person, so that it be upon urgent and 
 weighty causes, and at times convenient, and when 
 her majesty may be at leisure from other important 
 cares of the realm." 
 
 With equal hauteur, but w 7 ith greater misad- 
 venture, her feeble successor declaimed, in a tone of 
 splenetic tyranny, against his Commons' vaunted 
 liberty of speech, nor could the issue of the contest 
 be doubtful, for, where the pusillanimous James 
 assailed, Coke, with the newly-roused vigour of the 
 people of England, defended. There may sometimes 
 be detected, it is true, a strange appearance of pusil- 
 lanimity and vacillation in their proceedings, nor as 
 yet had the constant intermeddling of the monarch 
 with debates only partly concluded, and bills incom- 
 plete, attracted sufficient notice. Sir Charles Piggot 
 having made a desultory speech against the Scottish 
 nation, the king sent a message to the House, to 
 complain of a member 1 urging matter of invective 
 against his own people, using many words of obloquy 
 and scandal, ill beseeming such an audience, not 
 pertinent to the matter in hand, and very unsea- 
 sonable for the time and occasion. "He did much 
 mislike and tax their neglect, in that the speaker 
 w 7 as not interrupted in the instant, and the party 
 committed before it became public and to his high- 
 ness's ear." 
 
 It was ordered that Sir Charles Piggot be com- 
 mitted to the Tower during the pleasure of the House, 
 be dismissed from his place as knight of the shire for 
 
 ' Petyt's Miscellanea. 
 VOL. I. T
 
 '274 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Bucks, and that a writ be issued for a new choice. 
 Upon a message from the king he was discharged from 
 custody. The unfortunate knight had probably made 
 himself personally obnoxious, for we read k of his being 
 some time before reprimanded by the speaker for not 
 standing up bare-headed ; but even on this hypothesis 
 it would be difficult to acquit the House of tamely 
 yielding up their member as a victim to the royal 
 vengeance. " Privilege of speech," says Hatsell 1 , 
 " was frequently cavilled at by the courtiers in the 
 reigns of Queen Mary, Elizabeth, and James, when 
 they thought it trenched on the royal prerogative, and 
 in general the House acquiesced too much in this 
 doctrine." They inveighed against " some tribunes 
 of the people, whose mouths could not be stopped ;*' 
 declared that " a member must not speak what and 
 of whom he list;" and threatened "those idle heads 
 that would meddle with reforming the church and 
 transforming the commonwealth." But when James, 
 in his zeal for absolute monarchy, wrote a letter to be 
 communicated to the Commons, in which, speaking 
 of their privileges, he says, " We could not allow of 
 the style calling it their ancient and undoubted right 
 and inheritance ; we cannot with patience endure 
 our subjects to use such anti-monarchical words/' he 
 was encountered by a spirit as haughty as his own. 
 In December, 1621, Sir Edward Coke and Noy 
 assisted in drawing up a protestation and remonstrance 
 " that every member hath freedom from all impeach- 
 ment, imprisonment, or molestation, other than by 
 censure of the House itself, for or concerning any 
 bill, speaking, reasoning, or declaring of any matter 
 
 k Parliamentary History, vol. i. 
 1 Ilatscll's Precedents, title Privilege.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 275 
 
 or matters touching the parliament or parliament 
 business." The angry monarch soon after sent for 
 the Journal Book, and in council, with his own hand, 
 tore out the protestation. 
 
 It was an act of impotent rage : the rent leaf was 
 soon replaced, and will ever form the first page in the 
 journal of parliamentary privilege. From that period 
 the Commons urged their rights with more uniform 
 boldness, exchanged the ' baited breath' of submissive 
 petition for a language more becoming freemen of firm 
 remonstrance, and interfered to prevent the dastardly 
 revenge which singled out the boldest speakers, Sir 
 Edwin Sandys, Mr. Morice, and many others, for 
 punishment, as soon as parliament had risen. Some 
 members having been committed in 1614, for speeches 
 they had delivered in parliament, during the first 
 session, the grievance was discussed as soon as the 
 next parliament met, at a length and with a spirit 
 proportioned to its exceeding importance. After a 
 debate of several days, it was determined that they 
 should proceed by message to the king, and not by 
 petition in writing, to desire that, if any of the House 
 should speak in any doubtful manner, they may be 
 censured here, and not be punished in or after the 
 parliament. But, during the debate on that question, 
 a message to the House was brought from the king by 
 Mr. Secretary Calvert, to say, that (t his majesty did 
 grant liberty and freedom of speech in as ample 
 manner as any of his predecessors ever did, and, if 
 any should speak undutifully (as he hoped none 
 would), he doubted not but we ourselves would be 
 more forward to punish it than he to require it ; and 
 he willed us to rest satisfied with this, rather than to 
 trouble him with any petition or message, and so cast 
 
 T 2
 
 276 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 ourselves upon one of these rocks, that, if we asked 
 for too little, we should wrong ourselves ; if for too 
 much, or more than right, he should be forced to deny 
 us, which he should be very loath to do/' 
 
 This message put an end to further proceedings, 
 and involved the Lower House in a false security. 
 No sooner had they closed their sittings, than " those 
 ill-tempered spirits," Sir Edward Coke, Sir Robert 
 Philips, Mr. Pym, Mr. Selden, and Mr. Mallory, who 
 had been the most forward in asserting the privileges 
 of the House of Commons, were committed to the 
 Tower and other prisons ; the locks and doors of Sir 
 Edward Coke's chambers in London and in the Tem- 
 ple were sealed up, and his papers seized 01 . Sir 
 Dudley Digges and others, as a lighter punishment, 
 were sent into Ireland, to inquire into matters con- 
 cerning the king's service. 
 
 The attacks thus fiercely urged against the chief 
 of the Commons' privileges, to which all the rest 
 might be considered subordinate and ancillary, were 
 renewed by Charles with double vehemence, his cha- 
 racter being firmer, and assumption of the royal pre- 
 rogative still loftier than his father's. Accordingly, 
 in the first session of his first parliament, Charles 
 proceeded to attack the freedom of debate, sending a 
 message 11 to complain of a seditious speech by Mr. 
 Clement Coke, youngest son of the great lawyer, that 
 11 it was better to die by an enemy than be destroyed 
 at home;" and still more of the civilian Dr. Turner 
 having made an inquiry of sundry articles against the 
 Duke of Buckingham, as he pretended, but in truth 
 against the honour and government of the king, his 
 
 ■ Johnston's Life of Sir E. Coke. 
 " Parliamentary History, vol. ii.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 277 
 
 late father, adding a threat, in the guise of hope, that 
 the king might not be constrained to use his royal 
 authority to right himself against these two persons." 
 The Commons attended with a remonstrance, and 
 declared, that " neither the words mentioned in his 
 majesty's message, nor any others of seditious effect, 
 were spoken by Mr. Coke, as hath been resolved by 
 the House without one negative voice. However, he 
 did let fall some words, which might admit an ill con- 
 struction, but, being generally and instantly checked, 
 forthwith explained himself as to his intentions." 
 The king was forced to be content with this apology, 
 and found his forbearance rewarded by the House 
 acquiescing in his mandate, when the respect due 
 to the sovereign had been really outraged. Mr. More, 
 a member, having said in the following session, " That 
 we were born free, and must continue free, if the king 
 would keep his kingdom;" adding, "as thanks be 
 to God, we have no occasion to fear, having a just 
 and pious king;" on the king representing these 
 words to the House, a committee was appointed to 
 examine the matter, and, though cleared of ill inten- 
 tions, the audacious speaker was committed to the 
 Tower for four days, and only enlarged on a message 
 from his majesty. 
 
 His jealous mistrust of parliamentary eloquence 
 was not suffered to sleep. At a conference with the 
 Lords, on presenting articles of impeachment against 
 the royal favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, Sir 
 Dudley Digges compared him to a blazing star, and 
 Sir John Eliot named him as " that man." The two 
 free speakers were beckoned out, on pretence of a 
 message from the king, and committed to the Tower, 
 Charles avowing the act. Alarmed at this open exer-
 
 278 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 cise of tyranny, the House refused to continue their 
 sittings, and suspended all discussion on measures of 
 supply. This attitude of defiance constrained the 
 monarch to yield, and, though the forerunner of 
 measures less capable of justification, entitles the 
 leaders of opposition to the gratitude of their country. 
 The boldness with which the House asserted their 
 indubitable and essential right of freedom of speech, 
 and the personal freedom of the members, and their 
 decision in refusing to proceed on any business till 
 their leaders, Sir John Eliot and Sir Dudley Digges, 
 had been discharged , saved the liberties of England 
 The terrors of fine and imprisonment and Star 
 Chamber punishments would undoubtedly have pre- 
 vented many members from voting or speaking against 
 the measures of the court, while the more firm and 
 resolute, the Wentworths, Eliots, and other manly 
 spirits, whom no terrors could affright, would, by the 
 exercise of this power, have been withdrawn from the 
 House, and the court might easily have prevailed with 
 the timid herd which were left behind to give the 
 countenance of parliamentary authority to those deadly 
 assaults of prerogative, in which Charles had deter- 
 mined to prevail or perish. 
 
 " The very day," writes a modern author, p " that 
 Eliot had concluded his harangue with the memorable 
 peroration, ' My lords, I have done, you see the man,' 
 Charles came in his barge from Westminster Hall, 
 with Buckingham by his side, to order Eliot to the 
 Tower. The House of Commons broke up instantly. 
 The next morning, when the speaker reminded them 
 of the business of the day, " Sit down, sit down !" was 
 the general cry, no business till we are righted in our 
 ° Hatscll. ■' Fbrster's Life of Sir John Eliot.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS 279 
 
 liberties!" In vain did Sir Dudley Carlton, vice 
 chamberlain of the household, reason with the House 
 on what he termed their refractory silence, and declare 
 his opinion, that " the greatest and wisest part of a 
 parliament are those that use the greatest silence, so 
 as not to be opiniative or sullen." They would not be 
 moved from their moody silence, till, after eight days' 
 struggle, Sir John Eliot was released by royal warrant. 
 
 But, still untractable, he refused to make an apo- 
 logy for having simply said, "You see the man/' 
 though such shocking words had startled the supple 
 courtier Sir Dudley Carlton, as outraging all propriety, 
 11 extraordinary terms to use of so high a person, and 
 such as he never heard the like in parliament before." 
 The patriot contented himself with a simple explana- 
 tion, that he spoke not by the book, but suddenly. 
 " For brevity's sake he used the words ' the man.' 
 He thought it not fit at all times to reiterate his titles, 
 and yet thinketh him not to be a god !" The House 
 ratified his justification, by resolving, " That Sir John 
 Eliot had not exceeded the commission given him by 
 the House, in anything which passed from him in the 
 late conference with the Lords." 
 
 A new parliament was called in March, 1627, and 
 proceeded at once to the discussion of public griev- 
 ances. The solemn, grave, measured, tone of their 
 remarks sounds like the hollow murmur that heralds 
 an approaching storm. 
 
 " I read of a custom," said Sir Robert Philips q, 
 " among the old Romans, that once every year they had 
 a solemn feast for their slaves, at which they had 
 liberty without exception to speak what they would, 
 thereby to ease their afflicted minds, which being 
 
 Parliamentary History, vol. ii.
 
 280 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 finished, they severally returned to their former servi- 
 tude. I can live, although another, who has no right, 
 be put to live with me ; nay, I can live, although I pay 
 excises and impositions more than I do ; but to have 
 my liberty, which is the soul of my life, taken from 
 me by power, and to have my body pent up in a gaol, 
 without remedy by law, and to be so adjudged — O 
 improvident ancestors ! O unwise forefathers ! To 
 be so curious in providing for the quiet possession of 
 our laws and the liberties of parliament, and to neglect 
 our persons and bodies, and to let them lie in prison, 
 and that ' durante bene placito,' remediless ! If this 
 be law, why do we talk of liberties ? Why do we 
 trouble ourselves with a dispute about law franchises, 
 property of goods, and the like ? What may any man 
 call his own, if not the liberty of his person." 
 
 " Let us imitate Jacob," said Sir Henry Martin, 
 using the puritanical illustration from Scripture that 
 began to prevail, " who wrestled with the angel, and 
 would not let him go. I would we could wrestle with 
 the king, in duty and love, and not let him go from 
 this parliament till he comply with us." The veteran 
 Sir Edward Coke, added another quaint and forcible 
 illustration from the law: "For a freeman to be 
 tenant at will for his liberty he could never agree to it ; it 
 was a tenure that could not be found in all Littleton." 
 
 Their prayers were embodied in the famous petition 
 of right, and the king, after enshrouding evasive assent 
 in vague generalities, was at length driven to give, 
 through the clerk, his constitutional answer, Soit droit 
 fait comme il est desire. In their joy, the Commons dis- 
 regarded precedents, and gave a great shout of applause. 
 As a further practical token of their gratitude, in five 
 days Sir Edward Coke carried up to the Lords a bill for
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 281 
 
 granting five subsidies to the king, the whole House 
 accompanying him. But the calm proved evanescent. 
 The complaints against tonnage duties and imposts 
 soon burst forth anew with greater violence, as if gain- 
 ing strength from the temporary calm. To still their 
 displeasure, Charles sent a message through the 
 speaker, couched in the highest strain of prerogative, 
 requiring them " not to enter into or proceed with any 
 new business which may spend greater time, or which 
 may lay any scandal or aspersion upon the state, 
 government, or ministers thereof." Well might they 
 deprecate such a sad message, and exclaim, " If stop- 
 ped, and stopped in such a manner as we are now 
 enjoined, we must leave to be a council." Sir John 
 Eliot had only proceeded, "It is said also, as if we 
 cast some aspersions on his majesty's ministers : I am 
 confident no minister, how dear soever, can " — when 
 the speaker started up from the chair, and supposing 
 that the bold patriot intended to attack the duke, said, 
 with tears in his eyes, "' There is a command laid upon 
 me to interrupt any that should go about to lay an 
 aspersion on the ministers of state." An instant reply 
 was given, and met with unanimous assent, "that 
 every member of the House is free from any undutiful 
 speech from the beginning of the parliament to that 
 day." A vote was carried with acclamation, that the 
 House be turned into a committee " to consider what 
 is fit to be done for the safety of the kingdom, and 
 that no man go out upon pain of being sent to the 
 Tower." Meantime, the speaker, Sir John Finch, 
 requested permission to leave the chair for half an hour, 
 and the House having resolved itself into a grand com- 
 mittee, Mr. Kirton uttered words of ominous import. 
 "The king is as good a prince as ever reigned, it is
 
 282 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the enemies to the commonwealth that have so pre- 
 vailed with him, therefore let us aim now to discover 
 them, and I doubt not but God will send us hearts, 
 hands, and swords, to cut all his and our enemies' 
 throats." Sir Edward Coke adding, " It is not the 
 king, but the duke (a great cry of assent, ' Tis he, 'tis 
 he,') r that saith, ' We require you not to meddle with 
 state government or the ministers thereof.' " 
 
 Exception being taken next day to Mr. Kirton's 
 expression, it was resolved " That therein he had said 
 nothing beyond the bounds of duty and allegiance, and 
 that they all concurred with him therein." At length, 
 but ungraciously and by constraint, the king yielded 
 to this fixed determination of discussing grievances, 
 with a range of invective, for which the puritanical 
 notion of Mr. Coriton seems to have been taken as a 
 guide. " I hope we may speak here, as we may speak 
 in heaven, and do our duties, and let not fear divert 
 us." Allusion was again made to the sword by Sir 
 John Elliot who foresaw in this discussion " the begin- 
 ning of the end." " In some churches it is said, 
 that they did not only stand upright with their bodies, 
 but with their swords drawn, and if cause were, I hope, 
 to defend our prince, country, and religion, we should 
 draw our swords against all opposers." 
 
 The final struggle for privilege took place on the 
 2nd March, 1628, when parliament was on the verge 
 of dissolution ; and Sir John Eliot, the undaunted 
 leader of the opposition declared, " I protest, as I am 
 a gentleman, if my fortune be ever again to meet in 
 this honourable assembly, where I now leave, I will 
 begin again." It would have been well had he rested 
 here, but his next step was imprudent, and sunk into 
 
 r Parliamentary History, vol. ii.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 283 
 
 sedition. The speaker having interrupted his passion- 
 ate harangue on grievances, to announce that he was 
 the bearer of a royal message for adjournment, the 
 passionate orator retorted that it was not the business 
 of the speaker to deliver such a message, that adjourn- 
 ment belonged not to the king but to the House, and 
 read a remonstrance, after the speaker and clerk had 
 refused to read it, which he submitted to the chair, 
 who declined to put it to the vote, saying he had 
 been commanded by the king expressly, when he had 
 delivered his message, to rise : He then, protesting 
 "I do not say I will not, but I dare not," with tears 
 attempted to quit the chair, but was held down by 
 force, till Hoiles had read a protestation, hastily penned 
 by Eliot, " that whoever introduced innovations in reli- 
 gion, and w T hoever advised the levy of tonnage and 
 poundage without parliament should be reputed a 
 public enemy." The door being locked, and the black 
 rod refused admittance, the king sent for his guards to 
 force an entrance, but the House, their violence ex- 
 hausted, dispersed in time to prevent bloodshed, having 
 by this ill advised outbreak of temper exposed their 
 leaders to the royal vengeance. 
 
 The king dissolved the parliament, pointing out, 
 in a long printed declaration, how far the members of 
 that House '• have swollen beyond the rules of modera- 
 tion and the modesty of former times, and this under 
 pretence of privilege and freedom of speech, whereby 
 they take liberty to declare against all authority of 
 council and courts, at their pleasure." He committed 
 the ringleaders to the Tower, that they might not be 
 bailed, and requested the opinion of the three chief 
 judges, " Whether a parliament man offending the king 
 criminally or contemptuously in the parliament house
 
 284 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 (and not then punished), may not be punished out of 
 parliament." 8 Answer. " We conceive that if a par- 
 liament man, exceeding the privilege of parliament, 
 do criminally or contemptuously offend the king in 
 the parliament house (and not there punished), he 
 may be punished out of parliament." 
 
 After this erroneous and extra-judicial opinion, an 
 information was filed in the King's Bench against 
 Eliot, Holies, and Valentine, for seditious speeches 
 and tumult in parliament. The defendants demurred, 
 because these offences are supposed to be done in 
 parliament, and ought not to be punished in this court, 
 or in any other, but in parliament, Croke drawing a 
 subtle distinction: "And perhaps not only criminal 
 actions committed in parliament are punishable here, 
 but words also," Sir Robert Heath argued that such 
 speeches, which are here pronounced, prove them not 
 counsellors of state but Bedlams : the addition of one 
 word would have made it treason, to wit proditorie, 
 and the judges pronounced: "For the punishment, 
 although the offence be great, yet that shall be with a 
 light hand, and shall be in this manner ; that every of 
 the defendants shall be imprisoned during the king's 
 pleasure : Sir John Eliot to be imprisoned in the 
 Tower of London, and the other defendants in other 
 prisons." The victim of his patriotic rashness, "the 
 viper " as Charles I. unjustly termed him, lingered 
 four wasting years in close confinement in the Tower 
 and there perished. A few days before his death, 
 Eliot sent for a painter to the Tower, 4 and had his 
 portrait painted exactly as he then appeared, worn out 
 by disease, and with a face of ghastly paleness. This 
 portrait he gave to his son that it might be hung on 
 • State Trials, vol. iv. ' Forster's Statesmen.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 285 
 
 the walls of Port Eliot, near a painting which repre- 
 sent him in vigorous manhood, a perpetual memorial 
 of his hatred of tyranny. His fate was soon most 
 fearfully avenged : the Long Parliament held the over- 
 ruling of the plea upon the information to the juris- 
 diction of the court, to have been against the law and 
 privilege of parliament, and with a just and fitting 
 munificence voted £5000 to each of the sufferers. 
 Nor was this all : after an interval of nearly forty years, 
 that the report of this case in Croke might not be 
 considered law, the judgment was brought before the 
 Lords by writ of error and reversed. 
 
 The parliament which met in April 1640, assem- 
 bled in such excellent temper, that one Peard, a lawyer, 
 was compelled to explain, and narrowly escaped being 
 brought to the bar for calling ship-money an abomi- 
 nation, after its legality had been solemnly pronounced. 
 Their successors, the Long Parliament, the same men, 
 but with changed hearts and minds 11 , in November, in 
 a very different spirit, began forthwith to complain 
 loudly and angrily of their violated privileges : " The 
 members are to be free from arrest, to have liberty of 
 speech, a legislative, judiciary, and consiliary power, 
 being to the body public as the faculties of the soul to 
 a man. These privileges have been broken !" This 
 formed the gravamen of the manifesto with which, 
 intemperate in their patriotism, and inebriate with 
 success, the champions of privilege assumed the 
 characters of their oppressors, and rushed into a civil 
 war. 
 
 It is instructive to remark how vigorously the 
 Long Parliament, presbyterians, independents, repub- 
 licans, root and branch men, one and all bestirred 
 
 See Hallam's Constitutional History, vol. ii.
 
 286 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 themselves to extirpate freedom of political discus- 
 sion. Mr. Trelawney was committed to prison and 
 expelled the House, for having said, in private dis- 
 course*, that " the House could not appoint a guard 
 without the king's consent, under pain of high 
 treason." For his signal exposure of Strafford's 
 attainder, in which Lord Dighy used the memorable 
 sayings, " Let the mark be set on the door where 
 the plague is, and then let him that will enter die— 
 we must not piece up want of legality with matter 
 of convenience;" he was expelled the House, and 
 that very day made a peer by patent, by a very 
 spirited and praiseworthy exercise of the prerogative 
 of the crown. Another member, Mr. Taylor, saying, 
 " that the House had not his consent to pass the Bill 
 of attainder of the Earl of Strafford, for that it was 
 to commit murder with the sword of justice, by a 
 tyrannical resolution of the House," was committed 
 to the Tower, and declared incapable of ever being a 
 member. In the heyday of their usurped power, the 
 majority would not tolerate conscientious difference 
 of opinion. Mr. Holies having said "that some 
 propositions were dishonourable, and that the House 
 hath not only entertained them half way, but 
 embraced them," he was suspended the House during 
 that session of parliament, and might congratulate 
 himself on the leniency of the sentence. The future 
 great historian of their triumphant faction, Mr. Hyde, 
 was voted to the Tower by a majority of 169 to 128, 
 for having desired to have liberty to enter his pro- 
 testation against the printing of the remonstrance. 
 Many other members had protested, and warm 
 debates lasted two days concerning protestations, 
 
 x Lister's Life of Lord Clarendon.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 287 
 
 which might certainly have introduced a dangerous 
 novelty, but ought not to have been so put down. 
 No toleration for the licence inseparable from ani- 
 mated free discussion could be suffered. They would 
 "strike, but not hear." Serjeant Hide, not having 
 moved the committee, of which he was chairman, 
 against a member who said, " the parliament were all 
 rebels," was disabled from serving any longer in the 
 House, and sent to the Tower. The people discovered 
 too late, that if the king had whipped them with 
 rods, their new rulers would scourge them with 
 scorpions, that there are no tyrants so intolerant as a 
 multitude. It will be unnecessary to trace the 
 miserable remnant of a once great parliament through 
 its degradation and abasement. The mutilated House, 
 which had stifled discussion in its exaltation, was 
 compelled to hear bitter truths, and at last to be 
 driven forth with terms of personal contumely and 
 individual insult by a usurper y . The despotism of 
 Cromwell crushed with iron heel all free discussion, 
 and, though some sparks of English spirit now and 
 then glanced up, even in the reformed and newly- 
 fashioned House, the debates were but the ashes of 
 its ancient fires. But no sooner had that haughty 
 usurper passed away, than the republican boldness 
 burst forth against his pusillanimous son with almost 
 frenzied violence. Keeping the door closed against 
 the usher of the black rod, Sir Harry Vane denounced 
 the tame tyranny of Richard Cromwell. " Shall we 
 suffer an idiot, without courage, without sense, nay, 
 without ambition, to have dominion in a country of 
 
 y Dr. Gumble says forcibly in his Life of Monk, " on the 20th 
 of April (it should have been the 1st) they were jeered out of the 
 House."
 
 288 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 liberty ! Richard Cromwell has a sword by his side, 
 but did he ever draw it ? Is he fit to get obedience 
 from a mighty nation, who could never make a foot- 
 man obey him 2 ." 
 
 At the Restoration all discussion for a time 
 was wreathed of compliment and congratulation. 
 When their fever of loyalty had somewhat abated, 
 and the king's extravagant licentiousness had drained 
 his Commons of their last guinea, the old republican 
 leaven, that liberty of speech which had preceded 
 but disappeared with a commonwealth, was again 
 found to ferment in the assembly. In 1670 the House 
 had disagreed with the resolution of a committee of 
 supply, " that towards the supply every one resorting 
 to any of the play-houses, who sits in the boxes, shall 
 pay one shilling, every one who sits in the pit, six- 
 pence," &c. The majority refused to adopt this 
 puritanical taxation, all the courtiers urging that the 
 players were the king's servants and a part of his 
 pleasure. Sir John Coventry inquired in raillery, — the 
 jest was of the sharpest, — " whether the king's pleasure 
 lay among the men or women-players ?" His sarcastic 
 gibe gave such umbrage at court, that, a few evenings 
 afterwards, the unlucky knight was waylaid by a 
 company of persons armed, Sir Thomas Sandys, 
 lieutenant of the Duke of Monmouth's troop, com- 
 manding the party, and had his nose slit open. This 
 assassin-like revenge naturally excited a storm of 
 indignation in the House. The quaint style in 
 which the debate is reported, throws a ludicrous air 
 over what might well form a grave and solemn 
 discussion a . 
 
 1 Forster's Life of Sir II. Vane, 
 a Grey's Debates.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 289 
 
 Sir Robert Holt said, with undoubted truth, " It 
 concerns the Lords as well as us. The Lords' noses 
 are as ours are, unless they be of steel.'* Mr. Hale 
 couched his complaint in strange simplicity of guise : 
 "If a man must thus be assaulted by ruffianly 
 fellows, we must go to bed by sunset like the birds. '' 
 Sir Winston Churchill having declared that the 
 debate seemed to him a cutting of the king over the 
 face, his words gave offence, and he explained that 
 he said it by way of simile. 
 
 The poet Waller redeemed the tone of debate from 
 absurdity. " When the Greeks and Romans had 
 slaves disfigured and marked, it was a dishonour to 
 the master, but that a freeman, an ambassador of 
 the people, should be thus marked, is much more 
 horrible." It was determined that no other business 
 should be proceeded with, till a bill to prevent 
 malicious wounding for the future had passed. By 
 way of set-off, Dr. Arras made an extravagant motion 
 for a bill to be brought in to punish any man that 
 should speak any reflective thing of the king. By 
 some he was called to the bar, but they yielded to 
 his excuse as the only physician in the House, 
 he hoped he should be pardoned — " humanum est 
 errare." 
 
 The king's extravagance compelled him to become 
 an importunate suitor, and he heard, in consequence, 
 those home truths from his faithful Commons with 
 which the rich, if overpressed for relief, are wont to 
 edify spendthrift relations. When he asked for further 
 aid in 1675, Lord Cavendish said, " The people have 
 trusted us with their money, and Magna Charta is not 
 to be thrown with their liberties and money into a 
 bottomless pit." Mr. Mallet, another county mem- 
 vol. i. u
 
 290 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 ber, spoke with still more old-fashioned plainness of 
 speech : " The parliament in Edward III.'s time had 
 a great kindness for him, yet gave him money with 
 extreme caution, not that they mistrusted him, but a 
 woman called Alice Pierce, whom they mistrusted." 
 The same truth-telling burgess applied an example 
 equally in point to the royal libertine. " King James 
 I. was said to be the Solomon of his age. The king 
 is heir to his virtues ; there is something more 
 recorded of Solomon ; he fell to strange counsels by 
 strange women : and we cannot repose any confidence 
 in the king, if he puts his counsel in strange women. 
 If they be left, God will bless his counsels." 
 
 The House, however, reserved strictly to themselves 
 this licence of tongue in speaking of the sovereign, and 
 would not permit the impudent Titus Oates to declare, 
 when examined at their bar, a constitutional truth, not 
 then openly acknowledged : " The king holds his 
 crown by the same title I hold my liberty." He was 
 reprimanded for his irreverence by the speaker, but 
 refused to retract: il I am sorry I gave offence to the 
 House, in what I said, but it was my conscience, and 
 it was truth, and, though I may not say it here, I will 
 say it elsewhere, and believe it too." Again ordered 
 to withdraw, he narrowly escaped punishment, which, 
 in his case, would have been almost deserved, for speak- 
 ing the truth once without knowing it. " He has no 
 privilege," said Seymour, " to be saucy to his prince, 
 and uncivil to you ;" and Colonel Titus, with diffi- 
 culty, saved this precious informer, on the ground of 
 his merits ; (t I am not to be angry with a man for 
 pulling me out of a ditch, though he tear my clothes." 
 On the speaker administering the farther rebuke, 
 11 You come not here to expostulate, but to obey the
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 291 
 
 orders of the House," prudence got the better of his 
 portentous impudence, and he bowed in silence. 
 
 Through the whole of the Pensioner Parliament, 
 especially in its latter years, the members seem to 
 have given a liberal interpretation to old Serjeant May- 
 nard's rule, " to speak fully, freely, and fearlessly. 
 When the king opens parliament, what does the 
 speaker first crave? Liberty of speech. The king 
 calls us by writ Nobiscum consulendum, and how can 
 treating be without speaking ?" But when this latitude 
 of remark affected themselves, they became more tena- 
 cious of their own than of their sovereign's dignity, 
 and were exceedingly sharp to punish upon slight pro- 
 vocation. On the introduction of the Test Act, Mr. 
 Goring, one of the court party, having said, w T ith a 
 laugh and satirical nod of the head, " I desire a test 
 from those gentlemen on the other side of the House, 
 that they have no design of creeping into the minis- 
 ters' places when they are out, and if they will give 
 the House security that they will act better, I will then 
 be on their side," his words gave such dire offence, 
 that he was compelled to explain that he meant no 
 particular person, and to express his sorrow, if he had 
 given the House offence. But even this apology did 
 not satisfy a clamorous minority, though Sir John 
 Talbot remarked, sensibly enough, " "We must bear 
 with one another, and not be extreme to mark what is 
 done amiss." The insinuation of interested motives 
 (an opposition must of course be disinterested) was too 
 odious to be lightly forgiven. He was directed to 
 withdraw, and afterwards reprimanded by the speaker 
 in his place. " The House has considered your 
 words, Mr. Goring, and, as they are displeased 
 with your words, so are they pleased with your sub- 
 
 u 2
 
 292 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 mission, and I admonish you to forbear the like for 
 the future." 
 
 But, so far from displaying contrition, the petulant 
 debater narrowly escaped censure in the following week 
 for his sarcasms. An opposition orator, Sir George 
 Hungerford, having asserted " The army was pre- 
 tended to be raised against France, but all the world 
 knows there was no such intention," the courtiers 
 called to write the words down. Scarcely had the 
 clamour subsided, when Goring renewed it, by retort- 
 ing : " Yesterday there was a grand committee for dis- 
 banding the army, but I see now there is need of keep- 
 ing it up, if these things are said here." A loud cry 
 instantly arose, "To the bar, to the bar!" but as both 
 sides of the House had sinned in violence, the belli- 
 gerents were allowed to pair off in peace together. 
 One free statement, indeed, the House was compelled 
 to hear in guilty silence, that many of those present 
 had received bribes or pensions, for none could ven- 
 ture to deny its truth. " It is remarkable," writes 
 Marvel, "that, upon occasion of a discourse among 
 the Commons concerning libels and pamphlets, first 
 one member of them stood up, and in the face of their 
 House, said, " That it was affirmed to him by a person 
 that be spoke with, that there were among them thirty, 
 forty, fifty, God knows how many, outlawed." Ano- 
 ther thereupon rose and told, " It was reported too, that 
 there were divers of the members papists ;" a third, 
 " That a multitude of them were bribed and pension- 
 ers." And yet all this was patiently hushed up by 
 their House, and digested, being it seems a thing of 
 that nature which there is no reply to." b In the 
 frenzied panic that pervaded the country like a pesti- 
 
 b Marvel's Growth of Popery.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 293 
 
 lence of conspiracies, plots, and popery, the House lost 
 all the restraint usually imposed hy decency and good 
 manners. The words " papist" and u rebel" were ex- 
 changed between Trelawney and Ash, and a blow- 
 struck. The anti-papist declaimers would not have 
 so much as a popish cat to pur or mew about the 
 king. c In their eagerness to exclude the Duke of 
 York from the throne, they spurned alike the limi- 
 tations of law and bounds of decorum. " I hope," 
 said Colonel Titus, " we shall not be wise as the foxes 
 to whom Jupiter gave a stork for a king. To trust 
 expedients with such a king on the throne, would be 
 just as wise as if there were a lion in the lobby and we 
 should vote to let him in and chain him, instead of 
 fastening the door to keep him out." " If the duke 
 be not set aside," cried another, " the government will 
 be." This violence evaporated in declamation : their 
 oratory was let off like an escape of steam in two dis- 
 solutions, and the orators, defeated by their own extra- 
 vagance, put to utter rout. A complete reaction fol- 
 lowed : the once merry monarch tyrannized for four 
 years without a parliament, and had almost subsided 
 into a gloomy despot. 
 
 The House which met his successor in May, 1685, 
 was so submissive, that James declared " there were 
 not above forty members but such as he himself wished 
 for." d As the last parliament of Charles resembled a 
 Polish diet, the present seemed rather to be composed 
 of feudal serfs. When they gathered courage in 
 November to remonstrate against the employment of 
 officers in the army not qualified by law-, they were 
 rebuked by the sovereign in terms of menace : " I did 
 not expect such an address, having given you warning 
 
 c Echard's History of England, vol. ii. 
 d James's Memoirs by Clarke.
 
 294 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 of fears and jealousies among ourselves. I had reason 
 to hope that the character God hath blessed me with 
 in the world, would have created and confirmed a 
 greater confidence in you of me, and of all that I say 
 to you. But, however you proceed on your part, I 
 will be steady in all my promises I have made to you, 
 and be very just to my word in this and all my other 
 speeches." This answer to their address was read with 
 all reverence, and profound silence prevailed in the 
 House for some time. When Mr. Wharton moved 
 that a day might be appointed to consider of his 
 answer, Mr. Coke stood up and supported the motion, 
 " I hope we are all Englishmen, and are not to be 
 frightened out of our duty by a few high words." 
 There was a blank pause — 
 
 " His zeal 
 None seconded, as out of season judged, 
 Or singular or rash." — Milton. 
 
 Lord Preston at length took exception to this honest 
 sentiment, and, though he asked j)ardon, it was 
 resolved, " that Mr. John Coke, for his indecent and 
 undutiful reflection on the king and this House, be 
 committed to the Tower." 
 
 The servile spiritless members, fortunately for 
 the liberties of their country, were dismissed by a pro- 
 rogation two days afterwards, and never met again. 
 They had set a mark on themselves — a badge of 
 sycophancy, stamped in too legible characters to be 
 summoned to the convention ; and would only have 
 sullied by their alloy that judicious band of patriots, 
 who confirmed to this country in the bill of rights 
 her civil and religious freedom. The great clause of 
 that memorable Major Charta declared 6 that "the 
 
 8 Bill of Rights, s. 5.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 295 
 
 freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in 
 parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned 
 in any court or place out of parliament." Having 
 established this safeguard of political discussion, the 
 members of the Lower House lost no time in making 
 a practical application of their liberty. Far from bow- 
 ing down to the golden image which their hands 
 had set up, they criticised the Prince of Orange as a 
 monarch of their own creation, and both addressed him, 
 and spoke of him among themselves with as little defe- 
 rence as if he had been the president of a republic. 
 The parliamentary, as contradistinguished from an 
 hereditary king, obtained only curt and sullen 
 homage; very different from the deferential mention 
 formerly made of the Plantagenet, or Tudor, or 
 Stuart. The addresses of former Commons, even 
 to Charles II., would seem, by comparison, prostrate 
 adulation. The tone of independence which ensued, 
 though carried in several instances to excess, had a 
 constitutional tendency, and diffused a healthy spirit 
 of freedom through the nation. The coronation of 
 the Prince of Orange had taken the country by 
 surprise ; his gloomy manners made him personally 
 unpopular; his dissenting tenets excited the jea- 
 lous aversion of the church; and, as he was con- 
 strained immediately to plunge into wars, of which 
 the glory seemed far more uncertain than the cost, 
 the voice of murmurings and distrust against the 
 conqueror of the Boyne began to be quickly heard. 
 When ministers insisted on the necessity of further 
 aid to save the nation from falling into the hands of 
 the Irish and French, a member exclaimed, "Add 
 the Dutch. f " In opposing the bill for raising moneys 
 1 Ralph's History.
 
 296 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 for the civil list, Sir Charles Sedley saids, " His 
 majesty is encompassed with, his majesty sees 
 nothing but coaches and six horses, and great titles, 
 and, therefore, cannot imagine the want and misery 
 of the rest of his subjects. It's a general scandal, 
 that a government so sick at heart as ours should 
 look so well in the face. . . He is a brave and 
 generous prince, but he is a young king, encom- 
 passed and hemmed in by a company of crafty old 
 courtiers, to say no more." With truth, might his 
 sovereign have retorted on the discontented orator, 
 that he had been long known as a witty and polite 
 courtier but was a very juvenile patriot. 
 
 In a debate on grievances, 1689, Sir William L. 
 Gower observed 11 , " I am for taking out all the deer 
 in this king's park that were in King James' park j 
 let none but a protestant breed of deer be left." Sir 
 Duncombe Colchester retorted, " If you turn out the 
 deer it will do you no good unless you turn out the 
 keeper too." Some exclaimed, " Does he mean the 
 king?" He probably reflected on the Marquis of 
 Carmarthen; but the metaphor was ambiguous, and 
 admitted of that construction. The humble repre- 
 sentation of the Commons to the king, on his refusing 
 to pass the Place Bill, is distinguished by a vehe- 
 mence of tone which would have been seditious if 
 expressed elsewhere. 
 
 " Your Commons cannot, without great grief of 
 heart, reflect that, since your majesty's accession to 
 the crown, several public bills, made by advice of both 
 houses of parliament, have not obtained the royal 
 assent, and, in particular, a bill intituled ' An act 
 touching free and impartial proceedings in parliament,' 
 
 t Sedley 's Works. •> Parliamentary History, vol. v.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 297 
 
 which was made to redress a grievance, and take off a 
 scandal relating to the proceedings of your Commons 
 in parliament, after they had freely voted great supplies 
 for the public occasions, which they can impute to no 
 other cause than your majesty's being unacquainted 
 with the constitutions of parliament, and the insinua- 
 tions of particular persons, who take upon them, for 
 their own particular ends, to advise your majesty 
 contrary to the advice of parliament, and therefore 
 cannot look upon them but as enemies to your majesty 
 and your government. They do therefore humbly pray 
 that, for the future, you will be graciously pleased to 
 hearken to the advice of your parliament, and not to 
 the secret advice of particular persons, who may have 
 private interests of their own, separate from the true 
 interest of your majesty and your people." The king 
 returned a civil bu tevasive answer, and, though some 
 turbulent spirits wished to press for a further reply, 
 the good sense of the majority overruled their petulant 
 importunity. 
 
 The same session, in 1694, the factious John How 
 concluded some bitter reflections on the administration 
 of affairs with a quotation levelled personally at the 
 king. " Egone, qui Tarquinium regem non tulerim, 
 Sicinium feram ?"' and then moved that the House 
 might go into committee on the state of the nation. 
 No notice was taken at the moment of this unpardon- 
 able licence, and when Mr. Montague, after another 
 member had seconded How's motion, interposed to 
 desire his words might be written down, Sir Charles 
 Musgrave took an objection, in point of form, that his 
 animadversion came too late, such an interval of time 
 having been suffered to elapse. The House adopted 
 
 ! Hatsell.
 
 298 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 this opinion, and it has since become an established 
 rule, that any words objected to must be noticed at 
 the time or at the close of the speech, that the very- 
 words used may be written down, and an opportunity 
 for explanation given. In their national peevishness 
 at the darkening prospect of a diminished revenue, 
 increased taxation, and profuse expenditure, the country 
 gentlemen seemed to forget that 
 
 " There's a divinity doth hedge a king," 
 
 and took strange liberties with the sacred name of 
 royalty. Mr. Ettrick remonstrated on the parsimony 
 " of keeping the king, as it were, on board wages," 
 without rebuke ; and on the chancellor of the exchequer, 
 Mr. Smith, in a phrase singularly injudicious, obser- 
 ving, " that the king was in a starving condition," 
 Mr. Granville repeated the word with malicious irony ; 
 " If the king were starving, why then were such grants 
 made of crown lands ? if the king was really starving, 
 why were such great pensions lavished ? why were 
 foreigners enriched and made lords ?" k 
 
 The dislike of the king's nation was made a watch- 
 word and rallying cry of faction. The debate on the 
 Dutch guards was inflamed with invectives against 
 foreigners. " You will easily judge," writes the king 
 to Lord Galway, on whom this reflects. When the 
 death of the Duke of Gloucester made a further settle- 
 ment of the succession of the crown necessary, and the 
 House of Hanover began to be generally mentioned, 
 the opposition urged, " What ! must we have more 
 foreigners?" 1 "which" secretary Vernon observes, with 
 his ordinary matter-of-fact simplicity, " is not very 
 obliging to the king." But this jealousy of the 
 Hollander reached its height, when Sir John Knight 
 
 k Vernon's Letters. ' IJardwicke Papers.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 299 
 
 opposed the Naturalization Bill, in a speech steeped 
 with bitter prejudice, but applauded to the echo. " I 
 have heard of a ship in a violent storm, in danger of 
 perishing every moment; when the good commander 
 seeing the danger and apprehending death, desired his 
 crew to assist with resolution, and preserve themselves 
 and the ship, which the sailors refusing to do, he 
 retired to his cabin, humbled himself in prayer, and 
 implored the Power that alone can save in time of 
 need, that though the ship and company might be 
 justly swallowed up for the disobedience of the sailors, 
 yet that he and his cabin might suffer no damage. 
 Sir, I cannot as that good commander did, be so vain, 
 as to hope that either myself or the place for which I 
 serve can be preserved from the general inundation 
 which this bill, which we are now debating, lets in on 
 the liberties of my native country and countrymen, 
 and therefore be unconcerned for the good of England, 
 provided Bristol were safe. But if I debate not on them, 
 with that advantage and reason as our land admirals 
 can, no doubt with great ingenuity, on sea politics, I 
 hope the House will pardon me, for my observations 
 never cost the kingdom such expense of money at 
 home and losses at sea, as hath the experience of 
 those honourable persons in sea affairs. Can any man 
 hope to persuade me that our forefathers would have 
 brought foreign soldiers into England, and pay them, 
 and naturalize them likewise; and at the same time send 
 the English soldiers abroad to fight in a strange land 
 without their pay ! Let us abate our taxes, and, after 
 the wise precedent of our fathers, pay our own seamen 
 and soldiers at home, and send the foreigners back. 
 
 " Our palates for a long time have been so nice, that 
 nothing but a French cook could please them, nor 
 could we persuade ourselves that our clothing was
 
 300 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 good, unless from head to foot we were a la mode de 
 France. The gentleman was not well served without 
 a Frenchman, and the lady's commode could not sit 
 right, if her fine French woman did not put it on; now 
 on a sudden, the change is as violent in favour of the 
 Dutch, who are great courtiers and the only taking 
 people, and our English are a sort of clumsy-fisted 
 people, if compared with the modish Dutch Hans and 
 Frow, and in short, the Englishmen are fit for nothing 
 but to be sent to Flanders, and there either to fight-, 
 steal, or starve for want of pay. There is one thing, 
 Mr. Speaker, which comes into my mind, with which 
 I shall close this consideration: what reason was there 
 for blaming the mayors, aldermen, common-council, 
 and other governors of corporations, for surrendering 
 their charters, and at the same time hope to justify our 
 proceedings, though they throw up the great charter 
 of our English liberties to admit strangers ? Upon the 
 whole, Sir, it is my judgment that, should this bill 
 pass, it will bring as great afflictions on this nation as 
 ever fell upon the Egyptians, and one of their plagues 
 we have at this time very severe upon us. I mean 
 that of their land bringing forth frogs in abundance, 
 even the chambers of their kings, for there is no 
 entering the courts of St. James's and Whitehall, the 
 palaces of our hereditary kings, for the great noise 
 and croaking of the frog-landers. I will conclude all 
 with this motion, ' That the serjeant be commanded 
 to open the doors, and let us first kick this bill out*of 
 the House, and then foreigners out of the kingdom.' " 
 As these keen-barbed reflections of Mr. Knight's 
 on the king argued factious boldness, the published 
 speech was committed to the flames, and the speaker 
 only escaped imprisonment by denying the authenti- 
 city of the report. A better example of patriotic
 
 HOUSE OF COMMON'S. 301 
 
 licence was afforded by Mr. Price, in opposing the 
 grants of the revenues of Wales to the Earl of 
 Portland. Exposing the unconstitutional extrava- 
 gance of the royal bounty, this stout-hearted Cambrian 
 asserted, that it was contrary to the Bill of Rights, 
 and attributed the king's munificence to his being 
 imposed upon. " It cannot be pretended that he shall 
 know our laws (who is a stranger to us, and we to 
 him), no more than we know his counsellors, which I 
 wish we did." The House unanimously adopted the 
 public-spirited address of the truth-telling lawyer, and 
 William was compelled to recall his grant to a grasp- 
 ing favourite. 
 
 A remarkable instance was afforded in 1701 of 
 the facility with which popular assemblies are apt to 
 be carried away by a bold remark uttered at the right 
 season.™ Ministers had calculated on the unanimous 
 concurrence of the House in an address to own the 
 King of Spain, but Mr. Monckton opposed it warmly, 
 and said, " if that vote past, he expected the next 
 would be, for owning the pretended Prince of Wales." 
 The House seemed suddenly struck with the truth of 
 his observation, and sent up an amended address to 
 the king to enter into new alliances with the States. 
 His own surreptitious partition treaty exposed the 
 monarch to severe animadversion. Sir James Bolles, 
 a half-crazed knight, compared this division of another 
 man's kingdom to robbing on the highway, 11 and How 
 rejoicing in the idea, called the treaty felonious. 
 Though in general too phlegmatic and careless of 
 censure, the king was so highly nettled as to declare 
 " that, if the disparity of their condition had not res- 
 trained him, he would have compelled satisfaction." 
 
 »> Lord Mahon's History. " M' Pherson.
 
 302 HTSTORY OF THE 
 
 The Upper House scarcely fared better than the 
 sovereign in the angry discussions which, with scarcely 
 the interval of a single session, raged between them; 
 an active tory opposition leading the debates in one 
 House, and a steady whig majority overruling them 
 in the other. The free council of parliament, which 
 could take such liberties with the king, were not 
 likely to pay more respect to an obnoxious peer. This 
 strife of tongues beat with most violence against Lord 
 Somers, the best and ablest of their foes, and scrupled 
 not to assail him with charges of socinianism and 
 corruption. On Captain Kidd, whom the chancellor 
 had commissioned to clear the sea of pirates, turning 
 pirate himsehy Mr. Moore said, " that Kidd plundered 
 with a commission under the Broad Seal in his 
 pocket, and was encouraged to it by those in partner- 
 ship with him, who had obtained a grant of all he 
 should steal." How asked what would become of 
 this nation, if those in authority were not content to 
 plunder themselves, by grants of all that could be got 
 here, but likewise sent out their thieves to rifle what- 
 ever was to be met with elsewhere ? 
 
 The latitude which they took in speaking of the 
 Upper House, the Commons would not give. When 
 they selected several noblemen for impeachment, on 
 account of their privity to the Partition Treaty, omit- 
 ting others equally implicated, Lord Haversham com- 
 mented on their inconsistency. " Give me leave to 
 say, though I am not to argue it, it is a plain demon- 
 stration, that the Commons think these lords innocent ; 
 and I think the proposition is undeniable, for there 
 are several lords in the same crimes, in the same 
 facts : there is no distinction. And the Commons 
 ° Dr. Drake's Report. r Vernon's Letters.
 
 house or COMMONS. 303 
 
 leave some of these men at the head of affairs, near 
 the king's person, to do any mischief, if they were 
 inclined to do it, and impeach others, when they are 
 both alike guilty and concerned in the same facts. 
 This is a thing I was in hopes I should never have 
 heard asserted, when the beginning of it was from the 
 House of Commons." The managers of the confer- 
 ence instantly withdrew, indignant at so great an 
 aspersion on the honour of the House, perhaps more 
 indignant from its truth. The House resolved " that 
 John Lord Haversham hath, at the free conference 
 this day, uttered most scandalous reproaches and 
 false expressions, highly reflecting upon the honour 
 and justice of the House of Commons, and tending to 
 the making a breach in the good correspondence 
 between the lords and commons, and to the interrupt- 
 ing the public justice of the nation, by delaying the 
 proceedings on impeachments. That John Lord 
 Haversham be charged before the lords for the words 
 spoken by the said lord this day at the free conference, 
 and that the lords be desired to proceed to judgment 
 against the said Lord Haversham, and to inflict such 
 punishment upon the said lord as so high an offence 
 against the House of Commons does deserved" 
 
 They also refused to renew the conference till they 
 had received reparation for the indignity offered. 
 Vainly denouncing the lords' "very many irre- 
 gular and unparliamentary proceedings," and refusing 
 to appear at the trial, they solemnly protested against 
 the acquittal, as repugnant to the rules of justice, and 
 therefore null and void. Very brave words, undoubt- 
 edly, but insufficient to change the nature of the 
 dispute, or conceal their own partial and extravagant 
 i Parliamentary History, vol. v.
 
 304 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 injustice. Annoyed beyond measure at the defeat of 
 their favourite panacea for removing dissent, the bill 
 to prevent occasional conformity, the high church 
 tories inveighed against the bishops, and one of their 
 leaders 1 " declared he should be provoked to move for 
 leave to bring in a bill " for the toleration of episco- 
 pacy ; for since the prelates were of the same princi- 
 ples as the dissenters, it was but just that they should 
 stand on the same footing." 
 
 Sharpness of tone and licence of invective must 
 be conceded to the grand inquest of the nation, or Sir 
 Henry Capel's complaint would be just : — " If we 
 have nothing to do here but to give money, is it a 
 parliament, or a senate of New Rome, to set rates 
 upon fruits and chesnuts ?" A full measure of licence, 
 and running over, was accordingly given to declama- 
 tions against an unpopular king or an odious minis- 
 try, to the denunciations of an apostate peer or low 
 church bishop ; but if some hardy member withstood 
 a factious resolution of the majority, or opposed their 
 own sweet voices, he discovered that this privilege 
 was but a phantom with regard to his own protection. 
 Manley, a tory member,, having cautioned the House 
 to beware of passing Sir J. Fenwick's attainder, adding, 
 " it would not be the first time that people have 
 repented their making their court to the government, 
 at the hazard of the liberties of the people," — for 
 these words, which can scarcely be termed unguarded, 
 was immediately voted to the Tower. 
 
 This arbitrary act marked the heyday of whiggery. 
 What was done in the green tree was attempted in 
 the dry. When Hampden used the freedom of remark- 
 ing, in the tory parliament of 1712, that, "between a 
 
 r Sir J. Packinjrton.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 305 
 
 lazy campaign and a trifling negotiation, they were 
 amused by ministers at home, and tricked by enemies 
 abroad," the leader of the House, St. John, retorted, 
 " that it was a reflection on the queen, that persons 
 had been sent to the Tower for less, but that some 
 members who were ambitious of that honour should 
 be disappointed." The menace, though spoken in a 
 moment of passion, seems, in the very imagination, 
 utterly subversive of all free debate. The House, 
 as a body ever instant to notice and punish the 
 slightest disrespect to themselves, could not tolerate 
 criticism. In their eager disputes upon resuming the 
 prodigal grants by King William of the forfeited estates 
 in Ireland, the chancellor of the exchequer, retaining 
 office against an adverse majority of the opposition, 
 narrowly escaped with a resolution of censure for 
 making a true, and scarcely rash remark. 
 
 When Sir J. Pakington opposed the Union, com- 
 paring it to the marrying a woman against her will, 
 and asserting that it was carried on by corruption and 
 bribery within doors, by force and violence without, 
 the treasury bench exclaimed loudly for apology. He 
 excused himself by a double hearsay : " He w T as told, 
 Emery said in Scotland the Union was so carried." 
 
 The member for the University of Oxford, Sir 
 Wm. Whitelocke, eluded punishment by a more inge- 
 nious explanation. 5 Opposing some clause in the 
 Bill of Settlement, he committed himself by the rash 
 remark — " Should the Elector of Hanover succeed to 
 the throne, which I hope he never will — " The 
 conclusion of his sentence was drowned in shouts of 
 "To the bar! to the bar!" But he recovered his 
 presence of mind in the clamour, and refused to apo- 
 
 s Somerville's Queen Anne. 
 VOL. I. X
 
 306 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 logise. "The queen is younger in years than the 
 elector, and I merely expressed a loyal hope that she 
 might survive him." His words admitted of this 
 explanation, and those of the opposite faction, who 
 knew his meaning better, applauded his ingenuity. 
 The union with Scotland, uprooting such deep preju- 
 dices, caused many angry reflections to be cast on the 
 nation and body, especially as the forty-five used to 
 vote together, and the proud and sensitive strangers 
 were but too ready to resent them*. 
 
 The sliding-scale, by which offensive phrases and 
 indiscretions of speech appear to have been weighed, 
 was the prevailing opinion of the majority. In the 
 parliament of 1713, comprising a large number, if not 
 a preponderance, of Jacobites, Sir William White- 
 locke was allowed to predicate the speedy return of 
 the pretender without rebuke. General Stanhope 
 having moved an address to the queen, to use her 
 most pressing instances with the Duke of Lorraine to 
 remove the young Charles Stuart out of his territo- 
 ries, the member for the University of Oxford objected 
 that the like address was formerly made to the pro- 
 tector for chasing Charles Stuart out of France ; 
 notwithstanding which, that prince was some time 
 after restored to his father's throne. 
 
 But, however capricious or partial in noticing any 
 undue liberties of speech themselves, the House 
 evinced an unanimous feeling of jealousy and alarm 
 
 1 The following is a specimen of the scurrility to which even 
 courtiers would stoop : — " Sir Edward Seymour compared the Union 
 to a countryman that had a wife proposed to him without a fortune, 
 and gave this reason for refusing- the match, — that 'if he married a 
 bog-gar, he should have (cibsit invidia verba) a louse for his portion.' " 
 Vernon s Letters.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 307 
 
 at the slightest attempt to control its exercise beyond 
 their walls. When Colonel Churchill complained of 
 receiving a summons to attend the Board of Admi- 
 ralty, the night before, stating, " When I was called 
 in, the Lords accused me of what I said here, that 
 some persons in the fleet were cowards. I know not 
 that I am to answer anywhere for what I say here but 
 to the House,' 5 the assembled Commons were instantly 
 in a flame, Mr. Foley and others asserting, most 
 justly, that there was an end of privilege, "if officers 
 many of whom had seats, were to be called to account for 
 what might be said or done there." It appeared on 
 inquiry, that Colonel Churchill had used these words 
 elsewhere, and a satisfactory explanation was given, 
 that a man in the fleet had been condemned to be 
 shot as a coward j that the king had been petitioned 
 for pardon ; and that the board wished to ascertain 
 from Colonel Churchill whether he were a fit subject 
 for pardon. A resolution proposed by Sir Charles 
 Musgrave, "That no member be examined for what 
 he has said here." was negatived on the judicious 
 objection of Colonel Titus. " Do you think that this 
 is a new privilege ? This is calling that in question 
 that was ever out of question 1" — and the House 
 allowed the subject to drop, having vindicated the 
 privilege beyond cavil, w T ith a rebuke from the speaker 
 to the Board of Admiralty, inculcating more caution 
 for the future. " It had been civil and reasonable for 
 the board to inform Churchill they had no intent to 
 interrogate him as to any thing said in the House." 
 
 On the accession of Queen Anne, so high an 
 homage was paid to royalty as to be inconsistent with 
 freedom of debate. The whigs. howbeit unused to 
 bend the knee at court, when they found themselves 
 
 X 2
 
 308 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the only courtiers admitted within the threshold of 
 the palace, stooped to the very ground. When an 
 obnoxious tory, Mr. Charles Csesar, ventured a 
 remark, the chief libel in which lay in its truth, the 
 words were written down. We read in the journals, 
 " That an engrossed bill from the Lords, entitled ' An 
 Act for the better Security of Her Majesty's Person 
 and Government, and of the Succession to the Crown 
 of England in the Protestant Line,' was read a second 
 time, and Charles Caesar, Esq., upon the debate of the 
 said bill, standing up in his place, and saying the 
 words following (which were directed by the House to 
 be set down in writing at the table) : — ' There is a 
 noble lord, without whose advice the queen does 
 nothing, who, in the late reign, was known to keep a 
 constant correspondence with the court at St. Ger- 
 mains : ' and the said Mr. Csesar, endeavouring to 
 excuse himself, and being called upon to withdraw, 
 and he being withdrawn accordingly, and a debate 
 arising thereupon, the House resolved ' That the 
 said words are highly dishonourable to her majesty's 
 person and government, and that the said Charles 
 Csesar, Esq., should for his said offence be committed 
 prisoner to the Tower.' " 
 
 The tide of party passions never ran in a stronger 
 current than during the reigns of William and Anne, 
 and in all punishments, to the bar or the Tower, 
 regard was had more to the unpopularity of the 
 speaker than to the speech itself. Had this been the 
 measure invariably meted out, the privilege of speech 
 in parliament would have been limited by the condi- 
 tion of saying nothing distasteful to the court or 
 ministry. The complaint was well urged by a tory 
 county member, smarting under a sense of unfair
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 300 
 
 treatment, and determined at all hazards to unbosom 
 his suppressed vexation. 
 
 " Mr. Speaker, I did not intend to have troubled 
 you this session, and I believe it will be to little 
 purpose now ; for, if a gentleman stands up to com- 
 plain of grievances, although this House meets in 
 order to redress them, he is represented as a person 
 that obstructs her majesty's business ; if he finds fault 
 with the ministry, he is said to reflect upon the queen ; 
 if he speaks against the continuance of the war to 
 prevent the beggary of the nation, to prevent the 
 moneyed and military men becoming lords of us who 
 have the lands, then he is to be no object of her 
 majesty's favour and encouragement. This, Sir, is 
 the pass we are brought to, and this is the freedom of 
 speech you were pleased to ask for at the opening of 
 this session, and which of right belongs to every 
 member of this House. I remember the time when 
 such restraints as these would not have been suffered 
 or endured, but we are under arbitrary ministerial 
 power." 
 
 No sooner had the country gentlemen changed 
 sides, than they became in turn equally clamorous 
 for the Serjeant, equally anxious to incarcerate the 
 hostile parties, who would use their liberty as a 
 cloak for licentiousness. The immediate effects of 
 the accession of George I. were rather to curtail 
 than enlarge liberty of speech. The whigs would 
 fain have crushed their opponents without per- 
 mitting a single cry or murmur, too impatient and 
 vindictive to give their adversaries a fair hearing, or 
 any hearing at all. On the 5th of April, 1715, a 
 fortnight after the House had met, a motion was 
 made to take into consideration his majesty's royal 
 proclamation of the 15th of January for the calling
 
 310 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 of a new parliament. The new monarch having been 
 made to express his conviction " that his loving people 
 would send up to parliament the fittest persons to 
 redress the present disorders, and therein have a par- 
 ticular regard to such as showed a firmness to the 
 protestant succession when it was most in danger," 
 Sir William Wyndham complained of this proclama- 
 tion, as " not only unprecedented and unwarrantable, 
 but even of dangerous consequence to the very being 
 of parliaments." When called upon to justify his 
 charge, he declined giving any particular explanation, 
 but repeated, that " as he thought some expressions 
 in the proclamation of dangerous consequence, so he 
 believed every member was free to speak his thoughts." 
 In this belief the opposition orator found himself 
 wholly mistaken. Mr. Walpole, himself fresh from 
 the Tower, could with difficulty ward off the same 
 unjust punishment for uttering unwelcome truths, a 
 rampant majority being determined to fix some mark 
 of their displeasure upon the eloquent champion of a 
 fallen race, a Jacobite professed. 
 
 It was moved "that Sir William Wyndham, 
 having reflected upon his majesty's proclamation, 
 and having refused to justify his charge, although 
 often called upon so to do, is guilty of a great indig- 
 nity to his majesty and a breach of the privileges of 
 this House."" It was decided, after three divisions, 
 212 against 138, that he be reprimanded in his place. 
 The speaker, Sir S. Compton, acquainted him with 
 the resolution, sitting in the chair covered, and Sir 
 William standing up uncovered. " Sir, the arraigning 
 a proclamation issued by his majesty for calling the 
 present parliament, and refusing to assign any cause 
 why such proclamation is blameable, the House 
 u Parliamentary History, vol. vii.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 311 
 
 thought an indignity to his majesty, and so unwar- 
 rantable an use of that freedom of speech which is the 
 undoubted privilege of parliament, that the House 
 thought they could not let it pass without animadver- 
 sion ; but being willing their moderation should 
 appear, notwithstanding their levity has been too much 
 despised and contemned, they have inflicted the mildest 
 censure your offence w T as capable of, and have com- 
 manded me to reprimand you in your place., and, 
 in obedience to their command, I do reprimand you 
 accordingly." 
 
 Whereupon Sir William Wyndham said: "Mr. 
 Speaker, I very truly return my thanks to you for 
 performing that duty which is incumbent upon you, 
 from your office, in so candid and gentlemanlike a 
 manner. As I am a member, I know I must acquiesce 
 in the determination of the House j but, as I am not 
 conscious to myself of having offered any indignity to 
 his majesty,, or of having been guilty of any breach of 
 the privilege of the House, I have no thanks to return 
 to those gentlemen, who, under a pretence of lenity, 
 have brought me under this censure." 
 
 A still more odious exercise of outstretching tyran- 
 ny was displayed in 1717, against the leader of the 
 forlorn hope, Mr. Shippen. That plain-spoken, honest 
 jacobite had put his glove to his mouth, according to 
 his wonted bad habit, w and said, " the propositions in 
 the king's speech seemed rather calculated for the 
 meridian of Germany than Great Britain," adding 
 drily, " it is the only infelicity of his majesty's reign, 
 that he is unacquainted with our language and consti- 
 tution." He was tumultuously voted to the Tower, 
 and, by a mean exercise of vindictiveness, ministers 
 caused parliament to be adjourned, instead of pro- 
 
 w Speaker Onslow.
 
 312 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 rogued, that he might not be released at the rising of 
 the House. He was too stout-hearted to petition for 
 this release, and came out of prison, after many months' 
 confinement, with a fixed resolution to speak his senti- 
 ments as plainly as before. He even drolled upon his 
 doom, advocating, with all his economy, an article, 
 then first added to the estimates, of £200 a year for 
 the physician of the Tower. " Members " he said, 
 " have been frequently sent there for speaking freely, 
 others for acting corruptly. Now, as it is uncertain of 
 what denomination the member may be, who shall next 
 be committed to that state prison, let us not grudge 
 so trifling a sum for so charitable a purpose." x 
 
 Of his determination to speak out, be the conse- 
 quence what it might, old Mr. Shippen gave another 
 instance in the next reign. " His majesty knows how 
 much the nation is loaded with debts and taxes, and 
 how inconsistent it is with our constitution to keep up 
 a standing army in time of peace." Threats of his 
 former punishment being instantly made, the opposi- 
 tion leader quietly observed, " that he was peculiarly 
 unfortunate, for that in a former parliament he had 
 incurred the severe censure of the House for asserting 
 that the late monarch was unacquainted with the con- 
 stitution, and he now gave high offence, asserting that 
 his present majesty was not unacquainted with the 
 constitution." y The orator's witty antithesis saved 
 him from further molestation. Probably the House 
 had grown ashamed of their former capricious tyranny. 
 The speaker's call to order was deemed a sufficient 
 substitute for the Serjeant's mace ; as the season for 
 extraordinary excitement passed away, the forbear- 
 ance to punish was met by a similar good spirit of 
 
 x Parliamentary History, vol. viii. Y Bell's History of England.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 313 
 
 self-command ; and, during the long reign of George 
 II., members continued to speak with measured licence, 
 liable to censure, and occasionally incurring the rebuke 
 of their dictatorial head, but inapprehensive of com- 
 mitment. "It was reserved," to quote the judicious 
 observation of Mr. Hatsell, z " for a more enlightened 
 age, and for times when the true spirit of liberty should 
 be better understood, to ascertain and establish this 
 privilege to its utmost extent, consistently with the 
 language of good breeding and the behaviour of men 
 of liberal education." 
 
 Liberty of speech, indeed, is so essential to the 
 very existence of a free council, that, though it always 
 made a part of the liberties of the House of Commons, 
 it was never so well understood or acted upon, as in 
 modern days of increased intelligence and improved 
 constitutional knowledge. The principle is now firmly 
 fixed, on a foundation never to be shaken, that no words 
 spoken within the walls of St. Stephen's, however strong, 
 searching, and personal, can be inquired of in courts of 
 law, or taken criminal cognizance of, in any manner 
 whatsover, except by the House itself. Words which 
 would be treasonable, or seditious, or libellous, if uttered 
 beyond those sacred precincts, maybe spoken there with 
 the most perfect impunity from without : the character 
 and conduct of every subject in the empire may be dis- 
 cussed with the most entire unreserve, and comments 
 made for which, though the member must have defended 
 them at the sword's point, if ventured elsewhere, he is 
 not held amenable by the code of honour. The king's 
 name, indeed, must not be directly mentioned, lest the 
 mention of it should exert an undue influence over the 
 freedom of debate, nor will any disparagement of the 
 
 1 Hatsell, Precedents, title Privilege.
 
 314 HISTORY OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 
 
 House of Lords, as a body, be permitted, that a good 
 understanding may prevail between the two branches 
 of the legislature. a But, subject to this reservation, 
 the royal pleasure may be glanced at, through his 
 responsible advisers, with all the liberty of satire, and 
 an obnoxious peer assailed in the fullest Saxon cha- 
 racters of contumely and invective. The only true 
 safeguard against this unconfined range of speech con- 
 sists in the good feeling of the House, and the firmness 
 of the speaker interposing, whenever the offence may 
 require his interposition, to restrain the petulant 
 declaimer within that rule which cannot be too often 
 inculcated, "the language of good breeding and the 
 behaviour of men of education." 
 
 » Woodesson's Lectures,
 
 315 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The speaker's petition for privilege from arrest 
 dates from a later period than that for liberty of 
 speech, but it is supposed to have been included in 
 the general prayer made by Sir John Cheney, 1st 
 Henry IV., " that the Commons might enjoy their 
 ancient liberties and privileges." 3 
 
 It is an essential part of the constitution of every 
 court of judicature, that persons resorting to it should 
 be entitled to certain privileges, to secure them from 
 molestation during their attendance, and more pecu- 
 liarly essential to the court of parliament, the first and 
 highest court in the kingdom, that its constituent 
 members should not be prevented by trifling interrup- 
 tions from their attendance on important public duties, 
 but should, for a certain time, be excused from obeying 
 any other call, and be protected in their postponement 
 of private obligations to the service of the state. The 
 privilege may not unfrequently save electors from being 
 virtually unrepresented, 15 and it secures to all that free- 
 dom from personal restraint, without which there would 
 neither be dignity in the collective body, nor indepen- 
 dence in the individual. This exemption from arrest 
 
 a Hakewell's Modus tenendi Parliamentura. 
 * Speech of C. W. Wynn.
 
 316 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 has never been extended to such criminal proceedings 
 as involved treason, felony, or breach of the peace. 
 Before the existence of the journals, we are told of one 
 Fearne, a paltry member, being committed to the 
 Marshalsea, for pi ckery (i.e., picking pockets), without 
 any notice to the House. However disposed their 
 hands might be supposed to be to picking and steal- 
 ing on a larger scale, and to levying contributions from 
 the public purse, they must have felt ashamed of such a 
 petty-larceny rogue, and been anxious that his removal 
 should take place sub silentio. Since the passing of 
 the Habeas Corpus Act, it has been the invariable 
 usage of government to give notice to the speaker, by 
 letter, of the particular state offence for which they 
 may have arrested any member. 
 
 The gradual extension and encroaching advance 
 of this privilege to all civil process, forms a curious 
 chapter of constitutional history. Mr. Hatsell, after 
 a searching inquiry, has come to the conclusion, that 
 the claim in the time of Edward IV. comprehended 
 only arrests for trespass, debt, &c, on mesne process ; 
 that, against such arrests, the law gave a remedy of a 
 writ of parliament, which released the person of the 
 debtor, and did not affect the rights of the creditor. 
 For an arrest on a judgment, there was at that early 
 period no other redress than a special act of par- 
 liament. The first precedent is in King Edward I. 
 days, when, we learn, d " the Templars had certain 
 tenants in the Parliament House, which were behind 
 with their rents, and they made humble petition to the 
 king, That they might distrain either their bodies or 
 their goods for the same. The king positively refused, 
 
 c Parliaments and Councils of England. 
 d Townsend's Proceedings in Parliament.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 317 
 
 Non videtur honestum quod aliquis de mag no Parlia- 
 mento distHngatur." 
 
 The case of Speaker Thorpe's arrest may be passed 
 over as a precedent of no authority " begotten by the 
 iniquity of the times." Till the instance of George 
 Ferrers, a.b. 1543, when a member had been im- 
 prisoned, the House never delivered him out of custody 
 by their own authority, but referred him to that writ 
 of privilege, to which he was entitled at common 
 law. e 
 
 But when Ferrers, a burgess in the household of 
 Henry VIII., was arrested, the Serjeant was sent forth- 
 with to the Counter prison, and came back with a 
 report, that the officers of the city, after many stout 
 words, forcibly resisted him, and in the brawl broke 
 off the crown of his mace. The Commons declined 
 the writ which the chancellor offered, and decided 
 that the serjeant might deliver by shew of his mace, 
 without writ, the mace being a sufficient warrant. 
 The sheriffs, having been summoned, and having con- 
 tumeliously refused to surrender Ferrers, were com- 
 mitted to the Tower, and the clerk of the Counter to a 
 place there called Little Ease. This occurred in the 
 34th year of Henry VIII. who studiously cultivated the 
 good-will of his faithful commons. The king harangued 
 the chancellor and speaker, that the member should 
 have his privilege. " For I understand that you, not 
 only for yourselves, but also for your necessary ser- 
 vants, even to your cooks and housekeepers, enjoy 
 the privilege, insomuch, as my lord chancellor hath 
 informed us, that he, being speaker of the parliament, 
 the cook of the Temple was arrested in London, and, 
 as he served the speaker in that office during the par- 
 's Elsynge
 
 318 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 liament, was taken out of execution by the privilege of 
 parliament." 
 
 Ferrers had been surety for one Weldon, and, at 
 the king's recommendation, an act was passed to revive 
 the debt against Weldon and to acquit Ferrers. The 
 creditor who procured the arrest was committed for 
 his contempt. It is suspected that the privilege thus 
 insisted on, and exercised to as great an extent in this 
 first instance as the House has ever since been admitted 
 to exercise it, may be ascribed rather to the circum- 
 stance of Ferrers being a servant of the king than a 
 member of parliament. 
 
 The fence of common law once broken down, the 
 Commons went merrily forward in their aggressive 
 path of privilege, and proceeded to abate an arrest in 
 execution with as little ceremony as country justices 
 put down a common nuisance. In February, 1558, 
 there was an inquiry into a complaint, that John 
 Smith, returned burgess for Camelford, had come to the 
 House, being outlawed, and had deceived divers mer- 
 chants in London, taking wares of them to the sum of 
 £300, minding to defraud them of the same under 
 colour of privilege. The complaint was reported to be 
 true, and the House divided that he should be allowed 
 his privilege: Ayes 112, Noes 107. Prynne says: 
 11 How honourable this vote was for the House in the 
 case of such a cheating member, carried only by five 
 votes, is not fit for me to determine." 
 
 The burgesses who could venture so far under 
 Elizabeth were not to be deterred from still farther 
 encroachments by the blustering pusillanimity of her 
 successor. Sir Thomas Shirley had been committed 
 prisoner to the Fleet soon after his return, and before 
 parliament met, on an execution, and complained to the
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 319 
 
 House, March 1603. f The warden refused to deliver 
 the prisoner to the serjeant, and, persisting in his refu- 
 sal, when Shirley was sent for by the House, he was 
 committed ■ to the Tower. His friends urged the 
 extreme hardship, as they could not secure the war- 
 den from an action for an escape. The Recorder of 
 London moved that six members might be sent to 
 the Fleet with the serjeant and his mace, and there 
 require the delivery of Sir Thomas Shirley; if it 
 was denied them, to press to his chamber, and, 
 providing for the safety of the prison and prisoners, 
 to free him by force and bring him away with 
 them to the House. This strange legal advice to act 
 with a vigour beyond the law was carried by 176 
 against 153. But, the speaker reminding the House, 
 that all sent to enter the prison in that manner would 
 be subject to an action on the case, they relinquished 
 the project of a forcible rescue. 
 
 Many schemes were discussed in the House several 
 days together for the delivery of the prisoner, all to no 
 purpose ; at last the warden was sent for again, and 
 still obstinately refusing to deliver Sir Thomas, was 
 informed by the speaker " that as he did increase his 
 contempt, so the House thought fit to increase his 
 punishment, and that he should be committed to the 
 prison called Little Ease in the Tower." One night's 
 lodging in the miserable dungeon worked a marvellous 
 change in the obdurate gaoler. The lieutenant of the 
 Tower informed the House next day that the warden 
 relented, and would deliver up his prisoner to the 
 serjeant, if the House would send two of their mem- 
 bers, whom he named, to satisfy him in the point of 
 his security. The House refused, for they knew the 
 power of Little Ease, and sent another warrant of 
 
 ' Crompton on the Jurisdiction of Courts.
 
 320 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Habeas Corpus to be served on the warden to release 
 their member. The forms of these warrants are entered 
 in the journals, but there is an amusing private memo- 
 randum annexed : " That Mr. Vice-Chamberlain was 
 privately instructed to go to the king, and humbly 
 desire, that he would be pleased to command the 
 warden, on his allegiance, to deliver up Sir Thomas, 
 not as petitioned for by the House, but as if himself 
 thought it fit, out of his own gracious judgment." 
 
 This last method probably prevailed, for, by a 
 petition from the warden, we find Sir Thomas had 
 been given up. The House thought fit to keep the 
 offender in the same dismal hole some time longer ; 
 when at last they brought him to the bar on his 
 knees, he confessed his error and presumption, and 
 the speaker discharged him, paying the ordinary fees. 
 Two peculiar difficulties attending the release — that 
 the warden would have been liable to an action of 
 escape, and the creditor have lost his right to an 
 execution, — were removed by a general law, 1 James 
 L, to excuse the debt, and save harmless the keepers 
 of prisons. 
 
 From this time, all persons who ventured on 
 arresting a parliament man for debt, either in ignorance, 
 or wilful hardihood, were consigned to the custody of 
 the serjeant. In 1606, we read of a complaint that 
 Mr. James, a burgess, had been arrested on an execu- 
 tion. The attorney who procured the arrest, and the 
 officer who arrested Mr. James, were the next day 
 brought to the bar, and for this contempt committed 
 to the Serjeant's custody for one entire month ; the first 
 instance recorded in the journals, but speedily multi- 
 plied, of delinquents being handed over to the custody 
 of the serjeant, by way of punishment. The period of 
 protection that environed a member's person being
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 321 
 
 indefinite, Sir Edward Coke, in 1621, by an excess of 
 privilege, as great as any that the Stuarts ever usurped 
 of prerogative, carried a motion, that "all members 
 should be free from arrest by their creditors, during 
 an adjournment of five months." The precedent met 
 with such approval in Ireland, that the members there 
 enjoyed protection over a recess of two years, and as 
 their parliaments, till the middle of the 18th century, 
 were only dissolved on the death of the reigning 
 sovereign, luxuriated in a complete immunity from 
 troublesome debtors. 
 
 None, of course, proved themselves hardy enough 
 to dispute the summary power of the Long Parliament 
 during the saturnalia which marked the close of the 
 reign of Charles and the Commonwealth ; but after 
 the Restoration it was braved in a strange manner by 
 one Maurice Thompson, who, being ordered into cus- 
 tody for arresting a member, barred his house, and 
 kept the serjeant-at-arms at bay. He could not pre- 
 vail, till armed with a warrant from the speaker to break 
 open the door, and to call in the aid of the sheriffs of 
 Middlesex to enforce obedience. Excepting this futile 
 resistance, all attempts at opposition to the privi- 
 lege appear at length to have quailed beneath the 
 determined spirit with which the House invariably 
 asserted it. As to the extent of the privilege in one 
 particular, whether it freed a prisoner in execution at 
 the time of his election to parliament, the legal autho- 
 rities of the House still fluctuated in opinion. When 
 a petition was presented from Mr. Montague, in March, 
 1690, for his discharge, and it appeared that he had 
 been confined in the King's Bench prison, on a judg- 
 ment for debts incurred previously to and at the time 
 of his election, the committee appointed to search for 
 
 VOL. I. y
 
 322 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 precedents came to no decision till after repeated ad- 
 journments ; and, when they at length made a report, 
 the House postponed all consideration of it from time 
 to time, and never proceeded to any final resolution s . 
 
 A worthless member met with better fortune. 
 In 1707 Mr. Asgill wrote to the speaker to inform 
 him that he was detained a prisoner in the Fleet upon 
 two executions. His letter was referred to a commit- 
 tee, and the House ordered him to be delivered out of 
 custody by the serjeant with the mace. The only 
 distinction between the two cases seems to have been, 
 that the one was a prisoner in execution before, and 
 the other subsequent to, his election ! that in the first 
 instance the privilege must have had a retrospective 
 operation, and invested the person of the member with 
 a sanctity which it had not at the time of the arrest. 
 Mr. Hatsell, with a natural anxiety to promote the 
 privileges of the Commons' House of Parliament, 
 hesitates a complaint that the question should ever 
 have been mooted, whether a person was eligible to be 
 a member, though an outlaw or in execution at the 
 time of his return. h "Had James I.,' ? he says, " suc- 
 ceeded in establishing the doctrine that persons employ- 
 ed in foreign embassies, sheriffs of counties, bankrupts, 
 and persons outlawed or in execution, ought not to be 
 elected or to retain their seats, he would soon, by one or 
 other of these methods, have found means to withdraw 
 from their service in that House many of its ablest 
 members, to whose spirit and attention we, at this dis- 
 tance of time, are very much indebted for the existence 
 of the freedom which this nation now enjoys." 
 
 In a note to Burnet, the speaker, Arthur Onslow, 
 that vigilant guardian of all the just rights and privi- 
 
 B Journals, vol. x. h llatsell's Precedents, title Privilege.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 323 
 
 leges of the House, has left a memorable proof of his 
 conviction how much the collective benefit ought to 
 outweigh all considerations of individual hardship and 
 oppression. 
 
 " George Robinson, in 1737, was chosen member 
 for Marlow : after this, in the mean time, and before 
 the next session, a commission of bankruptcy issued 
 against him, he having some time before withdrawn 
 himself from his habitation and retired, it was said, into 
 France. The commission of bankruptcy was taken 
 out by the corporation for lending money on pledges, 
 to whom he had been cashier or banker, and was 
 charged by them with great embezzlement of their 
 money, and they petitioned his majesty to send 
 instructions to his ambassador at Paris to procure the 
 said Robinson to be seized and sent over hither. The 
 petition was referred to Sir Philip Yorke, the attorney- 
 general, who immediately came to me to know what 
 privilege I thought Robinson had in the case. Upon 
 talking it over, we both agreed that, as this was for a 
 detention of his person, and within the time of privi- 
 lege as to every thing but suits, it might be of danger- 
 ous consequence to the privilege of parliament, and 
 very ill use might hereafter be made of such a seizure. 
 He did accordingly report that it was by no means 
 advisable for his majesty to give such directions to his 
 ambassador, nor did any such direction go." 
 
 There can be no question that the speaker gave 
 judicious advice to the law officers of the crown, but 
 that the privilege is too valuable to be ever impugned, 
 even upon occasions of peculiar enormity, may admit 
 of some discussion. The sweeping censure of Swift, 
 however specious at first sight, is made in utter disre- 
 gard of the general good to the community, which a 
 
 Y 2
 
 324 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 safe and unmolested meeting of the great council of 
 the nation is calculated to produce. " The claim of 
 senators," says that arch satirist, in his essay upon 
 public absurdities in England, " to have themselves 
 and servants exempted from law-suits and arrests, is 
 manifestly absurd. The proceedings at law are already 
 so scandalous a grievance upon account of the delays, 
 that they little need any addition. Whoever is either 
 not able or not willing to pay his just debts, or, to keep 
 other men out of their lands, would evade the decision 
 of the law, is surely but ill qualified to be a legislator. 
 A criminal with as good reason might sit on the bench, 
 with a power of condemning men to be hanged for 
 their honesty." 
 
 Full light has been recently thrown upon the 
 advantages and attendant inconveniences of this pro- 
 tection in an eloquent and elaborate debate. 
 
 In the session of 1832 *, Mr. Baring proposed to 
 narrow this safeguard of parliament-men within closer 
 limits, and to take away the freedom from arrest in 
 all cases of judgment debts. He stated that he did 
 not mean to touch the right in criminal proceedings 
 nor on mesne process, but only in the event of actual 
 judgments against a member. The bill was finally 
 abandoned, but its ill success may be attributed rather 
 to the period of the session and approaching deter- 
 mination of parliament, as then constituted, than to 
 the weight of arguments used against it. Mr. Wynn, 
 indeed, ably contended, "that the duty of attendance 
 ought not to be interrupted by the private claims of any 
 individual. In maintenance of this principle, the par- 
 liament of 1707 released, — (as we have seen,) a very 
 obnoxious member named Asgill from custody, though 
 
 1 Mirror of Parliament.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 325 
 
 it immediately afterwards expelled him for an irreligious 
 publication. And just a century later, in 1807, a Mr. 
 Mills having written to the speaker, stating that he was 
 under arrest, was held entitled to his privilege, and on 
 motion discharged out of the custody of the marshal of 
 the King's Bench, though it was notorious that he had 
 purchased his seat to escape payment of his debts, 
 which amounted to £23,000/' More recently, on the 
 complaint of Sir Charles Hamilton, that he had been 
 arrested in mistake by an officer who had made no 
 apology, the officer was committed to Newgate and 
 detained ten days. 
 
 There is much force in Mr. Herbert's ingenious 
 objection, that some of the members of that House 
 had been known to be in very poor circumstances, and 
 if it were not for this boon, a sort of benefit of clergy 
 in civil suits, it would be in the power of any admini- 
 stration, by buying up his debts, to immure a man of 
 the first-rate abilities. A wealthy merchant, like the 
 late Mr. Thelusson, not over partial to long orations, 
 might have materially shortened the debates, by coop- 
 ing up together Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, and Courtenay. 
 
 The frauds upon debtors, which an abuse of the 
 privilege had occasioned, tainting the character of the 
 House, were chiefly relied upon by the supporters of 
 Mr. Baring's proposition. He cited the case of a Mr. 
 Bourke, who being confined in the King's Bench pri- 
 son in execution for a considerable debt,, procured, 
 through the venal instrumentality of some convenient 
 friends, his return for a pocket borough, but never 
 deigned to come near the House at all ; he had horses 
 ready at the door of the prison, started direct for the 
 continent, and never returned. There certainly 
 appears the stamp and mark of honesty in a legisla-
 
 326 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 tive measure which should protect the poor against 
 the rich, and prevent the confiding tradesman from 
 being defrauded of his just demands by the class who 
 feel no scruple in running up a long account, and 
 swindling under privilege of parliament. It accords 
 with our notions of political justice, that no man should 
 sit in the House of Commons to levy contributions on 
 his countrymen, who has not himself the means of 
 contributing ; and it deserves consideration, whether 
 any character can be more dangerous to the common 
 weal than a senator possessing great and commanding 
 eloquence, but subject to the harassing demands of 
 creditors, eager to grasp at some lucrative post by any 
 methods, and almost constrained against his conscience 
 to barter principles for place. Nor is it any legiti- 
 mate argument against the existence of much vexation 
 that there should be such few instances of members 
 being sued to judgment and execution. It is impos- 
 sible to calculate how many creditors may have been 
 deterred from prosecuting their just claims by the 
 known difficulties which the privileges of parliament 
 throw in their way. 
 
 The abstract reasons for such a measure appear to 
 outweigh the rather fanciful alarms of some Irish 
 representatives, that it would give rise to a system of 
 purchasing up judgments, mortgages, and incumbrances 
 on the estates of members of the legislature which, 
 though perfectly solvent, they might not be able to 
 satisfy on a short notice. The more grave objection 
 of Lord John Russell was entitled to greater weight, 
 that men of high talent and integrity were often care- 
 less in pecuniary affairs, and that it would be injudi- 
 cious to exclude such persons from the House, because 
 they might on particular occasions be unable to pay all
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 327 
 
 their debts. '* Such power," he urged, " might be made 
 a most improper use of, as hardly anything could be 
 so objectionable as making the private affairs of mem- 
 bers the subject of party discussion. By that proposal 
 the constituents were not called upon to consider the 
 integrity and talents of a person they might wish to 
 represent them, but had only to look to his pecuniary 
 circumstances." 
 
 The necessity for the change contemplated in Mr. 
 Baring's bill, even w T ere its expediency beyond doubt, 
 has been in some degree removed by the change in the 
 law of imprisonment for debt. Notwithstanding the 
 plausible arguments adduced in favour of such a mea- 
 sure, the historian of the privileges of members cannot 
 but heartily sympathise with the emphatic language 
 in which the author of the Lex Parliamentaria con- 
 cludes his treatise : " Nothing ought to be so dear to 
 the Commons of Great Britain as a free parliament ; 
 that is, a House of Commons every way free and inde- 
 pendent of the King, Lords, and Ministry, free in their 
 persons, free in their estates, free in their elections, 
 free in their returns, free in their assembling, free in 
 their speeches, debates, and determinations j free to 
 complain of offenders, free in their prosecuting for 
 offences, and therein free from the fear or influence of 
 others, how great soever ; free to guard against the 
 encroachments of arbitrary power, free to preserve the 
 liberties and properties of the subject, and free to part 
 with a share of those properties when necessary for the 
 service of the public." 
 
 The privilege of franking letters was one of the 
 very few honorary distinctions which members of the 
 House of Commons retained at the passing of the 
 Reform Bill. The sending and receiving letters free
 
 328 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 had become a mark of consideration, and, whilst the 
 loss to the revenue was not considerable, the gratifica- 
 tion this boon afforded to the privileged class of con- 
 ferring little favours should not be lightly esteemed. 
 It seemed the quiddam honorarium — the distinguishing 
 sign — the graceful apanage of an M.P. The history 
 of its introduction is curious, for, in company with 
 many prized distinctions, it had an ignoble origin in 
 the Pensioner Parliament of Charles II., in a settle- 
 ment of the revenues of the post-office. When Colonel 
 Titus reported the bill, k Sir Walter Erie delivered a 
 proviso for the letters of all members of parliament to 
 go free during their sitting. Sir Heneage Finch 'said. 
 it was a poor, mendicant, proviso. The question 
 being called for, the speaker, Sir Harbottle Grimstone, 
 was unwilling to put it, saying he felt ashamed of it, 
 nevertheless the proviso was carried. The restriction 
 of this privilege to the period of parliament's sitting was 
 speedily overlooked in practice, and for half a century 
 members enjoyed a license of writing free over any 
 number of post-office letters, and of enclosing franks 
 in parcels to be used by their friends and constituents 
 for any period of time, and of any weight. 
 
 At the accession, 1715, complaint was made of 
 great abuses in franking post letters, " tending to the 
 lessening of his majesty's revenue and to the disper- 
 sion of scandalous and seditious libels." As some 
 slight remedy for the evil, the House in its tenderness 
 directed that the superscription of each letter should 
 be in the member's hand-writing. A very liberal 
 extension of the privilege appears to have been still 
 connived at as an innocent job. Dr. Johnson relates, 
 in his life of Cave the printer, that tc he was raised to 
 
 k Grey's Debates.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 329 
 
 the office of clerk of the franks, in which he acted 
 with great spirit and firmness, and often stopped 
 franks which were given by members of parliament to 
 their friends, because he thought such extension of a 
 peculiar right illegal. This raised many complaints, 
 and, having stopped, among others, a frank given by 
 the old Duchess of Marlborough to Mr. Walter Plum- 
 mer, he was cited before the House as for a breach of 
 privilege, and accused, I suppose very unjustly, of 
 opening letters to detect them. He was treated with 
 great harshness and severity, but declining their ques- 
 tions, by pleading his oath of secrecy, was at last dis- 
 missed;" — no marked encouragement, assuredly, to 
 vigilance in the detection of abuses. That many 
 members (and tradition points strongly to the Scotch) 
 strained this permission to an abuse, there is no doubt. 
 The gossiping Wraxall 1 proves how long and to 
 what extent it prevailed. "Till 1784, neither date 
 nor place was necessary. Not only were covers trans- 
 mitted by hundreds, packed in boxes, from one part 
 of the kingdom to the other, and laid up as a magazine 
 for future expenditure, but far greater perversions of the 
 original principle, for purposes very injurious to the 
 revenue, took place. I was acquained with a member, 
 a native of Scotland, decorated with the order of the 
 Bath, who sent up to London from Edinburgh by one 
 post thirty-three covers, addressed to an eminent 
 banking-house in the Strand, most of which con- 
 tained, not letters, but garden-seeds. The post- 
 master-general had the covers carried up to the 
 speaker's chair ; but he voted for Lord North, and 
 the business never came before the House." 
 
 Merchants used to send and receive prices-current 
 
 1 Wraxall's Posthumous Memoirs.
 
 330 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 and circulars free, and bankers have been known to 
 realize some hundred pounds a-year by an abuse of 
 this advantage. Since the Union, an honourable mem- 
 ber has deposited the privilege in the hands of his 
 bankers, to be placed to the credit side of his account, 
 the daily number of twenty-five letters, the full amount 
 allowed to be sent and received, being under his 
 covers. 
 
 In 1760, the Lords amended a new Post-office 
 Bill, by leaving out the proviso of exemption. The 
 Commons agreed to this, on a private assurance from 
 the ministers of the crown that the privilege should 
 be continued ; and accordingly a warrant was issued 
 to the post-master general, directing the allowance to 
 the extent of two ounces in weight, thus reducing the 
 bulk of letters post-free within some moderate dimen- 
 sions. During the fiscal embarrassments to which the 
 unfortunate American war had reduced the country, 
 Lord North, in opening the budget, intimated one 
 method which had suggested itself of supplying the 
 deficiencies in the revenue, by restraining, or entirely 
 suppressing, the privilege of franking. m But the 
 House had become less sensitive to what their prede- 
 cessors deemed " a mendicant proviso," and inter- 
 rupted the scheme with such a loud and general 
 murmur of disapprobation, that the easy chancellor 
 of the exchequer stopped suddenly short, and proposed 
 instead the taking off the prohibition on foreign cam- 
 brics. The attempt at restraining the boon was 
 renewed by an abler financier, Mr. Pitt, with more 
 decision and with success. He proposed certain 
 regulations, the general object of which was to 
 restrain the number of franks sent or received by any 
 
 m Parliamentary History, vol. xxxiv.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 331 
 
 post, and also to restrict them in regard to weight. 
 He designed that in future all franks should be dated, 
 both as to time and place, — a measure which would 
 in some degree limit the advantage, as the limitation 
 ought to be, to the personal advantage of the members 
 of the two Houses. 
 
 These salutary amendments, yielding a large annual 
 profit to the revenue, were agreed to without a mur- 
 mur. The late active secretary of the post-office, Sir 
 Francis Freeling, was of opinion that the post-office 
 lost a mere trifle by the modified exercise of this pri- 
 vilege, so much was gained by answers to the letters, 
 and by mistakes in the envelopes themselves. The 
 exercise of franking was, after this regulation, watched 
 with such jealousy that, in 1799, a member brought 
 a charge, which the House seriously investigated, 
 against Sir Benjamin Hammet, for deputing to his 
 son the privilege during his illness. His friends justi- 
 fied this laxity of practice by the precedents of former 
 parliaments, whose members, they urged, delegated 
 this power occasionally to their wives, daughters, and 
 other ladies ; but the excuse was not admitted, and 
 the worthy knight received a reprimand, and caution 
 not to offend again. 
 
 All possibility of abuse is now at length removed. 
 An economical reform in the Post-office, as searching 
 and complete as that of the House itself, has put an 
 end to this counting-house convenience and drawing- 
 room luxury. These cheap favours to constituents 
 are abolished, and the last feather in the plume of 
 privilege remorselessly torn away.
 
 332 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 In the triumphant vindication of the undoubted pri- 
 vileges of the Commons, and the able advocacy of their 
 somewhat questionable powers, assumed from time to 
 time, the lawyers led the van, their earliest, most reso- 
 lute, and most persevering champions. From the first 
 dawn of civil liberty to its full development, they stood 
 between the crown and the subject, asserting the right 
 of every member to express his thoughts fully, freely, 
 fearlessly, withstanding the oppressions of the nobles, 
 and upholding the right of the representatives of the 
 people to tax themselves. Who, it may be asked, took 
 the lead in those memorable discussions, which esta- 
 blished the freedom of his majesty's poor Commons, 
 and confirmed a wavering House in their resolution, 
 but Sir Edward Coke, Selden, and Littleton ? Who 
 but these great constitutional lawyers managed the 
 memorable conference with the Lords, which preceded 
 the Bill of Rights ? Who drew up that Magna Charta, 
 but Serjeant Glanville, and Pym, and Hyde ? At the 
 Restoration, the cautious wisdom of Sir Matthew Hale 
 would have fettered the king with conditions, that 
 might have saved his reign from alternating between 
 anarchy and despotism. Whose voice more loud than 
 that of Maynard, Somers, Sawyer, and Williams, in
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 333 
 
 denouncing the tyranny of James ; whose suggestions 
 so valuable in establishing the happy Revolution ? 
 
 Their praise is not, however, confined to the jour- 
 nals and statute-book : the fears of usurping tyrants 
 in the early annals of English history, proclamations 
 of enmity, and futile efforts at exclusion, form the best, 
 because involuntary, homage to the merits of our great 
 lawyers. The statute 23rd Edward III., called that 
 parliament the meeting of the learned men, from the 
 number of persons learned in the laws which it 
 included. But, as the exactions of the royal favourites 
 were by these means thwarted, they petitioned that 
 " Nul home cle ley soient retournez ni acceptez cheva- 
 liers des Countees." The king willed in answer " that 
 knights and esquires only should be returned in full 
 counties." In the writ of summons to parliament 
 5th Henry IV. was inserted the famous clause, " No- 
 lumus quod aliquis homo ad legem aliqualiter sit electus." 
 This Nolumus, we are assured, a was inserted by 
 Henry IV. in his writ, as he suffered from extreme 
 want of money, and felt afraid of his demands being 
 resisted. 
 
 Deprived of their orators, the parliament granted 
 a subsidy tristabilis et valde gravis, and was called by 
 Speed the " lack-learning parliament," by Walsingham 
 Parliamentum indoctorum. " The prohibition that no 
 apprentice or man following the law should be chosen," 
 says Coke, 4 Institute 48, " made the parliament fruit- 
 less, and never a good law passed thereat, and called 
 the ' lack-learning parliament.'" 
 
 Since this time lawyers, for the great and good 
 service of the Commons, have been eligible, but 
 always objects of jealousy on the part of the crown. 
 n Coke's Institutes.
 
 335 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 James I. wrote to Secretary Calvert, desiring the 
 House Cl to go on cheerfully in their business, rejecting 
 the curious wrangling of lawyers upon words and sylla- 
 bles." In his speech, 1623, the pedantic monarch 
 says, " Let not any stir you up to law questions, 
 debates, quirks, tricks, and jerks." ° His son, declar- 
 ing his reasons for dissolving parliament, said, "Young 
 lawyers sitting there take upon them to decry the 
 opinions of the judges, and some have not doubted to 
 maintain, ' That the resolutions of that House must 
 bind the judges,' a thing never heard of in ages past. 
 And when one of the members of that House, speak- 
 ing of our councillors, said ' we had wicked counsel ■' 
 and another said, ' That the council and judges sought 
 to trample under feet the liberty of the subject ;' and 
 a third traduced our court of Star Chamber for the 
 sentence given against Savage, they passed without 
 check or censure by the House : By which may 
 appear how far the members of that House have of 
 late swollen beyond the rules of moderation and the 
 modesty of former times, and this under the pretence 
 of privilege and freedom of speech, whereby they take 
 liberty to declare against all authority of council and 
 courts at their pleasure." 
 
 When the dark Earl of Strafford sought to establish 
 an absolute tyranny in England, his first endeavour 
 was to sweep the obstructing lawyers from his path. 
 " I disdain," he writes to Archbishop Laud, p a to see 
 the gown-men hang their noses over the flowers of the 
 crown, and blow and snuffle upon them till they take 
 both scent and beauty off them ;" and again, " How 
 well this suits with monarchy, when common lawyers 
 monopolize all to be governed by their year-books, you 
 
 Parliamentary History, vol. i. p Forster's Lord Strafford.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 335 
 
 in England have a costly experience." The reason of 
 his hate is clearly legible — all who run may read it. 
 But the secret of their unpopularity with other classes, 
 who have no object to gain, seems less easily accounted 
 for, however undeniable in fact. Were their informa- 
 tion ever so valuable, their knowledge ever so import- 
 ant, they have never been favourites with the consti- 
 tuent body. The high-born patricians, though a 
 fourth part of the peerage is derived from the law, 
 sneered at the adventurers, who could with such facility 
 out talk them. Naval and military men undervalued 
 the peaceful labours of the gown ; county-members 
 reckoning their acres, whom Canning termed landed 
 grandees, would not listen to learned gentlemen, who 
 must speak volubly by the hour forsooth, according to 
 instructions, and were hired by fees. At three different 
 eras in parliamentary history, the aversion of three 
 different sections of the community is displayed by 
 their representatives in lively colours. Under the 
 Stuarts, when the clergy were still struggling for civil 
 offices of state, Archbishop Whitgift evinces in a pri- 
 vate letter to Burleigh, the jealousy of the proud 
 churchman : " The temporal lawyer, whose learning 
 is no learning anywhere but here at home, being born 
 to nothing, doth by his labour and travail in that bar- 
 barous knowledge purchase to himself and his heirs 
 for ever a thousand pounds per annum, and oftentimes 
 much more, whereof there are at this day many 
 examples.'" 1 Bishop Goodman depicts in a still more 
 amusing manner his disgust at the good offices which 
 men of the law exacted by their fears from the com- 
 monalty. 
 
 q Strype's Life of Archbishop Whitgift. 
 * Bishop Goodman's Letters, temp. James I.
 
 336 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 " One knight did affirm, that in one term he gave 
 twenty nobles in rewards to the door-keepers of the 
 attorney-general." The poor bishop complains " that 
 the lawyers usually had all the good matches in the 
 kingdom, and does boldly say there is not a mean 
 lawyer but spendeth as much venison in his house as 
 he doth that hath an ordinary park. I did once intend 
 to have built a church, and a lawyer in my neighbour- 
 hood did intend to build himself a fair house. One 
 sent to desire him to accept from him all his timber ; 
 another sent to desire he might supply him with all the 
 iron. In the building of my church, where it was so 
 necessary, for without the church they had not God's 
 service, and no church was near them within four or 
 five miles, truly I could not get the contribution of one 
 farthing." 
 
 In the Pensioner Parliament, the saturnine Andrew 
 Marvel, representing the country and trading interest, 
 railed at the long robe in this good set fashion : s " The 
 wisdom and probity of the law went off for the most 
 part with good Sir Matthew Hale, and justice is made 
 a mere property. This poisonous arrow strikes to the 
 very heart of government. What French counsel, 
 what standing forces, what parliamentary bribes, what 
 treating, and all the other machinations of wicked men 
 have not been able to effect, may be more compen- 
 diously acted by twelve judges in scarlet. What self- 
 denial were in the learned counsel in law, did they not 
 vindicate the decisions of the judges, perplex all reme- 
 dies against the encroachments and corruptions of 
 courts of judicature, word all acts towards the advan- 
 tage of their own profession, palliate abuses in elec- 
 tions, extenuate and advocate public crimes, where the 
 ■ Marvel on the Growth of Popery.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 337 
 
 criminal may prove considerable, step into the chair of 
 a money bill, and pen the clauses so dubiously, that 
 they may be interpreted in Westminster Hall beyond 
 the House's intention, mislead the House not only in 
 point of law, but even in matter of fact, without any 
 respect to veracity, but all to farther promotion." At 
 the Revolution, the courtly Lord Halifax, a favourable 
 specimen of the nobleman in Charles the Second's day, 
 cautioned the constituencies' " against choosing 
 lawyers, who almost all had narrow minds, and by 
 the whole scope of their studies found themselves 
 pressed to adhere to the king and his prerogative." 
 
 For this general odium, the venality of some and 
 tergiversation of other great lawyers, who trafficked 
 with their powers of speech, may perhaps in some 
 degree account. 
 
 The exactions of Dudley, wresting the law to 
 iniquity; the apostacy of Noy, suggesting in his guilty 
 flight the impost of ship-money ; the late repentance 
 of Coke, becoming in his old age, but not till then, a 
 tribune of the people, may in part explain this deep- 
 rooted aversion. But a still stronger motive of dislike 
 may be traced to the trivial jealousy which the weak 
 entertain against the strong, depreciating those arts of 
 oratory with which themselves may be unacquainted ; 
 undervaluing that research and laborious investigation 
 for which they have neither leisure nor capacity; mea- 
 suring by a money standard, those acquirements which 
 though it may retain, gold cannot purchase. The gift 
 of ready elocution, the self-possession, apt address, 
 unfailing facility of speech, and those attendant evils, 
 the habits of prolixity and repetition, an unsparing- 
 consumption of time, and minute subtlety, tend to 
 
 ' On the Choice of a Speaker. 
 VOL. I. Z
 
 338 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 weariness, and irritate and annoy the most impatient, 
 the least merciful in criticism, of all audiences — a 
 crowded House of Commons. Hence the frequent 
 complaints we read of the House being lawyer-ridden ; 
 of the garrulity of learned Serjeants ; of St. Stephen's 
 being overwhelmed with the politicians of Westminster 
 Hall, though they count but very few in a division. 
 The number of lawyers in parliament, in James I's. 
 time, was not more than twenty or thirty. When that 
 king commanded the House, " as an absolute king," to 
 confer with the judges on a disputed return for the 
 county of Bucks, they selected a committee of twenty- 
 one lawyers and sixteen gentlemen — apparently all the 
 lawyers in the House with the exception of Coke- 
 comprising the eminent names of Serjeant Hobbard, 
 Doddridge, Sir Francis Bacon, Yelverton, Lawrence, 
 Hyde, Sir Roger Wilbraham, &c, yet has the return of 
 practising barristers been always proportionably small. 
 Of this compact phalanx there has been in modern 
 times rather a diminution than increase, if we exclude 
 those country gentlemen and men of large fortune 
 who have been called to the bar, more as a matter of 
 form than with any serious intention of pursuing the 
 law as a profession, and on whom of course the esprit 
 de corps must have little, if any, weight. So long as 
 the House shall continue a legislative assembly, there 
 must be some persons conversant with the language 
 and interpretation of statutes, nor can they become 
 numerically formidable, since the abolition of nomina- 
 tion boroughs. Their favour with large popular consti- 
 tuencies is not so proverbial, nor their wealth or 
 influence so great, as to occasion, except in the minds 
 of sensitive country gentlemen, an inordinate cause of 
 alarm. Prynne's argument, that their exclusion would
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 339 
 
 shorten the debates, can only be noticed with contempt. 
 There may be serious evil in excessive discussion, but 
 the forcible thrusting forth of argument, the carrying 
 measures of government by the mere tyranny of num- 
 bers, is a far more serious evil, and abhorrent to the 
 genius of the constitution. 
 
 The unpopularity of lawyers attained its maximum 
 during the convulsion of the civil wars, when the 
 sword had been thrown into the scale, and justice 
 kicked the beam. Lord Keeper Whitelocke, that 
 they might not be forcibly excluded from their seats, 
 made a long and ample apology in behalf of the profes- 
 sion. u One of his arguments was a double-edged 
 sword; answering the military sneer, "that gownsmen 
 did not undergo such dangers and hardships as martial 
 men," he pointed to the great services performed 
 by Lieutenant- GeneralJones, Commissary Ireton, and 
 others, who, putting off their gowns, had served the 
 parliament stoutly as soldiers. His answer to the 
 invidious motion that lawyers, being members of the 
 House, should, during that time, forbear their practice 
 and pleading, will receive a more general assent : 
 "That in the act, which the member might be pleased 
 to bring in for that purpose, it might also be inserted 
 that merchants should forbear their trading, physicians 
 from visiting their patients, and country gentlemen 
 forbear to sell their corn and wool, whilst they sat as 
 members." So long as the Interregnum lasted, the 
 red coat and sabretasche superseded the lawyer's gown ; 
 but at the Restoration, the gentle goodness of Hale, 
 the stout presbyterianism of Maynard, the antiquarian 
 research of Prynne, and sound constitutional learning 
 
 ° Whitelocke's Memoirs. 
 
 Z 2
 
 340 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 of Bridgeman and Vaughan, were not without some 
 avail. 
 
 It must be confessed, however, that the legal pro- 
 fession shared largely in the degeneracy which pervaded 
 with universal taint the reigns of Charles II. and his 
 bigoted brother. From no period of our history can 
 a railer at law and lawyers extract so many obnoxious 
 persons and incidents. On the bench", Scroggs, North, 
 Jeffries, Saunders, and Wythens made a shambles of 
 Westminster Hall : in the senate, the blustering vio- 
 lence of Williams and Jones veered about at each 
 breath of corruption between court obsequiousness 
 and factious sedition. Even in this depth of degrada- 
 tion, it should be remembered that legal science still left 
 its trace and character in those admirable statutes 
 which reflected a legislative glory on the reign of 
 Charles ; which, in the act for abolishing military 
 tenures, in the habeas corpus act, the statute of wills, 
 the statute of limitations, the statute of frauds, have 
 conferred enduring good, and protected from spoil or 
 violence both persons and property. 
 
 Amid the din of the Pensioner Parliament, the 
 lawyer's voice might be heard, now battling stoutly 
 against the royal prerogative, now inveighing against 
 the upper house, baying to death Roman Catholic 
 noblemen, and hoarse with applauding the perjuries 
 of Oates. But though they shared in the excesses 
 of fanaticism and did not escape the pestilent 
 epidemic of those distempered times, — though among 
 their first-class men may be ranked grand apostates 
 from the cause of constitutional liberty, the honours of 
 an ambitious profession proving too strong a bait for 
 the firmness of Noy, the integrity of Digges and Little- 
 ton, — without them, wayward, ambitious, and recreant,
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 341 
 
 as too many were, what would have become of the laws 
 and liberties of Englishmen ? 
 
 If the accents of sound deliberative wisdom could 
 have been listened to in the moody and factious 
 temper of the Long Parliament, the eloquence of 
 Glanville and the persuasive arguments of Hyde would 
 not have pleaded in vain. Let us not disparage a 
 profession which has adorned the bench, with such 
 chancellors as Nottingham, Somers, and Hardwicke — 
 has placed in the chair of the House of Commons its 
 best speakers, More and Coke — has preserved its 
 privileges, and added to the renown of its orators ; 
 which engraved on the statute-book so many wise 
 and excellent laws, and, as a crowning glory, took an 
 active and leading part in the settlement of the happy 
 revolution. 
 
 At the head of those distinguished lawyers who 
 were summoned to the Convention Parliament may 
 fairly be placed the venerable Maynard, then in his 
 eighty-sixth year ! 
 
 To have toiled in his profession for sixty years 
 with intellect and spirits unbroken; to have received a 
 larger amount of fees than any serjeant, or utter bar- 
 rister before his time ; to have impeached some of the 
 most eminent lay and spiritual peers, and to have been 
 impeached himself and twice committed to the Tower ; 
 to have held rank and conciliated favour under five 
 dynasties — for he partook more of the willow than the 
 oak — and finally to have been first commissioner of the 
 great seal at the age of eighty-five — are a few among 
 the many singular incidents that illustrate the life of 
 this remarkable man. 
 
 Mr. Maynard was born at Tavistock, in 1602, the 
 eldest son of a private gentleman resident in that 
 town, and was educated at Exeter College, Oxford,
 
 ,342 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 previously to his admission at the Inner Temple. His 
 acuteness and docility recommended him to the 
 notice of Mr. Nov, the celebrated attorney-general of 
 Charles I., and he rose early into repute with the 
 attorneys, from being looked upon, according to his 
 own account, as Mr. Noy's favourite. He had formi- 
 dable rivals in Rolle and Selden, but soon obtained 
 professional eminence. His name frequently occurs in 
 Croke's Reports, forty-eight years before quitting the 
 bar. In 1647 his receipts from the profession were so 
 great, that Whitelocke, a rival lawyer, records the fact 
 in atone of wondering envy. "I attended the House, 
 and Maynard and I talking of our circuit gains, he told 
 me that he got on the last circuit £700, which I 
 believe was more than any one of our profession got 
 before." It was then more common than even in 
 modern days for aspiring lawyers to become members 
 of parliament. 
 
 Maynard accordingly secured a seat for Totness in 
 1640, but always acted on the prudent rule of making 
 politics subservient to the law. He had been from 
 boyhood closely wedded to his profession, and was not 
 unfaithful. Though a decided member of the presby- 
 terian party,, coinciding with all their schemes, and 
 compelled from the deference paid to his legal lore to 
 take part in those state prosecutions with which the 
 times were rife, he " did their bidding gently," and 
 never envenomed the duties of the advocate, like Pym 
 or St. John, by mixing with their performance the 
 bitter resentments of the man. 
 
 "Mr. Hyde's friends in the profession," writes 
 Clarendon in his faithful history, "were, among others, 
 John Maynard and Bulstrode Whitelocke, men of 
 eminent parts and great learning out of their pro- 
 fessions, and in their professions of signal reputation ;
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 343 
 
 and, though the two last did afterwards bow their 
 knees to Baal, and so swerved from their allegiance, 
 it was with less rancour and malice than other men : 
 they never led, but followed, and were rather carried 
 away with the torrent, than swam with the stream, 
 and failed through those infirmities which less than a 
 general defection and a prosperous rebellion could 
 never have discovered." To this moderation, easiness 
 of temper, natural caution, the acquired shrewdness of 
 the lawyer, and appetency of gain, in different degrees 
 of strength, jointly contributed. He would not cut off 
 all chance of reconciliation with temperate royalists, 
 even when he went most heartily with the proceedings 
 of the roundheads. Abstaining from all unnecessary 
 harshness, he supported the other managers in the 
 impeachments of Strafford and Laud, and sat in the 
 assembly of divines, when a synod of laymen met them 
 to consider the best method of establishing the presby- 
 terian form of church government. He even accepted 
 the office of deputy lieutenant, when the House 
 of Commons ventured on usurping the functions of 
 royalty, but never acted in that character. This 
 prudent, almost timid, reserve appears to have been 
 sorely tried on an occasion which is amusingly de- 
 scribed by "Whitelocke, though the quaintness of his 
 narrative must suffer from abridgment. 
 
 "In 1644," we are told, "the lord general 
 (Essex) began to have some jealousies of Lieutenant- 
 General Cromwell; one evening, very late, Maynard 
 and I were sent for to Essex House, and there was no 
 excuse to be admitted, nor did we know beforehand 
 (a decided case of hardship) the occasion of our being 
 sent for." They found in council the lord general and 
 Scots commissioners, with Holies and other presby-
 
 344 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 terian leaders. The Scottish chancellor opened the 
 cause of their summons, and the memorialist imitates 
 in his spelling the pronunciation of the cannie Scot, 
 " You ken varry weel that General Cromwell is no 
 friend of ours. It is requisite this obstacle or remora 
 should be removed. The Solemn League and Cove- 
 nant has settled how an incendiary is to be proceeded 
 against. Your opinion is desired, what is the meaning 
 of incendiary, and whilke way to proceed against him, if 
 he be such. By our law in Scotland we clepe him an 
 incendiary who kindleth the coals of contention and 
 raiseth differences in the state to the public damage 
 and he is ' tanquam publicus hostis patriae .' " 
 
 Maynard politely gave way to Whitelocke in solving 
 this knotty point, and then expressed a submissive 
 opinion that, however correctly defined the term incen- 
 diary might be, it was a term of civil law, and not 
 often met with in his books ; the application of it was 
 quite another question. " General Cromwell," he added, 
 " is a person of great favour and interest with the House 
 of Commons, and with some of the House of Peers 
 likewise, therefore there must be proofs, and the most 
 clear and evident against him, to prevail with the par- 
 liament to judge him an incendiary. I confess, my 
 lords, I do not, in my private knowledge, assure myself 
 of any such particulars, nor have we heard of any 
 here, and I believe it will be more difficult than some 
 of us imagine to fasten this upon him. The proofs 
 are not ripe — it is not fit for my lord general and the 
 Scots commissioners yet to appear in it." 
 
 This sensible advice, after a sharp debate and with 
 much reluctance, was adopted. At two in the morning, 
 the shrewd counsellors were dismissed with thanks, and 
 stole away to their respective homes greatly comforted
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 345 
 
 no doubt at having escaped an instant peril. " I 
 believe," says Whitelocke, in concluding his account 
 of their secret interview, " several false brethren in- 
 formed Cromwell of all that passed. After that he 
 seemed more kind to me and Maynard than he had 
 been formerly." Notwithstanding this comparative 
 restoration to favour, he was too able a member of the 
 presbyterian party not to be marked out as a victim 
 by the independent faction in their struggles for 
 ascendency. In 1G47 he was charged by Sir Thomas 
 Fairfax and the army, who included ten other 
 members most opposed to violent measures, in the 
 same sweeping accusation, with being delinquents and 
 favouring the royal cause. The terror of such a charge 
 seemed sufficient to deter the feeble remnant of the 
 Long Parliament from whispering one word in their 
 defence. They resolved, without a division, that he 
 should be expelled, committed to the Tower and 
 impeached. Several articles of impeachment were in 
 due course carried up to the Lords, charging him with 
 plotting to levy war against the parliament, and the 
 speaker commanded him to kneel at the bar, as a 
 delinquent. He refused with prompt and unexpected 
 boldness, saying he did not come to make bargains, 
 but desired, as a commoner of England and a free- 
 born subject, to be tried by indictment. And although 
 the Lords fined him £500 for contumacy, he persisted 
 in his refusal to kneel, protesting at the same time 
 that the articles brought against him were not believed 
 by those who brought them up. His unwonted 
 firmness taught the movement party that he could not 
 be crushed with impunity, and in a few months these 
 hostile proceedings were discharged. 
 
 He opposed with spirit the declaration of the
 
 346 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 House of Commons for a vote of non-communication 
 with the king, declaring that by such a vote parlia- 
 ment dissolved itself, and inveighed against the insolent 
 remonstrance of the army calling for justice on 
 Charles I., as the capital source of all grievances, 
 which their officers, now conscious of their overwhelm- 
 ing power, forwarded from St. Albans. Still wishing 
 to temporize, he argued, says a contemporary, as if 
 he had taken fees on both sides, " one while magni- 
 fying the gallant deeds of the army, then firking them 
 for their remonstrance." 
 
 When the execution of the unhappy Charles was 
 in agitation, his humanity again mastered all his pusil- 
 lanimous doubts ; he burst into the House, and pleaded 
 for his royal master's life with such impassioned energy 
 that Cromwell demanded that he should be brought 
 to the bar. But when the king had suffered martyr- 
 dom, he again relapsed into prudence, and accepted 
 office from the usurper. "In 1653," writes honest 
 Anthony Wood, " Oliver Protector, Maynard was by 
 writ, dated February 1st, called to the degree of Serjeant 
 at law, having before taken the engagement, and on 
 May 1st, was by patent made the Protector's serjeant, 
 and pleaded in his and the then commonwealth's 
 behalf against several royalists that were tried in the 
 pretended high court of parliament, wherein several 
 generous cavaliers and noble hearts received the dis- 
 mal sentence of death." 
 
 In his character as serjeant, he would still have 
 acted with honest vigour for the good of the subject, 
 had not his heart failed him for fear. The story of 
 his tergiversation is told, with a warmth that becomes 
 the lover of liberty, by Ludlow. " When George 
 Cony, a merchant, refused to pay custom, and it was
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 347 
 
 taken by force (during the usurpation), he sued the 
 collector at common law. Cromwell sent his counsel, 
 Serjeants Maynard and Twysden, to the Tower, where 
 they had not been above three or four days, when 
 they unworthily petitioned to be set at liberty, 
 acknowledging their fault, and promising to do so 
 no more, choosing rather to sacrifice the cause of 
 their client, wherein that of their country was also 
 eminently concerned, than to endure a little restraint 
 with the loss of their fees for a few days." Cromwell 
 told the judges they should not suffer the lawyers to 
 prate what it would not become them to hear. So 
 effectually subdued indeed was Westminster Hall, that 
 even the faint-hearted Maynard appears to have 
 been among his brothers of the long robe con- 
 spicuous for hardihood. When Lieutenant-Colonel 
 Lilburn was brought again to his trial for sedition, he 
 prayed earnestly for further time ; in regard the counsel 
 assigned him refused to appear for him, only Serjeant 
 Maynard, who was sick. Whether this was a con- 
 venient sickness of the body or not, Colonel Lilburn 
 gained a reprieve and eventually an acquittal. 
 
 In one of the few parliaments summoned during 
 the Commonwealth, this active lawyer was thought of 
 sufficient consideration to be returned for several 
 boroughs, and made his election for Newton. 
 
 From the parliament of 1656 he was excluded by 
 the audacious virulence of Cromwell, who claimed the 
 power of verifying the regularity of the elections, 
 together with Haselrig, Ashley Cooper, and the most 
 public-spirited of the commonwealth party. 
 
 The short notes of the debates taken by Mr. 
 Burton serve to show that he was on his re-admission 
 a frequent and judicious speaker, but are too brief and
 
 348 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 quaint to represent the style of his oratory. He is 
 made to bear his protest against two decided evils, long 
 speeches, and excessive legislation. " I profess to 
 you," he said, " I am not ambitious, I would be lower, 
 his parliament did pass more laws in one month 
 than the best student in England can read in a year, 
 and well if he can understand it then. We had a 
 speech to-day (Sir Arthur Haslerig's) which lasted 
 from nine till twelve. If you go on at this rate, to 
 have one speech a day, the Dutch will give you 
 £2000 a-day to do so." With the wary spleen of a 
 sectarian, he supported a convenient motion for the 
 dominant party that parsons should have no votes at 
 their elections, and is summary in rejecting a cavalier's 
 petition. But the nation was by this time sick of a 
 twelve years' tyranny, under the pretence of popular 
 government, and the iron hand of the Protector loosed 
 its firm grasp of power in death. His ancient serjeant 
 hastened to Whitehall to swear fealty to Richard 
 Cromwell, followed as a mourner in the pompous 
 funeral procession of his father, and the following year 
 repaired again to court to welcome the abjured Stuart 
 on his restoration. The guilt of the individual was 
 absorbed in that of the multitude, and bis merit as a 
 lawyer none could . question. He was accordingly 
 dubbed a knight by Charles on Lord Mayor's day, and 
 created by patent his ancient serjeant. Nay, had the 
 judges been better paid, he might bave been elevated to 
 the bench, but Sir John was too cunning to accept the 
 offer of a precarious dignity at the expense of certain 
 gain. He would not exchange the solid honorarium 
 of the bar for the pinching allowance then doled out 
 with most unwise parsimony to the bench. 
 
 That the commonwealth lawyer was not, however,
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 349 
 
 over-popular with the cavaliers, is proved by the 
 following note of the pious Mr. Pepys at the close of 
 his Journal on Coronation Day: " Thus did the day 
 end with joy everywhere, and, blessed be God, I have 
 not heard of any mischance to any body through it 
 all, but only to Serjeant Glynne, whose horse fell 
 upon him yesterday, and is like to kill him, which 
 people do please themselves to see how just God is to 
 punish the rogue at such a time as this, he being now 
 one of the king's Serjeants, and rode in the cavalcade 
 with Maynard, to whom people wish the same for- 
 tune." Both Serjeants escaped; the one from his 
 actual and the other from his imprecated tumble, to 
 earn disgrace in the next year as an earnest for their 
 full-blown honours. The Protector's chief justice, 
 Glynne, divided with his Serjeant, Maynard, the shame 
 of appearing at Westminster, in 1661, among the 
 crown lawyers to sustain the prosecution against Sir 
 Henry Vane ; an instance of tergiversation for which 
 they well deserved to be stitched into Butler's 
 rhymes — 
 
 " Did not the learned Glynne and -Maynard 
 To make good subjects traitors, strain hard?" 
 
 for that subject, whether good, bad, or indifferent, had 
 only carried out their own doctrines, as free as them- 
 selves from all personal participation in the death of 
 the royal martyr, and with whom they "had taken 
 sweet counsel together as friends." During the dis- 
 tracted reign of Charles II., Sir John Maynard sought 
 shelter on the civil side of Westminster Hall, his 
 increased age and infirmities serving as a convenient 
 plea for handing over the conduct of state trials to 
 younger, and, in bodily health, more able men. Roger 
 North relates, in an acrimonious but amusing manner,
 
 350 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 some characteristic and amusing anecdotes of his sub- 
 tlety and thrift w . 
 
 "Serjeant Maynard was a very able practiser, and 
 used to lay traps for the judges, and very cunning 
 ones; but, if he discovered that he was observed, he 
 straightway gave it up and contended not upon a 
 fallacy which he foresaw would be resolved. He once 
 had a mind to punish a man who had voted against 
 his interest in a borough in the West; and brought 
 an action against him for the scandalous words spoke 
 at a time when a member to serve in the House of 
 Commons for that borough was to be chosen ; and, 
 after his great skill, he first laid his action in the 
 county of Middlesex, and that was by virtue of his 
 privilege, which supposes a Serjeant is attendant on 
 the Court of Common Pleas and cannot be drawn 
 from the county where the court sat; and then, in 
 the next place, he charged the words in Latin, that, 
 if he proved the effect, it would be sufficient, whereas, 
 being in English, they must prove the very words 
 to a tittle; and those were a long story "that used to 
 be told of Mr. Noy and of the cock lawyers of the 
 West, and this was tried before his lordship (Lord 
 Keeper Guildford) at the nisi prius sittings for the 
 Common Pleas for Middlesex. The witness telling 
 the story as he swore the defendant told it, said, 
 1 that a client came to the serjeant and gave him a 
 basket of pippins, and every pippin had a piece of 
 gold in it.' ' Those were golden pippins !' quoth the 
 judge. The serjeant began to puff, not bearing the 
 jest; so the witness went on, 'and then,' said he, 
 * the other side came, and gave him a roasting pig (as 
 it is called in the West), and in the belly of that, there 
 w Life of Lord Guildford.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 351 
 
 were fifty broad pieces.' ' That's good sauce to a 
 pig/ quoth the judge again. This put the serjeant 
 out of all patience, and speaking to those about him, 
 'This,' said he, 'is on purpose to make me ridiculous!' 
 This story being sworn, the judge directed the jury 
 to find for the serjeant; but in the court the judg- 
 ment was arrested, because the words were but a 
 blind story, and went as mere merriment over ale 
 without intent to slander. Such bitterness flows 
 from the sour spirits of old pretended republicans." 
 
 " One afternoon, at the nisi prius court of the 
 Common Pleas in Westminster Hall, before the judge 
 sat, a poor half-starved old woman, who sold sweet- 
 meats to school-boys at the end of the bar, desired 
 the serjeant to pay her two shillings for keeping his 
 hat two terms. She spoke two or three times, and 
 he took no notice of her, and then I told the serjeant 
 the poor woman wanted her money, and I thought he 
 would do well to pay her. The serjeant fumbled a 
 little, and then said to me, ' Lend me a shilling.' 
 ' Ay, with all my heart,' quoth I, ' to pay the poor 
 woman.' He took it, and gave it her ; but she asked 
 for another. I said I would lend him that also to 
 pay the woman. ■ No, don't boy,' he said, * for I 
 never intend to pay you this,' and he was as good as 
 his word." 
 
 But, though smarting under the loss of his shil- 
 ling, poor North is compelled to pay reluctant 
 homage to the legal acumen of his crafty old friend. 
 "This great man, as I must call him, since his 
 natural and acquired abilities, and the immense gains 
 he had by practice, justly entitle him to that epithet, 
 was an anti-restoration lawyer. In 1684, I heard 
 him say in the Court of Chancery, of a cause then at
 
 352 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 hearing, that he was counsel in that cause in the year 
 1643. His actions in the rebellious times made the 
 Act of Indemnity smell sweet; and afterwards he had 
 the cunning to temporize and got to be made the 
 king's eldest serjeant, but advanced no further." 
 
 A more profound observer of men and manners, 
 Bishop Warburton, is less severe in his strictures upon 
 the political delinquencies of the trimming lawyer. 
 " Old Maynard and Whitelocke were both lawyers of 
 family, and, in the Long Parliament, both of the pres- 
 by terian faction, both learned and eminent in their pro- 
 fession, moderate, sage, and steady, and so far they 
 agreed. In this they differed: Maynard had strong 
 parts w r ith a serious modesty ; Whitelocke was weak and 
 vain ; a sense of honour made Maynard stick to the 
 presbyterian faction, and to fall with them; but, as he 
 had much phlegm and caution, not like Holies to fall 
 for them, so that he was never marked out by the 
 independent party for their first sacrifice. Maynard, 
 by adhering steadily but not violently to the party he 
 set out with, was reverenced by all, and, had he not 
 been more intent upon the affairs of his profession, 
 might have become considerable by station." 
 
 In this flattering likeness the profile only is taken. 
 Neither in the House nor at the bar did the serjeant 
 in his personal character command the reverence 
 which is here attributed to him, nor will his full- 
 length portrait give as agreeable, though it may a, 
 more faithful, representation. In the courts, indeed, 
 he played his bowls admirably, but would sometimes 
 meet with rubbers. He w r as rallying Gadbury, a 
 witness to the popish plot, when the man retorted 
 " Mr. Serjeant, I was none of the tribe of forty-one," 
 and the conscious-stricken non-conformist sat down.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 3o3 
 
 But even to the last he was ready with his repar- 
 tee, and obtained a partial homage from his depth of 
 learning. When Jeffries, with habitual roughness, 
 told Maynard he had got so old he forgot the law, 
 the Serjeant retorted with a readiness which has 
 become proverbial for its felicity, " 'Tis true, Sir 
 George, I have forgot more law than ever you knew!" 
 When, after his promotion to the bench, Jeffries was 
 disputing some legal point with Ward, a barrister, 
 overwhelming him with his rude rhetoric, " Do not 
 make such discourses ad captandum populum with 
 your flourishes. I will none of your enamel nor 
 your garniture," the aged serjeant rose to the rescue 
 of his oppressed brother, and stated how the law 
 really stood, in which statement the chief justice imme- 
 diately acquiesced. 
 
 The deference thus conceded to his great erudition 
 sometimes betrayed the court into error. Chief 
 Justice Pemberton, having adopted his opinion on the 
 authority of some case, which could not be met with 
 immediately, but to which he referred the judge, 
 afterwards reproached him with having misled the 
 bench, and said that, when he looked into the case, 
 he found that his brother Maynard might as well have 
 tossed his cap into the air, or have laughed in his face. 
 It would have been better for his memory had he 
 continued to amuse the civil side of Westminster Hall 
 with these comparatively innocent stratagems, and not 
 suffered himself in 1679 to act the character of high 
 priest, in offering up what he must have believed to 
 be an innocent victim, to appease the popular cry for 
 vengeance. His hatred of popery, together with the 
 little risk, induced the wary lawyer verging on eighty 
 to imbrue his hands once more in the shedding of 
 vol. i. 2 a
 
 354 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 innocent blood, and to carry up to the Lords the 
 articles of impeachment against Lord Stafford for 
 participating in a popish plot which had no existence. 
 It was craftily thought that, from the advanced age 
 and enfeebled intellect of this unhappy peer, he would 
 have bowed his head to the stroke without resistance, 
 but, fortunately for the cause of truth and justice, he 
 deceived the expectations of his persecutors, and 
 proved the perjured testimony of the suborned 
 witnesses with a force of conviction, that would have 
 ensured his acquittal from all but the wilfully har- 
 dened, and judicially blind. 
 
 In another state prosecution eagerly pressed 
 forward, Maynard, though not naturally cruel, but 
 time-serving, brought his legal lore to bear down the 
 accused. He explained, on the impeachment being 
 voted against Lord Danby, the words of the statute 
 25th Edward III. (the great statute of high treason), 
 that the courts of law could only proceed on one of 
 the crimes there enumerated, but that parliament had 
 still a power by a clause in the act to declare what 
 was treason. Swift remarks on this casuistry with his 
 usual terseness : " Yes, by a new act, but not by a 
 retrospective one, for Maynard was a knave and a 
 fool with all his law !" On another measure of a 
 more innocuous nature, but framed in a spirit of 
 superfluous legislation, the serjeant betrayed a pre- 
 judice but too congenial with the age in which he 
 lived. He sought to carry an act, which the good 
 sense of the House rejected, to prevent further build- 
 ing in London or the neighbourhood. " This build- 
 ing," he said, almost pathetically, " is the ruin of the 
 gentry and ruin of religion, leaving so many good 
 people without churches to go to. This enlarging of
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 355 
 
 London makes it filled with lacquies and pages. I 
 would prevent the design of enlarging the eity or 
 places adjacent. In St. Giles' parish, scarce the fifth 
 part can come to church, and they must be of no 
 religion at last !" This last suggestion, marked with 
 far-thinking shrewdness, (well for this country had it 
 been fully weighed and acted on,) atones for the 
 folly of a prohibition which would have restricted the 
 west end of London to Bow-street and the Strand, 
 and not even included in its precincts what the next 
 generation deemed the fashion of Great Ormond- 
 street and the exclusiveness of Soho-square. But 
 his view of public policy was contracted within a 
 narrow vision. 
 
 In matters of law Maynard shone in the House as 
 at the bar. His arguments in Skinner's case, — that 
 subject of warm conflict at a conference with the 
 Lords — delighted his brother Commoners so much, 
 that they were entered on the journals by express 
 order of the House. Sharing in the popular delusion, 
 he moved in 1681 to agree with the Lords that the 
 hopes of a popish successor were the grounds of the 
 plot. rt Shall we be led," he exclaimed, " like an ox 
 to the slaughter, or a fool to the stocks, and not 
 apprehend our danger ?" He was then the father of 
 the House, and could refer to a precedent, when he 
 was in the chair of the Committee of Elections, in 
 the Long Parliament in 1641. The respect gracefully 
 paid to the shrewd old lawyer rescued him from the 
 grasp of the serjeant for going his circuit without 
 leave of absence. His son Joseph Maynard was 
 instructed to inform his father that he must return 
 forthwith to his attendance, and that, if he refused 
 prompt compliance, he should be sent for in custody. 
 
 2 a 2
 
 356 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 The times were lowering with danger, and the par- 
 liamentary patriarch had two excellent motives for 
 his journey — to escape from trouble and accumulate 
 fees. 
 
 During the short reign of James, when a less 
 discerning eye than the Serjeant's could see from afar 
 in the political horizon the distant haze of revolution, 
 he could with difficulty be dragged from his forensic 
 retreat, even by the consummate impudence of Titus 
 Oates. When that infamous bravo was tried for 
 perjury in 1685, he called upon Serjeant Maynard to 
 speak to the legality of the proceedings against Lord 
 Stafford, but the learned gentleman was troubled 
 with a most convenient forget fulness, and begged to 
 be excused giving any evidence on the subject, 
 alleging as a reason, "I can never swear to my 
 memory for any cause so long ago." The defendant 
 remarked, with his accustomed audacity, "My lord, 
 I am very sorry the learned Serjeant's age should so 
 impair his memory," and was as usual huffed for his 
 sauciness by the judge: "I dare say you are not 
 more sorry than he is for his age!" Summoned to 
 the servile parliament of 1685, Maynard did the state 
 good service in exposing the iniquity of an act by 
 which it was sought to enlarge the definition of 
 treason. A clause had been so framed that anything 
 said in disparagement of the king's person or govern- 
 ment was made treason ; and, as judges and juries 
 were then constituted, any words spoken to the 
 dishonour of the king's religion might have been 
 comprehended within the scope and purview of the 
 statute. This monstrous innovation was strongly 
 opposed by Maynard, who, in a speech of convincing 
 eloquence, showed the injustice of making words 
 treason : —
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 3o7 
 
 " They were often ill-heard and ill-understood, 
 and were apt to be misrecited by a very small varia- 
 tion : men in passion or in drink might say things 
 they never intended, therefore he hoped they would 
 keep to the law of 25th Edward III., by which an 
 overt act was made the necessary proof of ill inten- 
 tion. When others insisted that ' out of the 
 abundance of the heart the mouth spake,' he brought 
 the instance of our Saviour's words, ' Destroy this 
 temple, &c.,' and showed how near the temple was to 
 this temple, pronouncing it in Syriac, so that the 
 difference was almost imperceptible. There was 
 nothing more innocent than these words as our 
 Saviour meant and spoke them, but nothing more 
 criminal than the setting on a multitude to destroy 
 the temple." "This," says Burnet, "made some 
 impression at that time. But if the Duke of Mon- 
 mouth's landing had not brought the session to an 
 early conclusion, that bill would certainly have 
 passed." 
 
 Sir John Maynard is entitled to the gratitude of 
 his countrymen for averting a sanguinary enactment, 
 which none but those whose lot was cast on evil days 
 could have dreamt of being proposed seriously, and 
 he deserves the especial remembrance of his learned 
 friends for quoting the Syriac in the original, a branch 
 of black letter lore with which no gentleman of the 
 long robe is expected to be very familiar. On the 
 welcome arrival of King William, the veteran of 
 eighty-five hastened to court, and graced his audience 
 with a repartee, perhaps the best known in our 
 language, which proved that his learning was not 
 superior to his wit. We repeat it for the sake of 
 adding Swift's caustic comment: "The Prince of
 
 358 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Orange, who could not avoid noticing his great age, 
 remarked, with his natural brusqueness, and with as 
 little expectation of making, as of eliciting, a com- 
 pliment : ' You must have outlived all the lawyers of 
 your time.' 'Yes,' replied the ready-witted advocate, 
 1 and I should have outlived the law itself but for the 
 coming of your highness !' " Swift margined this 
 note on his speech, proving oddly enough his tacit 
 admiration of its cleverness : — " He was an old rogue 
 for all that." But, however happy the reply, the 
 octogenarian could scarcely have expected in his 
 waking dreams to have been placed "in his reverence 
 and his chair days" at the head of the law. Few 
 members of the profession will acquiesce in the pro- 
 priety of the American regulation that all judges 
 must resign their seats at sixty, but none can approve 
 the precedent of selecting a common lawyer of such 
 an extreme age to be first commissioner of the great 
 seal. 
 
 But such was the anxiety of the new government 
 to multiply places and pensions, that all offices which 
 could by possibility be divided were distributed to 
 different hands, and, accordingly, the custody of the 
 great seal was put into commission, and intrusted to 
 the care of Sir John Maynard, Sir Anthony Keck, 
 and Sir William Iiawlinson. For three months he 
 tottered down to the Court of Chancery, and then 
 resigned its too onerous duties to Sir John Trevor. 
 His active services to the new government in the 
 Convention Parliament had certainly deserved high 
 rewards, but they might have been paid in a more 
 suitable form. In the Convention and first Parliament 
 that succeeded (to both of which he was returned for 
 Plymouth without opposition), he betrayed no want of
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 359 
 
 energy, but entered into the debates with all the 
 vigour of manhood. He was named at the head of 
 five eminent lawyers, Holt, Pollexfen, Bradford, and 
 Atkinson, to assist the Lords in their consultations,, 
 and to explain to them the laws and constitution of 
 the realm in the room of the judges, who were either 
 absent from London or unworthy of the trust, and 
 took the lead in the celebrated conference between the 
 Lords and Commons, upon the propriety of the word 
 Abdication. It is to be hoped that the reporter has 
 been more guilty than the speaker of the strange 
 rhetoric attributed to him : — 
 
 "My lords, when there is a present defect of one 
 to exercise the administration of the government, I 
 conceive the declaring a vacancy and provision of a 
 supply for it can never make the crown elective. If 
 the attempting the utter destruction of the subject 
 and subversion of the constitution be not as much an 
 abdication as the attempting of a father to cut his 
 son's throat, I know not what is. It is not that the 
 Commons do say the crown of England is always and 
 perpetually elective, but it is more necessary that 
 there be a supply, when there is a defect, and the doing 
 of that will be no alteration of the monarchy from a 
 successive one to an elective." 
 
 In the keen dialogue which ensued between the 
 managers of the conference, it would appear that 
 Lord Pembroke had the advantage of the lawyer, 
 notwithstanding his doctrine of descent, and analogies 
 from the Old Bailey. 
 
 Pembroke. "If there be a doubtful title (that is 
 dubious in whom the title resides, but a certain title as 
 to some one), and I cannot directly name him that 
 hath the immediate right, yet it is sufficient to prevent
 
 3G0 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the vacancy, that there is an heir or successor, let him 
 be who he will." 
 
 Maynard. " But your Lordship will neither agree 
 it is vacant, nor tell us how it is full. King James is 
 gone, we hear or know of no other ; what shall the nation 
 do in this uncertainty ? When will you tell us who is 
 king, if King James be not? Shall we everlastingly 
 be in this doubtful condition ?" 
 
 Pembroke. " Sure, Mr. Serjeant Maynard, you 
 will agree there is one, and no more than one, to 
 whom a right does belong of succeeding, upon failure 
 of Kinsj James. Has he no heir known ?" 
 
 Maynard. " I say no man can be his heir while 
 he lives. If he has any, it is in nubibus; our law 
 knows none; and what shall we do till he be dead? 
 It cannot descend till then." 
 
 Pembroke. " You agree that, notwithstanding 
 King Charles II. was abroad at his father's death, and 
 did not actually exercise the government, yet in law, 
 immediately upon his father's decease, he was not the 
 less heir for that, nor was the throne vacant." 
 
 Maynard. " That is not like this case, because 
 the descent was legally immediate ; but there can be no 
 such thing during King James's life as an hereditary 
 descent; so that either here must be an everlasting war 
 entailed upon us, his title continuing, and we opposing 
 his return to the exercise of the government, or we 
 have no government, for want of a legal descent and 
 succession. Pray, my lords, consider the condition of 
 the nation till there be a government ; no law can be 
 executed, no debts can be compelled to be paid, no 
 offences can be punished, no one can tell what to do 
 lo obtain his right or defend himself from wrong. 
 You still say the throne is not void, and yet you will
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 3G1 
 
 not tell us who fills it ! If once you will agree that 
 the throne is vacant, it will then come orderly in 
 debate how it should, according to our law, be 
 filled?" 
 
 In the debate on the state of the nation, the old 
 Serjeant showed how strong the Presbyterian leaven 
 was still within him, stirring up his hatred to Roman 
 Catholics and jealousy of the clergy. " There is no 
 Popish prince in Europe but would destroy all Pro- 
 testants, as in Spain, France, and Hungary; and in 
 Spain they destroyed a gallant young prince (Don 
 Carlos) whom they suspected to incline to the Pro- 
 testants; and now they would make Magdalen College 
 a new St. Omers." 
 
 The ruling passion was strong in death. The 
 aged puritan railed at the papists with his last breath, 
 and willed away all his personalty from his young 
 wife, his third wife by the way, and whose marriage 
 settlement he had rendered nugatory by what he 
 deemed a clever trick. Of a lawyer, so astute, so 
 erudite, and venerable, of a man so crafty, truckling, 
 and mean, it is easier to speak with levity than to 
 mention him in terms of respect or esteem. He nar- 
 rowly escaped the name of a pettifogger by the extent 
 of his learning and his length of service.
 
 362 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 The " gentle Somers," though far from being 
 That faultless monster which the world ne'er saw," 
 
 was one of the most incorrupt statesmen and patriotic 
 lawyers whom this country, rich in greatness, ever nur- 
 tured. His father did not spring " from the dregs of the 
 people," as the scurrilous Swift asserted, but was a res- 
 pectable attorney at Worcester. a He is termed indeed 
 by the same prejudiced authority " a great rogue;" but 
 his chief demerits appear to have been that he had com- 
 manded a troop of horse in Cromwell's army and was 
 parent to the whig chancellor. The old house in which 
 he was born had been inhabited by one branch of the 
 Somers family from the time of the Tudors, and known 
 by the name of the White Ladies, from its site being 
 that of some ancient monastery. It had sheltered 
 Queen Elizabeth in her royal progress, and Charles II. 
 just before the battle of Worcester, at which disastrous 
 period to royalty, the autumn of 1651, is dated the 
 birth of John Somers. Under this ample roof-tree 
 several families with whom the Somers had intermar- 
 ried, the Cookseys and Foleys, lived sociably together. 
 I fere too came on repeated visits the young Earl of 
 Shrewsbury (the elder Somers was receiver of his 
 
 ° Cookscy's Life of Lord Somers.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 363 
 
 estates), and grew up the warm friend of his son. 
 The patronage of this wavering but amiable nobleman 
 exercised through life a favourable influence on his 
 fortunes. He was educated at a private school in 
 Staffordshire, and is described to have been there a 
 youth without " outleaps, a cold-blooded boy/' who 
 loved to be with his books at play-hours. 
 
 A manuscript, formerly in the possession of Dr. 
 Birch, says, " The account of his behaviour at school 
 I had many years ago from a school-fellow. I think 
 Walsall was the place ; they learned their grammar 
 together ; I remember very well his account of Johnny 
 Somers being a weakly boy, wearing a black cap, and 
 never so much as looking on when they were at play." 
 This precocious gravity Somers shared with the late 
 Dr. Parr, who diversified his studies — "the boy is father 
 to the man" — with preaching in his shirt thrown over 
 the boy's jacket. At the late age of twenty-one he 
 took up his residence as gentleman commoner at 
 Trinity College, Oxford, destined, a generation later, 
 to be the college of the great Chatham, and cultivated 
 there that love of classical literature which he pre- 
 served in all its freshness amid an ungenial atmo- 
 sphere, the gloomy chambers of the Middle Temple, 
 and after his call to the bar. Politics, as well as 
 literature, diversified his legal studies. 
 
 In behalf of those leaders of opposition to whom 
 Shrewsbury introduced his young friend, Lords Shaftes- 
 bury and Russell, Sir William Temple, and Algernon 
 Sidney, Somers adventured his first essays as an 
 author. He composed the greater part of the cele- 
 brated " Answer to the Declaration of Charles the 
 Second on Dissolving his Last Parliament," and revised 
 several state papers and pamphlets ascribed to Sidney.
 
 364 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Provided with a handsome competency, independent 
 of his profession, he was early distinguished for 
 his generous and discriminating patronage of lite- 
 rature. We are told of his contributing one hundred 
 pounds to the repair of the college chapel, and taking 
 an active part in the publication of Milton's Paradise 
 Lost, in folio ; that he was strenuous in obtaining sub- 
 scriptions, and recommending the poem to general 
 notice. His own stray contributions to verse deserve 
 the praise of ease and elegance, and are far superior to 
 the uncouth attempts at rhyme of those great states- 
 men and lawyers, Lord Clarendon, Sir Christopher 
 Hatton, and Sir Matthew Hale, who loved the muses 
 truly much better than the muses loved them. When 
 " a mob of gentlemen/' as they termed themselves, 
 undertook to translate Plutarch ; they solicited Somers's 
 assistance, and he favoured them with a spirited 
 translation of the Life of Alcibiades, the character 
 which Lord Bolingbroke afterwards piqued himself so 
 much on resembling. He also translated several 
 epistles from Ovid. 
 
 Yet, in the midst of these and other less intellectual 
 dissipations, he did not neglect law. In 1683, he 
 appeared as counsel for Pilkington, the unlucky 
 ex-sheriff of London, who was cast in the heaviest 
 damages ever recorded, £100,000, and had Joseph 
 Jekyll, who afterwards married his sister, for a junior. 
 At this period, we are assured, he was realizing £700 
 a-year, though we cannot but suspect some exaggera- 
 tion, for he had not acquired rank, and was scarcely 
 known. The proverbial slowness of professional 
 advancement was exemplified in his case, notwithstand- 
 ing his legal and political connexions ; and, on the trial 
 of the Seven Bishops, when his name had been sug-
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 365 
 
 gested as junior counsel, the right reverend prelates 
 objected to one so young and so little known, Somen) 
 was then thirty-seven, a juvenile and somewhat pre- 
 mature age in that late-flowering profession. Lord 
 Kenyon, commending a learned junior of forty-eight, 
 spoke of him as "a rising young man." To the 
 honour of the puzzle-pated Serjeant Pollexfen, who will 
 be remembered for his discerning patronage more than 
 for his black-letter law, he persisted in having Somers 
 retained; and his speech, for simple and well-reasoned 
 eloquence, bears a most favourable comparison with 
 those which preceded it. His arguments were in truth 
 geometrical stairs supporting each other, b and the 
 peroration especially has obtained, as it deserves, uni- 
 versal admiration : — 
 
 " My lords, as to the matters of fact alleged in the 
 petition, that they are perfectly true we have shown by 
 the journals of both Houses. In every one of those 
 years which are mentioned in the petition, this power 
 was considered by parliament, and, upon debate, 
 declared to be contrary to law. There could be then 
 no design to diminish the prerogative, for the king has 
 no such prerogative. Seditious, my lords, it could not 
 be, nor could it possibly stir up sedition in the minds 
 of the people, because it was presented to the kino; in 
 private and alone. False it could not be, for the 
 matter of it was true. There could be nothing of 
 malice, for the occasion was not sought, but the thing 
 was pressed upon them. And a libel it could not be, 
 because the intent was innocent, and they kept within 
 the bounds set up by the law, that gives the subject 
 leave to apply to his prince by petition, when he is 
 aggrieved." 
 
 The flower of England's chivalry, her proudest 
 Granger. c Phillipps's State Trials.
 
 3G6 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 peers and most distinguished commoners, were present 
 to hear and applaud this noble specimen of well- 
 reasoned eloquence. The genius of the pleader wanted 
 only an opportunity, his oratory required but a 
 fitting theme and audience ; to be appreciated was but 
 to be known. From that day Somers stood forward in 
 the character in which Sunderland afterwards described 
 him to the king, d as " the life, the soul, the spirit, of 
 his party." The best form of whiggery, its mainten- 
 ance of tempered liberty, religious freedom, and gra- 
 dual amelioration, most accorded with his judgment 
 and taste. Returned to the Convention for his native 
 city, Worcester, he was chosen to be one of the mana- 
 gers of the conference with the Lords, when they would 
 have substituted an amendment to the resolution of 
 the Commons that the king had deserted the throne 
 instead of abdicated, the word which Somers had hap- 
 pily suggested, as one of doubtful import, likely to 
 reconcile jarring opinions, and to soothe uneasy con- 
 sciences. Some admirers of this great statesman have 
 expressed disappointment at this argument turning so 
 much on the niceties of verbal criticism. He cited 
 jurists and lexicographers, Grotius, Budoeus, and the 
 Code, to prove that desertion was an abandonment, 
 admitting the right to return and assume — abdication, 
 an absolute irrevocable renunciation, and therefore the 
 more proper word, first, as a consequence from the 
 king's violation of the original contract, which the 
 Lords had voted ; next, as effectually shutting out 
 King James, which object the Lords professed. He 
 maintained that the non-use of the term " abdication " 
 in tbe law-books was no objection, for it was a word of 
 known signification used by the best authors, and nei- 
 ther was the word desertion known to the common law. 
 
 '' Shrewsbury Correspondence.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 367 
 
 In persuading the Commons to adopt this resolu- 
 tion he laid down the proposition boldly, that the 
 king's going to a foreign power, and casting himself 
 into his hands, absolved the people from their alle- 
 giance. e He compared the case to that of Sigismund, 
 king of Sweden, who changed his religion, and, when 
 he had withdrawn from the kingdom, was voted by their 
 parliament to have forfeited the crown. The orator 
 then reminded the House of the imprecation of King 
 James L, that if his posterity were not protestant, he 
 prayed God to take them from the throne, and carried 
 the vote of abdication without a division. His own 
 notes, taken in pencil, form almost the only record of 
 that most interesting debate. "The dispute about the 
 words abdicate or desert," says Bolingbroke, "might 
 have been expected in some assembly of pedants, 
 where young students exercised themselves in disputa- 
 tion; but not in such an august assembly as this, of the 
 Lords and Commons in solemn conference upon the 
 most important occasion." But it should be remem- 
 bered that this discussion was in the nature of a feigned 
 issue, and that matters of the greatest moment lay 
 concealed under disputes about words. 
 
 The king had sufficient sagacity to reward this able 
 champion of his crown with the office of solicitor- 
 general, to the surprise and discontent of older law- 
 yers, Sawyer, Pollexfen, Williams, and other rivals, 
 none of whom could bear a comparison in consistency 
 and moral worth. Unfortunately, careless of his fame 
 as an orator, he has left no permanent memorial of his 
 exertions in the House, but appears to have been a 
 frequent speaker. The reports give little more than 
 the name, mere fleshless skeletons of what, under his 
 Parliamentary History, vol. v.
 
 368 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 plastic hand, must have been moulded to grace and 
 beauty. His spirited interposition and influence over 
 a critical debate are thus recorded by Burnet. f " One 
 of them questioned the legality of the Convention, 
 since it was not summoned by writ. Somers, then 
 solicitor-general, answered this with great spirit. He 
 said if that was not a legal parliament they, who were 
 then met, and who had taken the oaths enacted by that 
 parliament, were guilty of high treason. The laws 
 repealed by it were still in force ; so they must pre- 
 sently return to King James. All the money levied, 
 collected, and paid by virtue of the acts of that parlia- 
 ment made every one that was concerned in it highly 
 criminal. This he spoke with much zeal and such an 
 ascendency of authority that none were prepared to 
 answer it. So the bill passed without any more oppo- 
 sition. This was a great service done in a very critical 
 time, and contributed not a little to raise Somers's 
 character." 
 
 Of the jealousy with which the baffled Jacobites 
 regarded their arch-enemy, a curious instance is given 
 in Ralph, s Being chairman of a committee of ways 
 and means, and obliged as attorney-general to attend 
 the Lords, on occasion of the million-annuity bill, they 
 caused him to be sent for out of the chair, and as he 
 had offended one House by suffering them to wait for 
 him, so he offended the other as much by obeying that 
 summons rather too abruptly, and breaking up the 
 committee without a due regard to the usual forms. 
 Such are the petty courses of resentment with which 
 i action fastens on the great. 
 
 In 1693 Somers was appointed lord keeper, but 
 not ennobled, partly from his own indifference to title, 
 
 Memoirs, vol iii. ' Ralph's History of England.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 3G9 
 
 and partly by the king's parsimony, which reserved its 
 grants and honours for his own countrymen, or grasping 
 courtiers of more congenial humours and less culti- 
 vated tastes. Sir John Somers had been disappointed in 
 a contemplated marriage, and disregarded a title which 
 he could not transmit. A peerage was, in 1 G{)5, 
 urgently pressed upon his acceptance, and the Duke of 
 Shrewsbury wrote to his friend, " You should accept 
 the title. I have used all the arguments I have 
 already, and by your objections you may give me leave 
 to tell you, that you are as peevish and unreasonable 
 with too much modesty, as some are with too much 
 ambition." His modest friend did not acquiesce how- 
 ever for two years, when he was reluctantly created 
 Baron of Evesham, and promoted to the rank of lord 
 chancellor. In this office he has borne a liidi and 
 stainless reputation, but the period during which he 
 held the seals was too short to enable him to be 
 classed with Northington, Hardwicke, or Eldon. His 
 judgment on the celebrated Bankers' case, in collecting 
 books and manuscripts for which he is said to have 
 expended more than £1,000, has been always consi- 
 dered by lawyers one of the most elaborate judicial 
 arguments ever delivered in Westminster Hall. 
 
 The history of the case was shortly this. The 
 king's revenue had been farmed out under Charles II. 
 to bankers, to whom he allowed eight or ten per 
 cent, for advancing the money before the taxes were 
 received. Suddenly, without notice, the exchequer 
 was shut and all payments stopped, a measure equiva- 
 lent to the seizing a million and a half of other men's 
 money. When the king had committed this tyrannical 
 fraud, and grasped the deposits of the leading London 
 bankers, he granted to their clamours, in lieu of prin- 
 VOL. i. 2 b
 
 370 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 cipal, dividends out of the hereditary excise, equal to 
 six per cent, interest on their several debts. The 
 payments, never punctual, having fallen during the 
 late distracted times into arrear, the creditors sought 
 to enforce their claims by petition to the barons of the 
 exchequer. The barons were unanimous in their 
 opinion that the remedy by petition was proper, and 
 that the grant from the excise was good. On appeal 
 to the exchequer chamber, Chief Justice Treby stood 
 alone in his judgment that the barons had no authority 
 to make orders for payment on the receipt of the 
 exchequer. His opinion was adopted and enforced 
 by the Lord Keeper Somers, to whom, and the lord 
 high treasurer, whose office was at that time in abey- 
 ance, there lay an appeal. He submitted his doubts 
 whether he should decide according to his own opinion , 
 or in conformity with that of the majority of the 
 judges, to their determination, and they decided, seven 
 against three, that he should consult his own judgment. 
 Taking the same view of his duty, Lord Somers 
 reversed the judgment of the exchequer. The case 
 was afterwards carried into the House of Lords, who 
 reversed the decision of the chancellor. But, though 
 not supported by the highest court, it is far from clear 
 that the chancellor's judgment was erroneous, or his 
 principle of law unsound, the court of the last resort 
 sometimes permitting considerations of expediency, or 
 hardship, or abstract justice, or even, on rare occasions, 
 political favour, to influence their votes. The love of 
 justice was kindled assuredly by party heat. The 
 opposition peers cheered Chief Justice Holt in his 
 argument on a grave law point with a heartiness which 
 the merits of the case or the force of his reasoning 
 could not have elicited, and the decision formed a sub-
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 371 
 
 ject of malicious triumph. "Downright Shippen," in 
 verses upon which a spirit of bitterness is better 
 stamped than the metre, writes of the discomfited 
 chancellor as 
 
 " A shallow statesman ; 
 An unjust judge, and blemish of the mace — 
 Witness the bankers' long depending case." 
 
 During his four years of office he contrived to do 
 his country good service in the cabinet as well as 
 in court. His views of reform embraced a wider 
 expanse than was then usually taken. Burnet informs 
 us how valuable his counsels would have been on the 
 currency question, had they not appeared too daring 
 to the more narrow spirits with w T hom he was " cabined 
 and confined." 
 
 Somers proposed what would have put an end to 
 clipping the coin, "that a proclamation should be 
 prepared, with such secrecy as to be published all 
 over England the same day, ordering money to pass 
 only by weight; but that at the same time, during 
 three or four days after the proclamation, all persons 
 in every county that had money, should bring it in to 
 be told and weighed, and the difference was to be 
 registered, and the money to be sealed up to the end 
 of the time given, and then to be restored to the 
 owners, and an assurance was to be given that this 
 deficiency in weight should be laid before the parlia- 
 ment to be supplied another way, and to be allowed 
 them in the following taxes. The king liked this 
 proposition, but all the rest of the council were against 
 it, fearing mutiny. It would have saved the nation 
 above a million of money. Clipping went on, all 
 people believing parliament would receive the dipt 
 money in its tale." 
 
 2 b 2
 
 372 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 In all those practical duties of statesmanship which 
 fall to the lot of the chancellor, his versatile talents 
 for business proved him thoroughly proficient. " It 
 is not the least of his excellencies," says the honest 
 chronicler, Ralph, h " that, in point of address, whether 
 advising as a minister, or standing in the circle as 
 courtier, presiding in the House of Lords as speaker, 
 conferring or altercating with foreign ministers, giving 
 audience and despatch to suitors, or doing the honours 
 of his table, where he ' became all things to al] men,' 
 he was the most extraordinary man of his times." 
 
 Mackey, in his sketch of the leading characters of 
 the court of Great Britain, drawn for the information 
 of the Princess Sophia of Hanover, bears a similar 
 testimony to his Proteus-like power, and adds a per- 
 sonal description, which, as it could not fail to please 
 the German court, may not prove uninteresting to the 
 reader. " He has gained such a reputation of honesty 
 with the majority of the people of England, that it 
 may be said, very few ministers in any reign ever had 
 so many friends in the House of Commons. He can 
 go into the city, and on his bare word gain so much 
 credit of the public. He gives entertainments to 
 foreign ministers more like one always bred up in a 
 court than at a bar. He is of grave deportment, easy 
 and free in conversation, something of a libertine, of a 
 middle stature, brown complexion." It would have 
 been well for the king if he had sufficiently appreciated 
 the value of his able servant, and not, in exposing 
 him to a forlorn hope, have exacted a proof of his 
 loyal devotion injurious to both. 
 
 It would have been well also, for the country and 
 the chancellor's untarnished name, had he shown a 
 
 h History of England.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 373 
 
 less prompt obedience to the command of his sove- 
 reign ; but that firmness which had withstood the 
 storm, melted in the sunshine, and having once sug- 
 gested what was right, he did not think himself 
 obliged to resist what was wrong, at least in such 
 points as the king had set his heart upon. 1 The 
 courtier was too hard for the patriot, and he who had 
 pleaded so strongly for the right of resistance, acted 
 as if resignation and compliance were indispensable 
 duties. Maladroit in the arts of diplomacy, King 
 William sought to wean the French monarch by 
 concession from grasping the whole of the Spanish 
 inheritance, and to profit by a partition treaty from 
 the spoils of that unwieldy empire. He deluded himself 
 with the notion that partition treaties would produce 
 a more favourable dismemberment of Spain than even 
 successful war, and wrote to his chancellor from Loo 
 for powers under the great seal to treat with the 
 French ambassador leaving blanks for names. The 
 request of advice which accompanied this unconstitu- 
 tional demand, was a mere unmeaning compliment, as 
 the impatient king concluded the treaty four days 
 after his letter had been sent. Lord Somers should 
 have at once refused to incur such a fearful responsi- 
 bility, but the natural reluctance to thwart his royal 
 master in a scheme of darling policy, which, however 
 venturous, might at the time appear the best alter- 
 native to preserve the peace of Europe, prevailed over 
 his constitutional principles. 
 
 The treaty, treacherously divulged, unfortunate in 
 its result, and generally unpopular, raised a storm of 
 obloquy against the king which he could only avert 
 by sacrificing the keeper of his conscience. Irritated 
 
 ' Ralph's History.
 
 374 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 by the disasters of the session, and eager, like some 
 uneasy patient to change his physician, k he requested 
 Lord Somers to resign the seals voluntarily, and, when 
 his faithful councillor refused with firmness, sent him 
 a formal dismissal under the great seal. To his 
 brother peers, when the partition treaty came under 
 discussion, he gave so clear an account of his own 
 share and responsibility, that they proved their appro- 
 bation, according to the testimony of Tindall, by 
 shouts of applause louder and longer than had ever 
 been heard there before. 
 
 A less favourable hearing awaited the noble defen- 
 dant in the hostile audience, which then crowded the 
 ministerial benches of the lower house. Having learned 
 that they were discussing the question of his impeach- 
 ment, he adopted a course for which there were 
 several precedents, both in this and the preceding 
 reigns — that of the Duke of Leeds was the last — and 
 requested to be heard in his vindication. A chair was 
 immediately placed for the now unpopular peer within 
 the bar, on which he sat for a moment and then spoke 
 with persuasive eloquence and candour. He con- 
 sidered the letter a warrant in effect, though not in 
 form, and, rather than endanger a most important 
 treaty, at a very critical time, hazarded readily his 
 own personal safety. He had objected to many par- 
 ticulars in a letter to his majesty. As a privy coun- 
 cillor he had offered the sovereign his best advice, and 
 as chancellor had executed a ministerial task according 
 to his duty. 
 
 Of the success of his defence we have conflicting 
 evidence, tinged with the party views of the narrators. 
 
 »< Trevor's Life of William III. 
 ' Tindal's Continuation of Rapin.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 375 
 
 Burnet relates that " his defence was so full and clear 
 that if the question had been put immediately on his 
 withdrawal, the prosecution would have failed." Lord 
 Dartmouth, on the contrary, a high tory, says, " I 
 never saw that house in so great a flame, as they were 
 upon his withdrawing. He justified his putting the 
 great seal to a blank commission so poorly, and insisted 
 that the king's letter which he produced was a good 
 warrant, which every body knew to be none, nor did 
 the contents sufficiently justify him, if it had been any, 
 and his endeavouring to throw every thing upon the 
 king, provoked them to such a degree, that he left 
 them in a much worse disposition to himself than he 
 found them ; and I heard many of his best friends say 
 they heartily wished he had never come thither." 
 The historian and his hostile commentator speak, no 
 doubt, according to their own conviction, and most 
 various was probably the effect of the orator's rhetoric 
 on an excited popular audience ; but, as the dis- 
 cussion was prolonged till past midnight, and the vote 
 of impeachment then only carried by a majority of 
 198 to 188, there can be little doubt that his address 
 made a favourable impression on the moderate portion 
 of his audience. An artful question of the speaker, put 
 according to a previous resolution at the close of his 
 speech, "Who had informed him that there was a 
 debate in the House about him ?" was repelled by the 
 ex-chancellor, with a spirit worthy of his name. " He 
 was strangely surprised at a question that he never 
 knew was put to any man who came to desire the 
 favour of being heard, and if that question was 
 asked to bring the least prejudice to any man in 
 England, he would not only be content to He under 
 the censure of the House, but suffer the worst thing
 
 376 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 that might hefal him upon earth, rather than do such 
 a dishonest thing." He then withdrew, hut came back 
 immediately, and desired to leave with the House the 
 king's letter to him and the copy of his answer, which 
 he acquainted the House, he had leave to lay before 
 them. 
 
 An extract from this letter, "I suppose your majesty 
 will not think it proper to name commissioners that 
 are not English or naturalized in an affair of this 
 nature," betrays his dislike of foreign favourites. His 
 act in affixing the great seal to blank forms, both in 
 the power to treat and in the ratification, has been 
 deservedly censured by Lord Hardwicke and ought 
 not to exempt the minister from responsibility. But 
 that his error deserved to be visited with impeachment 
 no constitutional historian will allow. Another of the 
 articles with which his enemies sought to eke out their 
 accusation was, their imputing to the late chancellor's 
 connivance the piracies of Captain Kidd. This plau- 
 sible buccaneer had been entrusted with the command 
 of a vessel through the influence of Lord Somers and 
 Lord Halifax, who designed to put down piracy in that 
 part of the world, to cruize in the West Indies. His 
 valour was better known than his integrity, and he 
 seized the opportunity to turn pirate himself. All that 
 affected the chancellor in his perfidy was fairly enough 
 confessed by himself in his letter to the Duke of 
 Shrewsbury : " As to Kidd's business, we hope there 
 can be no blame, though perhaps we may appear 
 somewhat ridiculous." 
 
 His noble correspondent exclaims, with just indig- 
 nation on learning his unworthy treatment, " I wonder 
 that man can be found in England, who has bread, 
 that will be concerned in public business. Had I a
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 377 
 
 son, I would sooner breed him a cobbler than a 
 courtier, and a hangman than a statesman!" Such 
 was the natural reflection of the noble ; equally in 
 character was the conduct of the base ! The creeping 
 things after their kind crawled out with libels and 
 lampoons on the impeached ex-minister. Dr. Dave- 
 nant, in his discourse of private men's duty in the 
 administration of public affairs, had a fling at his rapa- 
 city : " If a lawyer from £300 a year in estate and 
 practice both together comes to have a good £6000 a 
 year, is he to rest there ? No, let him think of doubling 
 that estate, and to be made an earl !" 
 
 As the day of trial approached, the libeller re- 
 doubled his venom. " Dr. Davenant," Prior writes 
 in one of his lively letters, "is coming out with another 
 book, and, as I am told, very scurrilous upon my lord 
 chancellor. I must congratulate your happiness," he 
 writes to the Duke of Manchester, then ambassador at 
 Paris, " that you are out of this noise and tumult, 
 where we are tearing and destroying every man his 
 neighbour. To-morrow is the great day, when we 
 expect my lord chancellor will be fallen upon, though, 
 God knows what crime he is guilty of but that of 
 being a very great man and a wise and upright judge 1 
 Thus every day a minister, till at last we reach the 
 king." 
 
 But the plot failed for want of materials. The 
 vindictive Commons, unable to maintain their accusa- 
 tion, eagerly caught at a ground of quarrel with the 
 Lords on account of some sharp words spoken at a 
 conference by Lord Haversham, demanded reparation 
 for the scandal, and, no explanation which they would 
 allow to be satisfactory being given, voted, with con- 
 venient anger, that justice was denied by the Lords,
 
 378 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 and made an order that no member of their House 
 should presume to appear at the pretended trial of 
 Lord Somers, m the first on the list of the impeached 
 peers. As no prosecutor appeared, they were of course 
 declared not guilty, and Lord Somers withdrew for a 
 season to the enjoyments of rest and literature. This 
 rest was absolutely necessary for the restoration of his 
 shattered constitution. His letter to the king from 
 Tunb ridge gives a sorry report of his health ; and in the 
 previous year there is a report in the correspondence 
 of the day, " The chancellor has lost his fever, but has 
 fallen into the jaundice." To soothe a mind that could 
 not brook total absence of occupation, he frequently 
 took the chair of the Royal Society, of which he had 
 been two years before elected president, and, after 
 holding the distinguished post five years, resigned 
 it to an admirable successor, Sir Isaac Newton. His 
 literary pursuits were soon interrupted. In 1701 he 
 was requested by Lord Sunderland, at the pressing 
 instance of the king, to accept the post of head of the 
 government, but declined the responsibility, not yet 
 assured of the firmness of the sovereign. It is related 
 by Coke, that, in an interview with William, Lord 
 Somers objected that he might relapse into toryism, 
 upon which the king, leaning with his elbow on the 
 table said emphatically, "Never, never!" By the advice 
 of his faithful councillor, he dissolved the impeaching 
 parliament, and addressed the new House of Commons 
 in a speech composed by Somers, the original of which 
 Lord Hardwicke saw in his own handwriting. It was 
 the last speech of William, the most eloquent and 
 popular, perhaps, that ever proceeded from the throne ; 
 a simple but stirring appeal to parliament and the 
 
 m Coke's Detection of the Court of England.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 379 
 
 nation against the ambitious arrogance of the French 
 monarch, who had dared to taunt the whole people of 
 England, by proclaiming the son of James the Second 
 their king. 
 
 " You have yet an opportunity, by God's blessing, 
 to secure to you and your posterity the quiet enjoy- 
 ment of your religion and liberties, if you are not 
 wanting to yourselves, but will exert the ancient 
 vigour of the English nation ; but I tell you plainly 
 my opinion is, if you do not lay hold on this occasion 
 you have no reason to hope for another. — Gentlemen 
 of the House of Commons, I do recommend these 
 matters to you with that concern and earnestness 
 which their importance requires. At the same time, 
 I cannot but press you to take care of the public 
 credit, which cannot be preserved but by keeping 
 sacred that maxim, that they shall never be losers who 
 trust to a parliamentary security." 
 
 The House responded with alacrity, and the 
 people were drawing nearer to their king ; he had 
 never before such a chance of extensive popularity, 
 when death struck down his hopes. The memorable 
 speech was preserved as a relic, was circulated, we 
 are assured, even to remote towns and villages, and 
 framed and glazed in homage to his memory. The 
 national loss became heightened by the dismissal of 
 Lord Somers from the privy council. He was 
 obnoxious to the queen's husband from misrepresenta- 
 tion, and probably from a jealous sense of his own 
 inferiority : the illustrious by worth could scarcely fail 
 to excite the spleen of one who was utterly inefficient, 
 and illustrious only by courtesy. During his life- 
 time, the first six years of Queen Anne, Lord Somers 
 continued in a private station. But, fortunately for
 
 380 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the nation, his spirit inspired in secret the councils of 
 government and the deliberations of the House of 
 Lords. During the hot disputes and fierce jealousies 
 of the two Houses upon the extent of their respective 
 privileges, which threatened at one time to disturb 
 the equipoise of our constitution, Lord Somers con- 
 tended successfully for the independence of his order, 
 and subdued the angry pretensions of the Lower 
 House with the weight of reasoning, and superiority 
 of legislative wisdom. Against a pernicious measure, 
 — the bill for abolishing occasional conformity, — he 
 inveighed with such effect as to crush the scheme, 
 but at the hazard of life, being seized with severe 
 illness from his over-wrought exertions. 
 
 In ] 705 he saw his labours crowned with success 
 in the completion of the Union with Scotland, the 
 accomplishment of which statesman-like measure is 
 mainly due to his persuasive power over the Scottish 
 lords, and his comprehensive policy. Setting a praise- 
 worthy example to future ex- chancellors (would that 
 the example had been followed !) he dedicated a 
 portion of his leisure to the reform of the court of 
 chancery. He made a motion in the House of Lords 
 to correct some of the proceedings in common law 
 and in chancery, that were both dilatory and very 
 chargeable : he gained the concurrence of the lord 
 keeper and judges, but in the House of Commons it 
 was visible that the interests of under-officers, clerks, 
 and attorneys, whose gains were to be lessened, were 
 more considered than the interest of the nation. 
 Several changes., how beneficial soever to the subject, 
 which trenched on their profit, were left out by the 
 Commons. 11 Thus dis-amended, his valuable [bill 
 passed. 
 
 a Uurnct.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 381 
 
 On the death of Prince George of Denmark in 
 1708, Lord Somers was called to more active useful- 
 ness, and made president of the council. The second 
 Lord Shaftesbury, writing to a friend, shows how 
 immediately court favour succeeded the royal widow- 
 hood. 
 
 " November 20, 1708. 
 
 11 Somers has kissed the queen's hand, though not 
 directly as minister, pretty near it you may be sure : 
 since at this time of mourning (and so sincere a 
 mourner as the queen is) she hardly would see a 
 stranger, and what is more, a man so estranged from 
 her, and so wholly off from the court as he has been, 
 and whom I scarcely believe she has admitted at any 
 time to kiss her hand, he having been for certain the 
 prince's aversion, as you may judge by those who 
 chiefly influenced the prince, and were the violentest 
 enemies Lord Somers had." 
 
 Bland, winning, and deferential in his manners, he 
 appears to have rapidly conquered the prejudices of 
 the queen, but the same gossiping letters of the 
 Duchess of Marlborough, which relate his intimacy 
 with her royal mistress, prove, by their ill-natured 
 comments and sinister hints, that he could not have 
 stood high in the good opinion of the shrewish 
 favourite.? " I remember to have been at several of 
 his conversations with Queen Anne to fill out their 
 tea and wash their cups, and he was the chief man in 
 promoting the Union with Scotland ! One argument 
 was, that it would shut the door to let the Pretender 
 in, and no man in all the debates was so pressing as 
 
 ° Lord Shaftesbury's Letters. 
 p Thompson's Correspondence of the Duchess of Marlborough.
 
 OOJ, HISTORY OF THE 
 
 himself to have Dr. Sacheverell tried, and one of his 
 arguments for that was, that if they did not do it, the 
 queen would he preached out of the throne and the 
 nation ruined. Notwithstanding this, when the 
 queen had a mind by her new councillors to save Dr. 
 Sacheverell, she prevailed with Lord Somers not to 
 go to the finishing of his trial, and the reason he 
 gave for not doing it was, that his mother was dead, 
 and he was so exact, that, though he could not bring 
 her to life again, out of great decency he must stay 
 at home." There is no contending with an angry 
 woman who confuses bread-and-butter gossip with a 
 grave state trial, else it might have been gently 
 intimated that the politic president of the council did 
 not recommend a prosecution by impeachment, and 
 that, in absenting himself on such an occasion of 
 domestic bereavement as a mother's death, he con- 
 sulted merely natural feelings and common decency. 
 
 But the reason of Atossa's rancour is disclosed 
 in another letter to one of her confidants, Main- 
 way ring: — 
 
 " 'Tis certain, that as soon as he got into his 
 post, to obtain which I so often urged the queen, he 
 made his court to Abigail and very seldom came to 
 me, and it is as true that Lord Oxford and St. John 
 used to laugh in their cups, which came out by Duke 
 Devonshire, that they had instructed the queen to 
 behave so as to make Lord Somers think he should 
 be her chief minister. She could act a part very well, 
 when her lesson was given her, and in a little time it 
 appeared very plain to the Duke of Marlborough and 
 Lord Godolphin, that Somers thought of nothing so 
 much as to flatter the queen, and went to her per- 
 petually in private, and whatever was said to her
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 383 
 
 upon the subject that he did not like, he contrived so 
 as to have Lords Marlborough and Godolphin do 
 that, and when the council was entirely changed, and 
 for shame he could not continue if the tories would 
 have suffered him, to my certain knowledge he went 
 
 wait upon the queen at Kensington, which at that 
 time he would not have done, if he had not thought 
 he was much in her favour, and that some time or 
 other he might get by it." 
 
 Though superior to such petty malice, the duke 
 had cause for resentment of his own. Acting under 
 the patriotic advice of the president, Lord Cowper 
 had refused to affix his seal to the patent which the 
 queen would have directed for making him com- 
 mander of the forces for life, and the ambitious general 
 knew to whom the cruel disappointment of his hopes 
 was owing. Of the coldness which subsisted between 
 the two cabinet ministers, the following letter of com- 
 pliment, though turned with much elegance, furnishes 
 pregnant proof : — 
 
 Somers to the duke, September 1 709. " My lord: — 
 Many others can make their court better, but no man 
 living can more truly rejoice in your success, or has 
 more heartily wished and prayed for it. I cannot but 
 hope this last great success will quite lower the credit 
 of those who may wish for an ill peace, and satisfy the 
 French king at last, that he has attempted every thing 
 possible for saving his own honour, and that it is time 
 for him in good earnest to think of preserving France 
 from utter ruin. I am sure your grace will omit 
 nothing which may improve this glorious advantage. 
 
 1 am not so vain as to offer any poor thoughts of mine, 
 for that purpose. "i But, though too wise to lecture 
 his country's Hannibal on the art of war, he suggested 
 
 * Coxe's Mavlborough.
 
 384 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the best methods of supplying the sinews of warfare, 
 and even opened up fresh paths of conquest, of which 
 the great duke could not appreciate the value. Not 
 even a futile article of impeachment carried sufficient 
 force to deter the prescient statesman from those 
 adventures to the islands in the West Indies, which 
 afterwards proved so fertile of profit and glory to his 
 countrymen. 
 
 In a letter to his wife the duke thus invidiously 
 glances at the scheme : " Colonel Hunter, whom you 
 mention for the West Indies, is a very good man ; as 
 to the expedition itself, it is impossible for me to give 
 any judgment, but I know that my Lord Halifax and 
 my Lord Somers, by the judgment of some merchants 
 are made very fond of such expeditions : I do not 
 remember any of them that has hitherto served for 
 any thing but a pretext to plunder." It was in 
 agitation to send Lord Somers, as lord lieutenant to 
 Ireland, when SacheverelPs unadvised impeachment 
 put a sudden and final period to his career of useful- 
 ness. On the 20th of September, 1710, he was com- 
 manded to resign his staff of office to the Earl of 
 Rochester, and, with the resignation of his seat in the 
 cabinet, retired from public life. Though he was only 
 in his sixtieth year, the constitution of the invalid lawyer 
 was as completely broken, as if he had exceeded the 
 allotted space of three score years and ten. His great 
 faculties gradually sunk from energy into torpor, and 
 from torpor into childishness ; a paralytic stroke shat- 
 tered his intellectual strength, and for some years 
 before his death he survived the powers of his mind. 
 Still, in the midst of physical and mental weakness, 
 bowed down by sickness and infirmity, he was looked 
 up to as the oracle of his party — their Delphic shrine in 
 ruins. Even when the sap was gone and the boughs
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 385 
 
 had withered, the whigs still reposed under the shadow 
 of his name. 
 
 One or two anecdotes of his old age prove how 
 eagerly the leaders of party had recourse to their 
 former guide for counsel in emergency, with what 
 earnestness they tried to collect the Sibylline leaves, 
 parched and dewless as they were. When the bill 
 for repealing triennial parliaments was in agitation, 
 Dr. Friend, in a visit to Lord Townshend, informed 
 him that Lord Somers was restored to the full posses- 
 sion of his reason by a fit of the gout, which suspended 
 for a while the effects of his paralytic complaints. Lord 
 Townshend waited on his aged friend, and asked his 
 opinion. The venerable peer said, "You have my 
 hearty approbation in this business. I think it will be 
 the greatest support possible to the liberty of the 
 country." He is reported to have shed tears when the 
 same enthusiastic nobleman communicated to him in 
 triumph the general sweep, which George I. proposed 
 to make of the whole tory connexion. His cautious, 
 somewhat timid, spirit shrunk from the danger of 
 such extreme measures. 
 
 Speaker Onslow 1- records a meeting rather earlier 
 in point of time, when the purity of his advice 
 appears to have been tainted with the prejudices of 
 faction. "There was a motion," he says, "made in 
 1713 by the whig lords for dissolving the union for 
 the purpose of distressing the ministry. I had it from 
 good authority (which he names), that at a meeting 
 upon it at Lord Somers' house, where Sir Thomas 
 Monroe was, nobody pressed that motion more than 
 that noble lord. Good God !" 
 
 The consistent whig speaker, before writing his 
 
 ■ Notes to Burnet. 
 VOL. I. 2 C
 
 386 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 pious exclamation of horror at the depravity of the 
 keen politician, should have borne in mind the date of 
 this anecdote, should have remembered the undimmed 
 brightness of his meridian, and made allowance for the 
 mists which obscured his setting, and gathered still 
 more thickly round his close. 
 
 There were spots in the sun ! Insincerity, love of 
 money, and libertinism have been laid to the charge of 
 this really great and good man with different degrees 
 of truth. " My Lord Somers," says the prejudiced 
 but plain-spoken Duchess of Marlborough, "could 
 not have supported himself so long at the head of the 
 whigs, if he had not had good talents. But there was 
 one thing that appeared to be a great blemish to a lord 
 chancellor, that he lived as publicly with another man's 
 wife as if she had been his own." Several cotem- 
 poraries hint at this licentiousness, with which his 
 manners were tainted from an early disappointment in 
 love. Mackey in his friendly portrait to the Princess 
 Sophia says, " He is of a grave deportment, easy, and 
 free in conversation, something of a libertine. " " The 
 grave Somerius," writes a collateral descendant, Cook- 
 sey, "became infected with the gallantries of a licentious 
 court. " s He had been disappointed in his first attach- 
 ment, and renounced marriage. To this excess Mr. 
 Cooksey attributes his frequent attacks of illness and 
 premature decay of intellect ; and, though the credit 
 of his biography is lessened by the easy credulity with 
 which he ascribes the authorship of the Tale of a Tub 
 to his distinguished kinsman, the charge is too often 
 repeated by well-informed persons not to convince the 
 reader of its truth, and not to raise his admiration 
 at the simplicity of Hannah More in setting up this 
 
 ■ Cooksoy's Lord Somers.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 387 
 
 libertine statesman as a faultless model for the worship 
 of fashionable society. 
 
 The proof of his cupidity rests on evidence less 
 convincing. " I have heard," says the Duchess of 
 Marlborough, " but do not know the truth of that 
 myself, that he got as much money as he could in the 
 post of chancellor, and some grants not becoming a 
 chancellor to have." The excellent tory gentleman 
 Evelyn, records in his Diary, "It is certain that this 
 chancellor was a most excellent lawyer, very learned 
 in all polite literature, a superior pen, master of a 
 handsome style, and of easy conversation; but he is 
 said to make too much haste to be rich, as his prede- 
 cessor and most in place in this age did to a more 
 prodigious excess than was ever known." Lord 
 Hardwicke justifies the conduct of the chancellor in 
 receiving a gift of £30,000 at one time from the lavish 
 king, and in obtaining the grants of two several manors 
 in Sussex, by the examples of other statesmen, espe- 
 cially Sir Robert Walpole, and on the ground of the 
 great officers of state being miserably underpaid. But 
 when Lord Hardwicke takes the character of Sir 
 Robert Walpole as the standard, he fixes upon one of 
 a much lower grade than that by which the admirers 
 of Lord Somers would wish to have his moral stature 
 compared. Though free from absolute reproach for 
 soliciting these grants, he would have stood above 
 imputation, had he not solicited them. His pension 
 and private fortune were sufficient to support the rank 
 of one who studied retirement and lived without 
 ostentation ; nor can the painful suspicion his procur- 
 ing those grants occasions be wholly dismissed, that the 
 greediness, which debased Lord Verulam, may have in 
 a slight degree sullied his incomparable successor. 
 
 2 C 2
 
 388 history of the 
 
 The charge of insincerity is more unfounded, and 
 rests on the partizan rancour of the Dean of St. 
 Patrick, and the jealous gossip of the Duchess of 
 Marlborough, whose great lord had, it would seem, 
 been offended to the death by the patriotic firmness 
 with which Lord Somers resisted his daring design of 
 becoming dictator. His vindictive widow wove into 
 her memoir every thread of scandal that could gratify 
 her spleen against her husband's enemy. With those 
 who had no personal reasons of quarrel, his universal 
 courtesy might naturally create a suspicion that he 
 was fair and false, that, in the worst sense of the 
 apostle's precept, he was " all things to all men." He 
 perhaps consulted the feelings of the venal throng 
 who frequented his levee or sought his acquaintance 
 too much, and good-naturedly left his hearers to 
 imagine a preference which he did not feel. 
 
 So many hints of this courtier-like artifice are 
 scattered with profusion through the writings of Swift, 
 that Walter Scott has filled up with the name of 
 Somers what the author left in blank. " I burnt all 
 my lord's letters where he had used these words to 
 me, ' all I pretend to is a great deal of sincerity/ 
 which indeed was the chief virtue he wanted." And 
 yet the retiring chancellor and studious statesman did 
 not affect that enthusiastic attachment, the warmth 
 and gaiety of heart, the abandonment of restraint, and 
 careless, social festivity, with which St. John would 
 attach his worshippers. Alarmed at his commanding 
 intellect, those who paid court to Harley would com 
 plain of the chancellor's talent for finesse ; annoyed 
 with his decorous mien and conversation (for Somers 
 respected propriety too much openly to profane it), the 
 boon companions of Bolingbroke railed at his caution
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 389 
 
 and reserve. The reproach flung by high-flying 
 tories at his manners, that they were cold and distant, 
 seems inconsistent assuredly with their accusation of 
 insincerity ; yet we find it hazarded with the same 
 bitterness, and as little based on truth. Arthur 
 Maynwaring, literary toady to the Duchess of Marl- 
 borough, at the very time he repeats the whisper of 
 my Lord Halifax that Somers always had a cold, 
 reserved temper, which formerly had done great mis- 
 chief to his party, admits, " I never saw any one 
 so little reserved that was thought to be so, for, except 
 yourself, nobody ever spoke so freely to me since I 
 was born." 
 
 His chief crime consisted in being the Coryphceus 
 of a party, whose apologist, as he lived in angry 
 times, could not detect a virtue but factious virulence 
 would contrive to spell it backwards. From what 
 source could his mildness to opposing creeds and 
 toleration for dissent proceed, but a lurking affection 
 to Toland and deism ? His caution was construed 
 into fraudulent reserve, his moderation into timidity, 
 his prudent w T isdom into cunning. His regularity in 
 business, punctuality, and despatch could originate, 
 forsooth, in no other cause than low birth and addic- 
 tion to the counter. " Have you not observed," 
 Swift writes to Lord Bolingbroke, in a sort of flatter- 
 ing query, " that there is a lower kind of discretion 
 and regularity, which seldom fails of raising men to 
 the highest stations in the court, the church, and the 
 law ? Did you never observe one of your clerks cut- 
 ting his paper with a blunt ivory knife ? Did you 
 ever know the knife to fail going the true way? 
 "Whereas if he had used a razor; or a penknife, he had 
 odds against himself of spoiling a whole sheet. I
 
 390 IirSTORY OF THE 
 
 have twenty times compared the motion of that ivory- 
 implement to those talents that thrive best at court. 
 Think upon Lord Bacon, Williams, Strafford, Laud, 
 Clarendon, Shaftesbury, the last Duke of Bucking- 
 ham, and, of my own acquaintance, the Earl of Oxford, 
 yourself, all great statesmen in their several ways, and 
 if they had not been so great, would have been less 
 unfortunate. I remember but one exception, and that 
 was Lord Somers, whose timorous nature, joined with 
 the trade of a common lawyer and the consciousness 
 of a mean extraction, had taught him the regularity of 
 an alderman or a gentleman usher." 
 
 Shame on such odious prejudice! It has spoiled 
 more pages in contemporary history than the sharpest 
 penknife, though it cut ever so awry, could have 
 done. Perhaps, in the wish to discover the strength 
 and weakness of this great lawyer's character, to put 
 in strong relief its depth and shadows, his biographer 
 has dwelt too long on these rancorous effusions of 
 jealousy and factious hate. It is pleasant to shut 
 their pages, mildewed by prejudice and spleen, and 
 turn over the tributes which the wise and good, both 
 of his own and later generations, have rejoiced to 
 render. None of these, strange to say, equal in grace 
 and elegance, the eulogy of Swift. 
 
 He dedicates the " Tale of a Tub " with consum- 
 mate address as if from the bookseller, pretending that 
 he was going to turn over a hundred or two dedications, 
 and transcribe an abstract to be applied to his lord- 
 ship ; that he met with the words " Detur dignissimo," 
 and called at a poet's chamber, who worked for his 
 lordship, to know who it was the author could mean. 
 He thought himself the person aimed at : "I desired 
 him to guess again." " Why then," said he, " it must
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 391 
 
 be I or my lord." " I found several other wits all in 
 the same story, both of your lordship and themselves." 
 He employs these wits to furnish him with materials 
 — they bring him hard names of Cato and Tully, of 
 Socrates and Epaminondas. " I expected to have 
 heard of your lordship's bravery at the head of an 
 army ; of your undaunted courage in mounting a 
 breach or scaling a wall ; or to have heard your pedi- 
 gree traced in a lineal descent from the house of 
 Austria; or of your wonderful talent at dress and 
 dancing; or your profound knowledge in Aquinas, 
 metaphysics, and the oriental tongues. But to ply 
 the world with an old beaten story of your wit and 
 eloquence, &c, I confess I have neither conscience 
 nor countenance to do it." 
 
 The panegyric of Addison, in the " Freeholder," 
 seems cold and insipid, when compared with this feli- 
 citous strain of compliment, but had the merit of 
 coming from the heart. That graceful writer dedi- 
 cated his "Travels" to the same worthy patron, 
 and from his experience on the continent, paid the fol- 
 lowing apposite tribute to his merits as a statesman : 
 " Whatever great impressions an Englishman must 
 have of your lordship, they who have been conversant 
 abroad will find them still improved. It cannot but 
 be obvious to them, that, though they see your 
 admirers every where, they meet with very few of your 
 well-wishers at Paris or at Rome ; and I could not but 
 observe, when I passed through most of the protestant 
 governments in Europe, that their hopes or fears for 
 the common cause rose or fell with your lordship's 
 interest and authority in England." The calm judg- 
 ment of posterity has confirmed what might be deemed 
 the partial opinions of contemporaries. 
 
 Lord Mahon says, with emphatic brevity, after
 
 392 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 considering his conduct, 1 " I know not where to find 
 a more upright and unsullied public character than his. 
 He had contracted nothing of the venality and base- 
 ness of the age." In this decision, the mature criti- 
 cism of Mackintosh concurs, u "Lord Somers seems 
 to have very nearly realized the perfect model of a 
 wise statesman in a free community. His end was 
 public liberty; he employed every talent and resource 
 which were necessary for his end, and not prohibited 
 by the rules of morality. His regulating principle was 
 usefulness. His quiet and refined mind rather shrunk 
 from popular applause. He preserved the most 
 intrepid steadiness, with a disposition so mild, that his 
 friends thought its mildness excessive, and his enemies 
 supposed that it could be scarcely natural." With this 
 elegant eulogy, conforms the tribute of a living states- 
 man and intellectual whig, Lord John Russell : 
 " Somers is a bright and a great example of a states- 
 man who could live in times of revolution without 
 rancour, who could hold the highest posts in a court 
 without meanness, and who could unite mildness and 
 charity to his opponents with the firmest attachment 
 to the great principles of liberty, civil and religious, 
 which he had early espoused, long promoted, and never 
 abandonecl." w 
 
 The poet's garland, to wreathe the brows of the 
 literary chancellor, has been woven with less skilful 
 hands. The prosaic truth of Blackmore, in his satire 
 upon wit, will scarcely atone for its dulness : — 
 
 " But what remains will be so pure, 'twill bear 
 The examination of the most severe ; 
 'Twill Somers' scales and Talbot's test abide, 
 And with their mark please all the world beside." 
 
 1 Lord Mahon's History of England. u Life oy his Son. 
 
 Lord J. Russell's History of Europe.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 393 
 
 The following couplet in the " Dispensary," still 
 less corresponds with the reputation of Dr. Garth: — 
 
 " Somers doth sick'ning equity restore, 
 And helpless orphans now need weep no more." 
 
 Pope contents himself with a mere frigid mention 
 of his name as a literary patron, and cannot even spare 
 an epithet: — 
 
 ** The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield read, 
 And Buckingham, applauding, nods the head." 
 
 Waller's clever apology on another occasion must, 
 we presume, be the reason of this coldness, " that poets 
 always succeed better in subjects of fiction than of 
 truth." The sacred band in the next generation extol 
 the merits of the " gentle friend to song" with more 
 heartiness and. success. Whitehead, though not for- 
 tunate in his comparison, infused some spirit into his 
 stanzas: — 
 
 " Patrons and arts must live, till arts decay, 
 
 Sacred to verse in every poet's lay ; 
 Thus grateful France does Richelieu's worth proclaim, 
 Thus grateful Britons doat on Somers' name." 
 
 In his address to Lord Chatham upon Trinity 
 College, Dr. Warton has dilated upon the associations 
 of the place, in a classical strain, not altogether un- 
 worthy of the Oxford professor of poetry : — 
 
 " In that calm bower, which nurs'd thy thoughtful youth 
 In the firm precepts of Athenian truth, 
 Where first the form of British liberty 
 Beam'd in full radiance on thy musing eye — 
 That form sublime, whose mien, with equal awe, 
 In the same shade unblemish'd Somers saw." 
 
 The unblemished Somers wrote himself very good 
 verses for a lawyer, better than Murray's, and not 
 inferior to Charles Yorke's. The following part of
 
 394 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 his translation of Dido's Epistle to iEneas shows his 
 facility of metre : — 
 
 " All day, iEneas walks before my sight, 
 In all my dreams, I see him every night, 
 But see him still ungrateful as before, 
 And such as, if I could, I would abhor ; 
 But the strong flame burns on against my will, 
 I call him false, yet love the traitor still." 
 
 His Latin verse was still more beautiful. These 
 lines from his epitaph on his sister are not more perfect 
 in sentiment than rythm : — 
 
 " Moribus ilia vultuque modesto 
 Omnes callebat artes, 
 Quae virginem decebant 
 Quid plura ? Hie una jacent 
 Parentum delicise, et decus, et dolor 1" 
 
 Lord Somers, though he published many pam- 
 phlets on subjects of politics and constitutional law 
 anonymously, never avowed any of his writings. 
 " Prodesse quam conspici" was at once his motto and 
 practice. He would not discover the paternity, even 
 when an impudent pretender had laid claim to a copy 
 of his verses, and assured the chancellor, in answer to 
 his question, for he was naturally curious, how long 
 the composition occupied his thoughts, " that it was 
 a mere trifle, — he had done it off-hand." A scornful 
 laugh, which not even Somers' good-nature could 
 suppress, alone detected the cheat, and revealed his 
 secret. It was only by internal evidence, and the fact 
 of the two treatises in Lord Hardwicke's possession 
 being entirely, with the alterations, in Somers' hand- 
 writing, that Sir Walter Scott was enabled to trace 
 authoritatively to his authorship " the Just and 
 Modest Vindication of the Last Parliament of Charles
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 395 
 
 the Second," and " Advice to Grand Juries," which 
 the celebrated Dunning calls "a valuable treatise, 
 attributed to one who not only understood the consti- 
 tution but loved it." 
 
 The ninth volume of the Somers Tracts contains 
 "Another Vindication of the Proceedings of the late 
 Parliament of England, by John Lord Somers," in the 
 preface to which Sir Walter Scott says, " It does not 
 appear by what authority this piece is ascribed to him. 
 It does not occur in Lord Somers' works given by Wal- 
 pole. But in style and spirit it is not unworthy of 
 the great name prefixed to it ; and it was a point of 
 his character to be very indifferent towards claiming 
 the literary merit to which he was entitled. It is 
 well known that he composed several political tracts 
 at this important period. His pen was ready to serve 
 the public, but with so little regard to his own pecu- 
 liar fame, that we are ignorant even of the titles of 
 many of his works." His manuscripts, which filled 
 above sixty folio volumes, were unhappily destroyed 
 by a fire that consumed Mr. Yorke's chambers in 
 Lincoln's Inn, in 1752. 
 
 He left a noble library, of which a fine collection 
 of bibles formed a large and valuable portion. For 
 this laudable curiosity he would have been excommu- 
 nicated in the dark ages, and was denounced as a 
 Socinian and freethinker in the enlightened days of 
 Queen Anne. He was too good a patron to literature 
 and too earnest a friend of liberty not to oppose the 
 Licensing Act. " His best friends," he said with 
 epigrammatical point and terseness, " found nothing 
 more to be praised of Trajan in his government than 
 that, in his time, all men might think what they 
 pleased, and every man speak what he thought." In
 
 396 HISTORY OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 
 
 the year 1694, when Somers was lord keeper, the act 
 for licensing printing presses expired, never to be 
 renewed; and the dominion of a licenser over works 
 of literature passed away for ever. 
 
 Lord Somers died in the summer of 1716, having 
 long survived his mental capacity, and left no son to 
 transmit his honours. But the friend of Tillotson, 
 patron of Milton, counsellor of William in his best 
 days, scarcely more distinguished for his writings in 
 the closet than for his dissertations in the senate, the 
 eloquent poet, the persuasive orator, the accomplished 
 lawyer, the consummate statesman, impeached like 
 Lord Verulam, but not like him giving just matter of 
 impeachment, the President of the Royal Society, 
 which has never since, though graced by princes of 
 the blood, had one more noble from the patent of 
 intellect — he has bequeathed his name an heirloom 
 to his country, lasting as her literature and identified 
 with her laws. 
 
 The monument posterity has raised to his honour 
 is worth all the sculptured urns in Westminster 
 Abbey — their heartfelt reverence for his sayings and 
 acts, for his speeches full of deliberative wisdom, for 
 his statutes of enduring equity. On that votive 
 pillar, reared by grateful memories, are inscribed 
 the vote of abdication of James II., the Bill of Rights, 
 the union with Scotland, the settlement of the Pro- 
 testant Succession. What statues would modern 
 statesmen deserve, could such memorials be engraved 
 upon their pedestals !
 
 397 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 There were other great lawyers in the Convention 
 Parliament, but whose names command no respectful 
 remembrance, for they wanted integrity. Of these 
 the most notorious are Sir Robert Sawyer and Sir 
 William Williams. Both had been speakers of pre- 
 ceding parliaments, and had filled high legal offices in 
 the two last reigns; the first being attorney-general 
 to Charles II. and James II., and the last solicitor- 
 general to James. Able, active, ambitious, they 
 strayed from the broad path of duty, and in the slip- 
 pery byways of promotion stumbled and fell. But 
 they took too prominent a part in the first debates of 
 a most important session, and held too distinguished a 
 station bath in the house and out of it, not to require 
 a particular notice. 
 
 Sir Robert Sawyer, confessedly one of the most 
 learned of his cotemporaries, had formed himself, 
 we are assured, on the model of Chief Justice Hale, 
 before whom he practised in the exchequer ; but the 
 study must have been directed to his intellectual 
 rather than his moral qualities. " He was," says 
 North, in his quaint style, 8 " a proper comely gentle- 
 man, inclining to the red; a good general scholar, 
 
 d North's Life of Lord Guildford.
 
 398 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 and perhaps too much of that;" his bias was to loyalty, 
 the character of his family, an inclination fostered, 
 doubtless, and matured in the orthodox cloisters of 
 Magdalen College, Cambridge. As early as 1666, 
 we find, from an entry in Pepys' Diary, that he was 
 advancing rapidly in his profession. 15 " Into the 
 House of Lords, where a great committee. I did hear 
 the great case against my Lord Mordaunt. Here was 
 Mr. Sawyer, my old chamber fellow at Magdalen, a 
 counsel against my lord, and I was glad to see him 
 in so good play." His talents were too conspicuous 
 to remain long concealed under a stuff gown. 
 Returned to parliament for a close borough, he took 
 a decisive part against the claims of the Lords in the 
 great struggle of the Commons about appellate juris- 
 diction. But the pestilent atmosphere of a corrupt 
 court was soon to wither his laurels. 
 
 In April, 1678, by the king's particular appoint- 
 ment, the Commons chose Mr. Sawyer their speaker, 
 " a great practiser in the exchequer," and then ad- 
 journed for a fortnight. In a few days, however, 
 Mr. Sawyer excused his attendance by reason of a 
 violent fit of the stone, occasioned by his long sitting- 
 one day in the House ; whereupon the old speaker, 
 Mr. Edward Seymour, was reinstated in the chair." 
 The court lawyer had, there is no doubt, weighty 
 reasons for abdication. 
 
 When the voluptuous Charles began, a few years 
 later, to act the part of a callous tyrant, he selected 
 Sir Robert Sawyer as a fit instrument for oppressing 
 his subjects, and made him attorney-general in the 
 room of Sir Creswell Levinz. This vindictive situa- 
 tion he held from 1681 to 1687, six years stained 
 
 b Pepys' Diary, vol. i. c Ecliard's History.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 399 
 
 with the blood of some of England's noblest freemen, 
 and damning to the honest fame of the first law officer 
 of the crown. To secure the conviction of a poor 
 dependant on Shaftesbury, one College, nick-named 
 the "protestant joiner," who had swelled the cry of a 
 popish plot, and now found himself, much to his own 
 amazement, in the meshes of a prosecution for high 
 treason, the attorney-general, distrusting the grand 
 jury, d obtained an order from the chief justice that 
 the witnesses should be examined and the indictment 
 disposed of in open court. His illegal artifice failed, 
 and the grand jury ignored the bill, but the destined 
 victim was not permitted to escape. Being charged 
 with treasons committed in Oxfordshire as well as 
 Middlesex, he was again put on his trial, and, through 
 the medium of a more courtly and better packed jury, 
 was sacrificed for the sins of his party. In the san- 
 guinary year 1683, Sir Robert Sawyer hunted to the 
 death nobler victims, Lord William Russell and 
 Algernon Sidney, straining the arbitrary powers of 
 his office with merciless rigour, and, as a worthy 
 successor of Coke, taunting his unhappy prisoners. 
 He opposed the noble lord's wish for a postponement 
 to the afternoon, in consequence of a mistake in fur- 
 nishing the names of the jury. " You," he rejoined 
 to Lord Russell, "would not have given the king an 
 hour's notice for saving his life." The trial of that 
 virtuous peer was, however, among the fairest of those 
 cruel times, though a passage from Echard shows the 
 spirit with which it was conducted. 6 "When Lord 
 Russell asserted that the business at Sheppard's house 
 was sworn to only by one witness, it was answered, 
 that if there was one witness of one act of treason, 
 
 d State Trials, vol. ix. e Echard's History.
 
 400 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 and another of a second, that manifested the same 
 treason, it was sufficient." 
 
 "The attorney-general," says a prejudiced party 
 writer/ " and Sir George Jeffries made a home thrust 
 at the prisoner. The former said, ' Your lordship 
 remembers in my Lord Strafford's case there was but 
 one witness to one act in England, and another to 
 another in France, and the latter said there was not so 
 much evidence against him as against your lordship.' 
 Home thrusts certainly, but made with poisoned 
 weapons ! When on the infamous trial of Sidney, 
 Lord Howard of Escrick, " that monster of a man," 
 had finished his treacherous evidence, and, in reply 
 to a question of the chief justice, Colonel Sidney 
 answered with emphatic scorn that he had nothing 
 to ask, the attorney-general broke in with a scurrilous 
 gibe, " Silence, you know the proverb." s His mode 
 of proving a second overt act of treason by a treatise 
 found in Sidney's cabinet, by whom written and when 
 written left in doubt, was also a memorable iniquity, 
 and fully justifies the reversal in parliament of his 
 attainder. On Hampden's trial for a misdemeanor, 
 when his counsel challenged a juror, because he had 
 an office under the crown, and was, therefore, not 
 indifferent, contending that it had been held a good 
 cause of challenge in Coke, the attorney-general made 
 a futile attempt to disparage a legal authority still 
 higher than his own. "How many hundred errors," 
 he asked scoffingly, " do you find in my Lord Coke, 
 notwithstanding all his learning ? It is an opinion in 
 a straggling book." 11 
 
 But the act which more exclusively brands his 
 
 f North's Lord Keeper Guildford. s Phillipps's State Trials. 
 
 11 Hargrave's State Trials, vol. x.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 401 
 
 memory, and for which lie afterwards justly suffered, 
 was his share in that legal murder, the condemnation 
 of Sir Thomas Armstrong 1 . This unhappy man had 
 fled to Holland to escape a prosecution for treason, 
 was outlawed, and seized at Leyden by virtue of a 
 warrant from the States for a reward of 5,000 guilders. 
 In his confusion at the moment, he forgot to claim 
 protection as a native, and was hurried off to England. 
 When he was brought up in custody to the King's 
 Bench, the attorney-general moved for an award of 
 execution upon the statute 6 Edward VI., which, 
 however, contained a clause permitting a person out- 
 lawed to purge himself of his outlawry, and claim the 
 benefit of a trial by rendering himself within a year. 
 In his case there were several months of the year 
 since his outlawry yet to run. 
 
 Sir Robert Sawyer drew a subtle distinction, to 
 which the court joyfully assented, that the prisoner 
 had not surrendered, he was taken ; he had not 
 rendered himself, but was brought in custody, and 
 therefore could not claim the benefit of the statute. 
 In vain the prisoner urged that he might have ren- 
 dered himself, and come over voluntarily to claim the 
 benefit of the act, the allotted year of grace not 
 having expired. 
 
 A vindictive tribunal soon arrived at a foregone 
 conclusion, and Sir Thomas Armstrong was quibbled 
 out of his life. " He was murdered," says Burnet, 
 " for having been the favourite of the Duke of Mon- 
 mouth." The guilt seems to have been almost 
 equally divided between the attorney-general, who 
 demanded judgment, the Chief Justice Jeffries who 
 tried, and the Lord Keeper North, to whom applica- 
 
 i Sir J. Hawles' Remarks on the Trial. 
 VOL. I. 2D
 
 402 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 tion had been made for a writ of error. His lordship 
 found, according to his nephew and apologist, that 
 writs of error to reverse outlawries in treason had 
 never been made without a warrant from the attorney- 
 general, for it is not a writ of right but of favour. 
 That functionary, on the other hand, denied that it 
 was in his power to grant the writ, but the prisoner 
 must apply to the king by petition. The whole 
 appears to have been a nefarious juggle between the 
 court and counsel, equally unscrupulous, and equally 
 submissive to the beck of royalty, to destroy an 
 obnoxious individual and presumed traitor, whom they 
 could not legally convict. 
 
 Sir Robert continued for three years after the 
 death of Charles II. the indefatigable instrument of 
 his bigoted brother's tyranny, filing criminal in- 
 formations for libels against the government with a 
 rigour worthy of the Star Chamber, till at length the 
 king's polemical madness reached a height which not 
 even his creeping ductility could venture to gain. 
 He was directed to draw up a warrant investing a 
 priest of the church of Rome with a benefice by 
 virtue of the royal prerogative, and to confirm one 
 Walker, head of Magdalen College, together with 
 some thirty of the fellows, who had apostatized to the 
 Romish communion by a writ non obstante. The 
 learning and orthodoxy of the attorney-general took 
 alarm much more quickly than his conscience had 
 done at commissions of simple cruelty. He declared 
 that such proceedings would be against not one statute 
 only, but against all the law r s since the days of Eliza- 
 beth ; that he durst not comply, and desired his 
 majesty to weigh the matter, for that it struck 
 at the very root of the Protestant church. The king
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 403 
 
 was obstinate to rush on his fate, and Sir Robert 
 Sawyer, at a fortunate period for his own safety, 
 found himself dismissed from office. 
 
 The prosecution of the seven bishops following 
 the next summer, he was naturally selected as their 
 leading counsel, and acquitted himself at the trial 
 with distinguished legal ability. But, though dex- 
 terous in his points of law, and subtle in his argu- 
 ments, he seems to have been sadly wanting in 
 eloquence, — a deficiency common to the bar of his day. 
 Nothing can be imagined more tame and jejune than 
 the speeches then usually addressed to juries by 
 counsel for state prisoners. They seem to move in 
 fetters, so clumsy are their reported attempts at 
 exciting sympathy: like mere legal machines they 
 revolve incessantly round volumes of black letter, 
 instead of addressing themselves with all their heart 
 and all their soul, in plain intelligible English, to the 
 rescue of a client trembling for his life. The spirit 
 of Erskine had not yet descended on our courts, whose 
 powers of speech rose no higher than their indepen- 
 dence. 
 
 Even in these busy prosaic days, unfavourable to 
 forensic eloquence, a reader may be tempted to smile 
 at the following lame and impotent peroration to the 
 ex-attorney's speech for the defence, on an occasion 
 which, above all others, ought to have compelled a 
 pathetic appeal, to have thrilled through every vein in 
 his hearers, and made their hearts burn within them. 
 "The defendants," concluded this ineloquent lawyer, 
 " have not acted as busybodies. The other side 
 would have this petition work by implication of law 
 to make a libel of it, but by what I have said it will 
 appear there was nothing of sedition, nothing of 
 
 2 D 2
 
 404 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 malice, nothing of scandal in it, nothing of the salt, 
 and vinegar, and pepper, that they have put into the 
 case. We shall prove the matters that I have opened 
 for our defence, and then I dare say your lordships 
 will be of opinion we have done nothing but our 
 duty." 
 
 Sir Robert, it may be inferred, was not deeply read 
 in " Cicero cle Oratore." He shared in the triumph 
 that succeeded the glorious acquittal of his venerable 
 clients, and was returned to the convention with an 
 illustrious colleague, Sir Isaac Newton, for Cambridge 
 University. Never, in point of intellect, could the 
 University be better represented. From his extrinsic 
 importance as father-in-law to Lord Pembroke, and his 
 high legal reputation, he expected to be one of the 
 council appointed to advise the Lords, but was rejected 
 at the pressing instance of Lords Mordaunt and Dela- 
 ware, who declared they would have none of those who 
 had been instruments in the late reign. With the 
 zeal of an exile from office, he inveighed bitterly against 
 James, and, in one of the debates previous to the vote 
 of abdication, even went the length of saying: "In all 
 I have read, I never met in so short a reign with the 
 laws so violated and the prerogative so stretched." 
 
 James, be it remembered, had reigned nearly four 
 years, and till the last twelve months this virulent 
 declaimer had been his first law officer. In committee 
 on the state of the nation he moved that the House 
 should vote it inconsistent with a protestant govern- 
 ment to have a popish prince ; adding the sententious 
 apothegm : " There is a possibility that a papist may 
 be saved, and a possibility that a popish king may 
 govern well, but where the papists govern the king it 
 is next to an impossibility that the government should
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 405 
 
 be protestant." He argued with much subtlety against 
 voting the convention a parliament, and was beginning 
 to assume such a lead in the debates, that the prospect of 
 promotion seemed opening before him. But his rivals 
 and enemies were eager to take advantage of former 
 misconduct, and the lover of retributive justice must 
 rejoice that he had laid himself open to their attacks, 
 that the hand of the lawyer stained with blood should 
 for once have forgot its cunning. 
 
 A petition was presented from Lady Armstrong 
 and her daughters for annulling the attainder of Sir 
 Thomas, and produced a long and angry debate. Mr. 
 Hawles, afterwards solicitor-general, remarked, " how 
 scandalous is it, when a man guilty of murder should 
 be protected within these walls ! Armstrong offered a 
 plea, and you have voted its rejection wilful murder. 
 Were the judges and prosecutors not guilty ? They 
 were all guilty. I am not for rigour, though blood 
 cries for blood." Sir Win. Williams, who had drawn 
 the prisoners' plea, and harked on the cry for ven- 
 geance against an odious rival, said bitterly, "All is 
 put upon the dead Chief Justice Jeffries, and the dead 
 must answer for the dead, and the dead must bury the 
 dead. The judges acted the part of executioners. 
 The attorney-general, forsooth, was asleep in the 
 court." 
 
 He made a sophistical defence. "It was not his 
 duty to grant a writ of error. Application must be 
 made to the king by petition, and he gives a warrant 
 to the attorney-general to consent to it. It was the 
 duty of his office upon outlawry brought to pray judg- 
 ment of the court." After various excuses by his 
 friends (Sir Robert had a strong party in his favour) 
 the bill was recommitted for the purpose of examining
 
 405 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Mrs. Matthews, a daughter of the deceased. k Her 
 evidence pressed hard upon the accused member. " I 
 was with Sawyer/' she asserted, ''for a writ of error. 
 He said ' your father must die, he must die, he is an 
 ill man.' My mother was ready to pay him all his 
 due fees, but he said ' he must die.' When my father 
 was brought to the bar, the chief justice asked Sawyer 
 whether he prayed an award of execution, which was 
 done. My father desired that the statute of outlawries 
 might be read, and said he thought it was plain he 
 was come in within a year. Said Sawyer, ' Sir Thomas 
 will not find anything in the statute to his purpose. 
 Possibly he will say he surrendered himself to your 
 lordship, but, Sir Thomas, you should have surren- 
 dered yourself before you went out of England.' Said 
 the chief justice, * we have enough against him.' Said 
 Sawyer, * Armstrong was active in the fire at New- 
 market.' " 
 
 In answer to questions from Sir Robert, she 
 deposed further : " I believe Sawyer said, ' It was not 
 in his power to grant a writ of error,' and he did say, 
 1 you must apply to the king or lord keeper by peti- 
 tion.' The king and duke said ' it was an impudent 
 petition.' I cannot say Sawyer demanded execution 
 before the judges had declared themselves." 
 
 Sir Robert, being heard in defence before he 
 withdrew, denied the truth of what Mrs. Matthews 
 had asserted as to their private conversation, and 
 argued that he had done his duty and no more. "As 
 for my management at the arraignment, it was accord- 
 ing to my oath and duty to attend the court. Every 
 tittle of what passed was printed in three days, and 
 went all over England. It was not only lawful, but 
 
 k Parliamentary History, vol. v.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 407 
 
 my duty to put Armstrong upon trial, to hear what he 
 had to say to the record of outlawry, and I prayed 
 judgment ; if he had nothing to say, it was my duty to 
 pray execution. I went no further, not a tittle, in 
 this business. Armstrong quoted such a statute, and 
 it was read in court. Has he rendered himself to the 
 chief-justice? No! Armstrong said, ' I now render 
 myself to your lordship.' This is the fact ; I never 
 argued to incline the court one way or another. When 
 Armstrong had said he surrendered himself, I sat down 
 and said no more." 
 
 The ex-attorney-general then withdrew. His plea 
 of passive acquiescence, of silent connivance, did not 
 avail, though his friend, Sir Robert Cotton, in parti- 
 cular, urged that he had done his duty to God, the 
 king, and the prisoner. It was resolved, <f that Sir 
 Robert Sawyer be put into the bill of indemnity (to be 
 excepted) as one of the prosecutors of Sir Thomas 
 Armstrong ; " and the question that he be expelled, 
 passed in the affirmative, 131 to 71 ; a just retributive 
 vote, though the flames which consumed him were fed 
 by party heat. It would appear from a remark drop- 
 ped by Hawles, that he might have prevented the 
 petition being presented, had he consented to give the 
 widow and daughters of the man who had been mur- 
 dered under forms of law some compensation, but he 
 preferred the displeasure of the House to parting with 
 his money. 
 
 The indignity of expulsion was too common in 
 those troubled times to be deeply felt. In the new 
 parliament, which met in March, 1689-90, he was 
 again returned, unopposed for the University, took 
 part in several debates, was frequently heard as counsel 
 before the House of Lords, and only arrested by death,
 
 408 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 in 1692, from pursuing with revived strength, a career 
 of lucre and ambition. 
 
 His rival the versatile lawyer, Win. Williams, was 
 the eldest son of the Rev. Hugh Williams, D.D., rector of 
 Nantyerog, in Anglesea, and educated at Jesus College, 
 Oxford. He went the North Wales circuit, and 
 gained the reputation, according to Sir Peter Leicester, 
 of being a very acute young gentleman. 1 Having 
 danced at an assize ball with a rich heiress, the daugh- 
 ter of Watkin Kyffin, Esq., he obtained the young lady's 
 consent to propose himself to her father as a suitor, 
 and when the old gentleman asked roughly " what have 
 you?" replied with ready boldness, "I have, Sir, a 
 tongue and a gown ! " His suit prospered, and he 
 became by his marriage the founder of the flourishing 
 families of Wynnstay, and Bodllewyddan and Penbedw. 
 
 Selecting the path to preferment of a political 
 lawyer, he was chosen recorder of Chester, in 1667, 
 and afterwards selected for one of its members. His 
 early career in parliament, though turbulent, was not 
 dishonourable. Rough and ready, he displayed all 
 the unscrupulousness of a thorough partizan. When 
 some just strictures had been hazarded against the 
 judges in 1676, he declared that he never knew, during 
 his eighteen years' practice in Westminster Hall, the 
 bench better filled with judges, with men of loyalty, 
 learning, and integrity. This eulogy was pronounced 
 upon those pliant sages of the law who had declared 
 the king's proclamation for shutting up the coffee- 
 houses to be legal, because, forsooth, the act for set- 
 tling the excise (in which coffee was not included) 
 gave a power of refusing licences to such as could not 
 find security for the payment of the duties. His 
 
 Yorke's Royal Tribes of Wales.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 409 
 
 sincere opinion of their integrity was confessed by- 
 Mr. Williams in another debate, when, to suit the 
 argument, he stated his experience as counsel for 
 merchants in the exchequer, where it was common to 
 determine " what's white black, and what's black 
 white." His promotion at the bar was slow. After 
 twenty-one years' practice, he could spitefully reflect 
 on the solicitor-general, and say, " Though I have not 
 a silk gown, I am bound as much by my allegiance to 
 preserve 'the prerogative of the crown." He was at 
 that time compensated by the favour and considera- 
 tion of the popular party. The drawing up of the 
 impeachment against Lord Stafford was recommended 
 to the care of Mr. Williams and Lord Cavendish ; and, 
 on the meeting of the new parliament in October, 
 1678, he was unanimously elected speaker. " Though 
 a worthless man," says Burnet, " he was chosen 
 speaker for his zeal." He returned thanks for his 
 election in a speech glowing with gratitude, declaring, 
 " that he was their own member, their own entirely, 
 and that he expected no boon, but by their grace and 
 favour to depart as he came, when they should please 
 to command him." m 
 
 But, though obsequious to the House, " he showed 
 a more than ordinary stiffness," when presented for the 
 king's approval, and abstained from using the usual 
 court excuses of unfitness or want of worth. The 
 House was then in full cry, running down popery, 
 and not only exercised vengeance on such members as 
 had during the interval of parliament expressed their 
 abhorrence of petitions, but, by a violent excess of 
 authority, even ventured to threaten and imprison 
 strangers wholly beyond their jurisdiction. 
 
 m Grey's Debates.
 
 410 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Sir Francis Wythens, a puisne" judge, having pre- 
 sented an address to the king, expressing abhorrence 
 to petition his majesty for the calling a sitting of 
 parliament, was ordered to receive his sentence of 
 expulsion on his knees, and was there harangued by 
 the speaker: "You, being a lawyer, have offended 
 against your own profession; you have offended 
 against yourself, your own right, your own liberty, as 
 an Englishman. This is not only a crime against the 
 living, but a crime against those unborn. You are dis- 
 membered from this body." Sir Robert Cann having 
 been rash enough to declare that there was no plot 
 but a Presbyterian plot, shared the same fate ; and 
 the recorder, Jeffries, being voted a betrayer of the 
 rights of the subject, was compelled to kneel before 
 the speaker's vituperative eloquence. But his choicest 
 rhetoric seemed to be reserved for Sir Robert Peyton, 
 who had abandoned the country party, and been recon- 
 ciled to the Duke of York by means of stolen inter- 
 views through the intervention of Lord Peterborough, 
 Mrs. Collier, and Mr. Gadbury. His speech on 
 passing sentence smacks of the Old Bailey, and 
 deserves recording as a greater curiosity, than any 
 choice specimen of the antique preserved in the 
 British Museum. " Many gentlemen, whose eyes are 
 in their heads, their tongues and eyes have moved 
 as well as yours. You have sat betwixt the devil and 
 the witch, Mr. Gadbury and Mrs. Collier. The dark 
 ways you have taken show your ill designs. You 
 have fallen from being an angel to be a devil. From 
 the beginning you sought your own interest, to set up 
 a commonwealth. You had 20,000 men to make 
 your interest the stronger ; you were bustling like the 
 wind in this House and in coffee-houses. Your
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 411 
 
 county chose you to this place, not only for your 
 interest, but for an example to other men ; not with 
 noise and thundering, but to behave yourself without 
 vanity or ostentation. This parliament nauseates such 
 members as you are; you are no longer a part of this 
 noble body." 
 
 The unfortunate knight, thus bethumped with 
 words, felt so indignant at the speaker's coarse abuse, 
 that, immediately on the rising of parliament, he sent 
 him a challenge. Mr. Williams, instead of expressing 
 regret or giving satisfaction, with more prudence than 
 gallantry, made his complaint to the privy council, 
 and poor Sir Robert Peyton was again committed to 
 the Tower. But, resolved to have some revenge, he 
 published the most offensive part of the speech, with 
 the following title-page, " A specimen of the rhetoric, 
 candour, gravity, and ingenuity, of Mr. William Wil- 
 liams, speaker to the late House of Commons." A 
 worse ebullition of temper, a more complete want of 
 self-command, in an office, which, above all others, 
 required dignified forbearance and severe caution, is 
 nowhere recorded. But this elegant composition 
 seems to have been well adapted to the rancour of the 
 times. Not a murmur escaped the vindictive Com- 
 mons against such undignified railing, and, when the 
 parliament was dissolved, and a new one summoned 
 to meet in the schools at Oxford, the first act of the 
 members was to re- seat their homely speaker in the 
 chair. He spoke with wonted audacity when pre- 
 sented to the king for his approval: " To manifest 
 to your majesty and the world that they are not 
 inclined to changes, the Commons have, with one 
 voice, elected me their speaker." 11 Their choice was 
 
 "Echard's History.
 
 412 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 ratified by Charles, though displeased with the bold- 
 ness of the tone in which the customary assent had 
 been solicited. His second harangue, in requesting 
 for members their peculiar privileges, contains a 
 passage highly curious, from the contrast which it 
 presents between his real and assumed character : "I 
 am set in the first situation of your Commons for 
 trust and quality, a high and slippery place. It 
 requires a steady head and well-poised body in him 
 that will stand firm there. Uprightness is the safe 
 posture and best policy, and shall be mine in this 
 place, guarded with this opinion, that your majesty's 
 service in this trust is one and the same with the 
 service of your Commons, and that they are no more 
 to be divided than your crown and sceptre." 
 
 Notwithstanding this rhetorical promise, an abrupt 
 division immediately followed. Starting at once their 
 fatal scheme of exclusion, his friends pushed the 
 king to extremities, were ignominiously dissolved 
 within a week, just as they had promise of removal 
 from the confined schools to the noble theatre at 
 Oxford, read their dissolution in the Gazette, were 
 scattered, powerless, and at mercy. The unlucky 
 Serjeant presented a prominent and exposed mark to 
 the vengeance of an irritated prince, who knew not 
 how to pardon, or forget afterwards as king the inju- 
 ries done to the Duke of York. He had been exas- 
 perated by the energy with which Williams had sup- 
 ported the Bill of Exclusion, and lay in wait for an 
 opportunity of retaliation. The moment a detested 
 House of Commons were broken up, he seized the 
 occasion their violence had given to crush his defence- 
 less enemy. A narrative of the infamous Dangerfield, 
 showing how he had been employed by the popish
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 413 
 
 Lords to invent the Meal-tub Plot, and implicating 
 the Duke of York, had been ordered to be printed 
 with the votes, in November, 1G80. In the strict 
 discharge of his duty as speaker, Williams had 
 licensed the printing of the votes, including the nar- 
 rative. A criminal information was filed in the 
 King's Bench, at the command of his royal highness, 
 for this imputed libellous publication, replete with the 
 strongest Latin adverbs, " that it had been published 
 by the late speaker, scandalously, seditiously, and 
 devilishly." Williams demurred, alleging that he had 
 acted under the express authority of the House, and 
 that the publication must be privileged. Sir Robert 
 Atkyns, an eminent lawyer, but who had given up 
 practice, hastened from the country to volunteer his 
 aid, and borrowed a gown to argue this constitutional 
 demurrer. Judgment should have gone, and in the 
 good times of the law would have gone, for the defend- 
 ant; but what was to be expected, when the real pro- 
 secutor had succeeded to the throne, with Jeffries 
 for chancellor and Pemberton forjudge? 
 
 The corrupt Court of King's Bench, a convenient 
 instrument of tyranny, having pronounced judgment 
 for the prosecution, imposed the exorbitant fine of 
 £10,000 on the defendant for acting in his ministerial 
 character, £8,000 of which he actually paid. James 
 the Second was huckster enough to bargain to remit 
 the remainder, on condition of prompt payment. But 
 even this concession he could only be induced to make 
 by urgent entreaty, and, on yielding at length, annexed 
 a proviso to the niggardly act of grace, most charac- 
 teristic of the cunning tyrant, that nothing should be 
 given to any of the courtiers, who had been employed 
 
 9 The Right Hon. Ch. W. Wyun's Notes to the State Trial.
 
 414 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 to solicit the abatement. But the speaker's persecu- 
 tions were not yet over. The same licensed publica- 
 tion of Dangerfield, which accused the Duke of York, 
 contained also charges against the Earl of Peterborough, 
 and that aggrieved nobleman, to share in the spoil, 
 brought an action of scandalum magnatum, in vindica- 
 tion of his wounded honour. The disposition of the 
 servile court had been found so hostile to the allow- 
 ance of any privilege of parliament, that it was 
 thought most expedient to effect a compromise, and 
 the king, who had been gratified by an early payment, 
 interfered to induce Lord Peterborough to accept the 
 jackalPs share — a poor £150 — in satisfaction of his 
 wounded feelings. Three bills were introduced into 
 parliament in the years 1689-90 and 95, to reverse 
 the judgment of the King's Bench against Williams. 
 The Bill of Rights recites, " among other endeavors of 
 King James to subvert the laws, by prosecutions in 
 the Court of King's Bench for matters and causes 
 cognizable only in parliament," and refers to this case, 
 as one of the offences by which James II. had forfeited 
 the crown. 
 
 The House of Commons expressly declared the 
 judgment to be illegal and subversive of the freedom 
 of parliament, p It does therefore appear inconsistent 
 that this very judgment should have been suffered to 
 continue unreversed, and the illegal fine which had 
 been imposed on the speaker unrepaid. 
 
 The solution of the enigma is to be found in the 
 want of a compensation fund and the constrained eco- 
 nomy of the times, the country groaning beneath the 
 pressure of war taxes, and the prodigality of the royal 
 bounty on foreign or adopted favourites. Among 
 
 t C. W. Wynn's Notes.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 415 
 
 the difficulties which pressed on the new government 
 after the Revolution, that of raising money formed the 
 chief; and parliament, disgusted with the profusion of 
 King William's grants, was led into the opposite 
 extreme of parsimony, even in instances where the 
 nation's justice called for a more liberal proceeding. 
 We shall find in consequence no disposition to make 
 pecuniary compensation to any of those who had suf- 
 fered illegally during James's reign, unless a source 
 independent of the public purse could be found for that 
 purpose. 
 
 A bill to confiscate the estates of the deceased 
 Chancellor Jeffries was brought in, and an intention 
 avowed to fine all excepted persons in the bill of 
 indemnity. This united all the connexions of the 
 persons excepted to oppose every bill for the reversal 
 of proceedings wdiich were likely to entail pecuniary 
 compensation to the party aggrieved, and this combina- 
 tion w T as strong enough (particularly in the Lords) to 
 throw out every bill of this nature. It was originally 
 proposed by three bills, that the tine of £8,000 should 
 be repaid to Williams by Sir Robert Sawyer, who had 
 filed the information against him. Sir Robert was 
 in consequence heard against the bill, both in person 
 and by counsel, and though passed by the Commons, 
 in 1695, it failed in the Lords. On this occasion, 
 Williams made a speech in vindication of himself. 
 The following are some of the loose memoranda con- 
 taining the heads of his speech : " Earl of Macclesfield 
 will testify that I refused the chief justiceship of 
 Chester, because I would not be thought to do any 
 thins; that misrht seem to incline against the interest of 
 the Commons in that trust. In this proceeding pos- 
 terity will justify me. I look upon this as the glory
 
 416 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 and honour of myself and family. If I had submitted 
 to the information, if I had tamely yielded and con- 
 fessed, it had been better with my estate but worse 
 with my reputation." 
 
 So far the lawyer acted well, but it would have 
 been better for his reputation, however much the 
 worse with his estate, had he consistently maintained 
 his principles. For a period of several years he con- 
 tinued faithful to his party-friends, and was selected 
 to defend some of the noblest victims to state prose- 
 cutions, when Charles II. had resolved to rule without 
 a parliament, and, hardened into cruelty by his selfish 
 terrors, to dip his sceptre in blood. After the Presby- 
 terian Plot broke out in 1683, to quote the prejudiced 
 Anthony Wood,*! " Williams became an advocate for 
 them and the fanatics, particularly for John Hamden, 
 Lawrence Braddon, Sir Samuel Barnardiston, and 
 Algernon Sidney." He conducted their several 
 defences with marked courage and zeal. In the last 
 case, he was harshly reproved by the judge for prompt- 
 ing his heroic client, and stopped in some forcible 
 comments on the character of the leading witness for 
 the crown, " that monster of a man," as Evelyn justly 
 termed him, Lord Howard of Escrick. Having observed 
 with much pertinency, " May it not be believable that 
 what he hath said, he hath said only for his own sake, 
 and that he has, by exposing this gentleman and the 
 blood of others, procured himself a pardon." The 
 lord chief justice interrupted him, " That is a harsh 
 word and too roundly expressed ; you had need to 
 explain yourself; it is a little too rank, as though the 
 king's pardon were to be procured by blood." 
 
 In the progress of the trial, Jeffries contrived to 
 q Wood's Athense Oxonienses.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 417 
 
 give the hardy advocate, with whom he had a per- 
 sonal ground of quarrel for the reprimand he had pro- 
 nounced as speaker, "a lick" (to use his own expressive 
 phrase) " with the rough side of his tongue." 
 
 The counsel called a Dr. Needham into the box, 
 to say what opinion Lord Essex had of Lord Howard, 
 evidence clearly inadmissible, and the judge expressed 
 his amazement. " I only offer it thus," faltered in ex- 
 planation the intrepid counsel, when the chief thun- 
 dered forth, "Offer what is evidence, man!" The 
 man was soon to be reconciled to Jeffries, for he had 
 no high standard of moral worth. In an unhappy 
 hour for his good name, he abandoned his former prin- 
 ciples to the gratification of self-interest and revenge. 
 The oracle of the whigs, the amerced and liberal speaker 
 of the two last parliaments of Charles, the terrorist 
 against popery and arbitrary power, he suddenly 
 renounced all his political connexions, became recon- 
 ciled to a popish king and a despotic court, received 
 the honour of a baronetcy (if honour it could be called), 
 in 1686, at the hands of James, was appointed soli- 
 citor-general, and had, as a crowning infamy, the con- 
 viction of the Seven Bishops entrusted to his special 
 management, under promise of the seals in the event 
 of success. r 
 
 He carried the prosecution, we read in a letter of 
 the times, 3 as high as possible; boasting that " he had 
 tacked about, and would teach others to do so too." 
 His choleric and unjustifiable deportment during the 
 trial, both to the judges, the opposing counsel, and the 
 venerable prelates ; his petulant interruptions ; his 
 consummate assurance in laying down positions the 
 most remote possible from law ; show the whole man to 
 1 Yorke's Tribes. ' Sir H. Ellis's Letters. 
 
 VOL I. 2 E
 
 418 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 have been infected with the spirit of a Scroggs or a 
 Jeffries, and to have imbibed all the virus of his royal 
 master. The by-play of the advocates, that diversi- 
 fied the course of the proceedings, however amusing, 
 is anything but complimentary to the forensic courte- 
 sies of the times. When a formal objection was taken 
 to the criminal information that it contained the words 
 ' vi et armis/ and the solicitor asserted boldly that 
 these words were constantly inserted,* the Bishop of 
 Peterborough ventured to ask, ' ' Was it so in your own 
 case, Mr. Solicitor ? " Sir Wm. Williams retorted ; 
 " Yes, it was so in my own case, and you were one of 
 them that prosecuted me for ought that I know; or if 
 you did not prosecute me you preached against me , or 
 if you did not, some of your tribe did." After this 
 singular burst of spleen, he interrupted the clerk of 
 assize, who was proceeding to read the information in 
 English, and desired him to read it in Latin. The 
 Bishop of Peterborough appealed to the chief-justice : 
 " My lord, we request it may be read in English, for we 
 don't understand Law-Latin." This request appeared 
 too reasonable to be acquiesced in by the rancorous 
 manager of the prosecution. " No, my lords, the 
 bishops are all very learned men, we all know ; pray 
 read it in Latin," and in that abominable jargon it was 
 accordingly read. 
 
 The interchange of those innocent missiles, hard 
 and bitter words, between Williams and his fellow- 
 apostate Sir Robert Sawyer, seems to have been inces- 
 sant. When that rival-worthy prayed the judgment 
 of the court, whether "the cases put by Mr. Solicitor 
 were like the case of the bishops, for whom he 
 appeared as leading counsel," Mr. Solicitor recrimi- 
 
 Statc Trials.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 419 
 
 nated the ' argumentum ad hominem.' " They are as 
 like as Sir Robert Sawyer is to Mr. Attorney that 
 was! " and again ; the solicitor-general sharply asked, 
 " How many times have you been accused of playing 
 tricks, Sir Robert Sawyer ? " Sir Robert might well 
 apply the personal retort: "Not so many times as 
 you, Mr. Solicitor ! " His scolding interruptions often 
 called down the displeasure even of the partial chief- 
 justice. Having alleged that the publication was 
 proved, Sir Robert Sawyer denied that it was so, 
 saying, " We oppose that Sir ! " Upon the solicitor 
 replying, " You oppose it ! We know you '11 oppose 
 what's common sense, we don't speak to you, we 
 speak to the court/' the chief-justice rebuked this 
 petulance, with more propriety of feeling than felicity 
 of phrase : " It is unbecoming men of your profession 
 to be chopping in and snapping at each other." 
 
 Mr. Finch, another counsel for the defendants, 
 being stopped in some objection by the shrill vocifera- 
 tion, " My lord, is this to be suffered?" Mr. Finch 
 continued his objection with some point: " I was not 
 going to invade that privilege, which Mr. Solicitor 
 claims, of making objections and not permitting an 
 answer;" and Sir Robert Wright added, "Pray Mr. 
 Solicitor, give us leave to hear fairly what they have 
 to say, for I perceive he cannot offer to speak but you 
 presently stop his mouth ! Do not chop in upon him!" 
 a somewhat undignified remark, it must be confessed, 
 but certainly most pertinent. Aware, as a shrewd 
 lawyer must have been, of the difficulties of his wretched 
 case, the crown advocate sought to deter the defend- 
 ants' counsel from their duty to their clients, by 
 taunts and innuendoes too well understood in those days 
 of illegal violence. When Serjt. Pemberton, in cross-
 
 420 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 examining the most important witness for the crown, 
 Lord Sunderland, summoned upon the exigency of 
 the case, put a searching but most pertinent interroga- 
 tion, the following extraordinary dialogue ensued : — 
 
 Serjeant Pemberton. "I would ask this question 
 sir, — when the bishops came in the second time, 
 whether they did desire to know if it were his 
 majesty's command that they should own it ? " 
 
 Solicitor-General. "If men will be so pressing, 
 I for the king desire the question may be entered !" 
 
 Sir Robert Sawyer. " What do you mean, Mr. 
 Solicitor '?" 
 
 Solicitor. " I know very well what I mean, sir; I 
 desire the question may be recorded in court." 
 
 Serjeant Pemberton. " Record what you will, I 
 am not afraid of you, Mr. Solicitor." 
 
 Solicitor- General. " Are you afraid of the law?" 
 
 Lord Chief Justice. " Pray be quiet, gentlemen." 
 
 After the counsel for the bishops had established a 
 most triumphant defence, and produced document 
 upon document, confirmatory of their strict right to 
 act as they had done, Sir William Williams attempted 
 to destroy the effect of these precedents, by an 
 ingenious but unfounded distinction between what 
 might be legal, the presenting of petitions by a subject 
 to the king, when parliament was sitting, and what 
 was illegal during the recess. 
 
 "All those precedents that they have produced, of 
 what the Lords did and what the Commons did in 
 parliament, is no warrant for them to shelter them- 
 selves under against the information here in question." 
 Here Mr. Justice Powell spoke aside to the lord 
 chief justice : — " My lord, this is strange doctrine. 
 Shall not the subject have liberty to petition the king
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 421 
 
 but in parliament ? If that be law, the subject is in 
 a miserable case !" His chief replied in an audible 
 whisper, " Brother, let him go on, we will hear him 
 out, though I approve not of his doctrine." 
 
 On the solicitor- general restating his sophistical 
 argument, " The Lords may address the king in 
 parliament, and the Commons may do it, but that 
 therefore the bishops may do it out of parliament does 
 not follow," the honest puisne judge felt himself again 
 compelled to interfere : " My lord, this is wide. Mr. 
 Solicitor would impose upon us, let him make it out, 
 if he can, that the king has such a power, and answer 
 the objections made by the defendants' counsel." 
 The chief was surprised by this remark out of all 
 patience. "Brother, impose upon us indeed! He 
 shall not impose upon me; I know not what he may 
 upon you : for my part I do not believe one word he 
 says I" Another puisne judge was too uneasy between 
 his judgment and inclination, his knowledge and fears, 
 to remain longer silent. Mr. Justice Holloway now 
 addressed the solicitor, pronounced ex cathedra to be 
 so little worthy of credit. " There is one thing I 
 would fain be satisfied in. You say the bishops have 
 no power to petition the king." 
 
 Solicitor. " Not out of parliament, sir." 
 
 Mr. Justice Holloivay. " The king requires the 
 bishops to disperse his declaration; this, they say, out 
 of tenderness of conscience they cannot do, because 
 they apprehend it is contrary to law, and contrary to 
 their function. What can they do if they may not 
 petition?" 
 
 The solicitor, for want of a better answer, was 
 compelled to make this ignominious reply : — " I'll tell 
 you what they should have done, sir. If they were
 
 422 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 commanded to do anything against their conscience 
 they should have acquiesced till the meeting of par- 
 liament ! " 
 
 At this miserable subterfuge, some people in 
 court, we are told, hissed, u but the intrepid sophist 
 persevered. " If the king will impose ujDon a man 
 what he cannot do, he must acquiesce, but shall he 
 come and fly in the face of his prince ? shall he say it 
 is illegal, and that the prince acts against prudence, 
 honour, or conscience, and throw dirt in the king's 
 face? Sure this is not permitted. This is libelling 
 with a witness." Such a sorry compound of bad 
 rhetoric and bad law was demolished by Mr. Justice 
 Powell, in a tone of grave expostulation. " Mr. 
 Solicitor, it would have been too late to stay for a par- 
 liament, for it was to have been distributed by such a 
 time." From this dilemma the crown-lawyer could 
 find no escape, but faltered forth, " They might have 
 lain under it and submitted." Alas! for the broken 
 spirit of the once rampant whig, when it could be 
 brought to enunciate this slavish dogma. We cannot 
 wonder that the feelings of the excited audience 
 should have found vent in repeated exclamations of 
 displeasure, however unbecoming a court of justice, or 
 that they should have hissed long and loudly, when 
 the solicitor had the hardihood, forgetting the sure 
 contrast his hearers must form between the past and 
 present, to enlarge on the Bill of Exclusion. 
 
 The case for the prosecution had miserably failed — 
 not a shred of proof of publication was left together ; 
 in any other days but those of legal violence, the jury 
 would have been directed at once to return an acquit- 
 tal, when the temporizing chief justice began to sum 
 up. The happy indiscretion of Mr. Finch, who 
 
 " Sir II. Ellis's Collection of Letters.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 423 
 
 interrupted his lordship, to suggest the defect of 
 evidence, caused the partial judge to pause, that the 
 chasm might be supplied, and encouraged the counsel 
 for the prisoners to rest their defence upon a solid 
 foundation, a firm principle of law. Abandoning all 
 technical ground, they boldly submitted that the king 
 had no power to dispense with laws. The jury were 
 shut up in a private room all night, at six in the 
 morning agreed on their verdict, and, when the judges 
 re-entered the court at nine, pronounced an acquittal. 
 The vast shout of applause, which rang through West- 
 minster Hall, startled the ear of Jeffries as he took his 
 seat in the court of chancery, and, being informed the 
 reason, he was perceived to cover his face with a large 
 bouquet of flowers, to conceal a smile, as much as to 
 say, " Mr. Solicitor, I keep my seal." 
 
 "Palace Yard," says Coke, "and all the streets 
 about were thronged with an infinite people, whose 
 loud shouts and joyful acclamations, upon hearing the 
 bishops were acquitted, were a very rebellion in noise, 
 though far from being so either in fact or intention." 
 The rejoicings of the people appear to have galled 
 beyond endurance the sensitive feelings of the disap- 
 pointed law officers of the crown. We read in the Ellis 
 correspondence, of the solicitor's personal activity in 
 attempting to seize the triumphant rioters, mortified 
 spleen and baffled ambition lending wings to his zeal. 
 Some of the gown were as loud in the rejoicing as 
 any, for which the attorney-general caused one of 
 Gray's Inn to be seized, and bound him to answer 
 to an information. " The solicitor-general was likely 
 to catch another, but that he narrowly escaped with 
 the crowd." At night, bonfires and illuminations 
 attested the popular joy, blazing up the more from the
 
 424 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 vindictive and abortive efforts to quench it. A few 
 days afterwards several were indicted as rioters at 
 Hickes-Hall, for being concerned in the making of 
 bonfires, but the grand jury, in the true spirit of 
 John Bull,, would find no bill, though sent back no 
 less than three times. These insolent perversions of 
 all law and justice were perpetrated in the summer of 
 1688: in six months the cause of the constitution and 
 social order prevailed — the tyrant and his myrmidons 
 were at mercy. A new king, a new parliament, new 
 laws succeeded to try the heart and test the principles 
 of public men. Williams had neither the fortitude 
 nor integrity to linger long in the camp of a routed 
 party. He had deserted the weak and defenceless 
 before ; he was ready to double and turn again. By a 
 second treachery, he sought the favour of a new monarch 
 in abandoning the cause of his abdicated prince. 
 Summoned to the convention parliament, the late 
 speaker pushed himself into the van. On the 28th 
 January (six months after the acquittal of the bishops) 
 he proposed a resolution: "That James II., by with- 
 drawing from England, has deprived the kingdom of 
 England of the exercise of the kingly dignity," and 
 suggested with unfaltering tongue " that the House 
 should consider the arbitrary power given to the late 
 king by the judges: weak judges will do weak 
 things their master commands them ; they read no 
 books and know nothing to the contrary. I could 
 give many instances." 
 
 Eager to pay his court to royalty, he proposed 
 that a revenue should be settled on the new king for 
 three years certain, and made a merit of not being 
 a member of the only parliament convened by his 
 predecessor, artfully insinuating that he was a martyr
 
 HOUSE OP COMMONS. 425 
 
 to his disinterestedness as speaker, and that his inde- 
 pendent spirit had been the cause of his exclusion. 
 Notwithstanding his assurance and braggart boasts, 
 the reproach of tergiversation was too recent not to 
 excite the angry notice of more consistent senators. 
 The following report of a dialogue with How, called 
 the shrew of the House, shows how boldly the crown 
 lawyer confronted their displeasure/ 
 
 Sir Willi am Williams. " I can fast as well How, 
 but I cannot pray so well." 
 
 How. "If Williams had gone on in the way he 
 was once in we should have had all fasting and no 
 praying." 
 
 Williams. " How has forgotten the bishops were 
 acquitted, and who had a hand in doing it ! " 
 
 How. " I protest I do not accuse Williams for 
 acquitting them ! " 
 
 The day after the expulsion of Sir Robert Sawyer, 
 it was moved by Mr. Bertie that the name of Williams 
 should be excepted from the bill of indemnity. A 
 long and warm debate ensued. "There are men," 
 said Sir R. Napier, ' ' who carry the mark of Cain 
 upon them — men that sailed before every w r ind; one 
 has been named, and I desire he may withdraw." Old 
 Serjeant Maynard enlarged on the enormity of an 
 archbishop and six bishops being brought to trial by 
 a jury at the King's Bench bar, for a modest and 
 dutiful petition to the king. " How monstrous that 
 such a petition could be construed into a libel 1" The 
 ex-solicitor's conduct in the chair was with difficulty 
 permitted to atone for his delinquencies in West- 
 minster Hall — the fight at Shrewsbury was at length 
 taken as a set-off for the affair at Gad's Hill. He 
 
 T Parliamentary History, vol. v.
 
 420 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 escaped by the narrow majority of 17 — dividing 190 
 against 173. But, though unpunished, he was also 
 unrecompensed for his heavy losses as speaker, and 
 became once more the legal architect of his own 
 fortunes. Restored to his rank of king's counsel, he 
 resumed his profession with considerable pecuniary 
 profit. We are informed by Yorke * that he had read 
 an opinion of his, after he had left the chair, and 
 ceased to hold office under the crown, adding, " Pem- 
 berton, who had been chief of both benches had 
 done the same, and his opinion is also to the same 
 case." But a bar was put to all hope of further 
 professional advancement. Surviving the greater 
 portion of King William's reign, he never but on 
 one occasion was intrusted with a confidential mission, 
 to investigate a supposed seditious conspiracy of 
 certain Roman Catholics in Lancashire. His conduct 
 there has been bitterly censured by the whig party: 
 he is charged with having colluded with the accused, 
 and thrown discredit on the witnesses for the crown, 
 but whether the charge rests on sufficient evidence, 
 the details of that obscure intrigue give too in- 
 distinct a light for the modern historian to venture 
 an opinion. 
 
 He closed a versatile and turbulent life at his 
 chambers in Gray's Inn, in July 1700, aged 66, justly 
 obnoxious to the reproach of being x a corrupt and 
 vicious man, who had no fixed principles, but followed 
 his own interest, happy in one circumstance at least 
 that he has founded an illustrious line of descendants, 
 whose merits are sufficient to redeem even his memory 
 from disgrace. He was of short stature and hand 
 
 » Royal Tribes of Wales. x Burnet.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 427 
 
 some ; his portrait by Allen presents a round Welsh 
 face, with quick, lively features, and an expression of 
 much intelligence. His younger son John was a pro- 
 vincial barrister of some eminence at Chester, and 
 ancestor to Sir John Williams of Boddlewyddan.
 
 428 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 In the life of a far better man, the staunch tory 
 lawyer, Robert Price, a written, as the title-page assures 
 us, by appointment of the family, we are informed that 
 he was born at Cerrig-y-druidion, North Wales, in 1653, 
 and educated at the Grammar School of Wrexham, 
 and St. John's Cambridge, that he made the grand 
 tour for two years, and on his return married a gentle- 
 woman with £13,000 fortune. One anecdote of his 
 tour is worth noticing. Being detained at Florence, 
 and afterwards at Rome, on suspicion of heresy, some 
 few of his law books formed the subject of a very strict 
 inquiry, in particular Coke upon Littleton, which was 
 taken for an English heretical bible. The young 
 lawyer was carried to the Vatican, where he soon con- 
 vinced his accusers of their error, and made a present 
 of the book to the Pope, who immediately assigned it 
 a place in his library, on the very same shelf where are 
 deposited Anne Boleyn's Letters to King Henry VIII. 
 Returned to parliament in 1679, he gave his vote 
 against the bill of exclusion. 
 
 These high prerogative politics caused him to be 
 removed at the Revolution from two snug appointments 
 which he held, as attorney-general of Glamorganshire, 
 a Life of Mr. Justice Price, 1732.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 429 
 
 and town-clerk of Gloucester. " Excepting that ever- 
 memorable battle of the Boyne," says the Jacobite 
 writer of his life, " the chief business of five years was 
 only the promotions and exorbitant grants of King 
 William to his favourites., especially that most noted 
 one to William Bentinck." 
 
 The king made his countryman Earl of Portland, 
 Knight of the Garter, and, with other lands, granted 
 him in perpetuity the lordships of Denbigh, Broinfield, 
 and Yale. The warrant for this grant being forwarded 
 to the Lords of the Treasury, Sir William Williams, 
 Sir Roger Puleston, Sir Robert Cotton, and Mr. Price 
 were heard against it. Mr. Price objected that the 
 grant was of large extent, being five-sixths of a large 
 county ; that it was too great a power for any foreign 
 subject to have ; that the people of the county 
 were too great to be subject to him ; that the pro- 
 posed grant, subjecting his countrymen to a foreign 
 subject, would put them in a worse posture than their 
 former estate, when under William the Conqueror and 
 his Norman lords. He drew a warning from the his- 
 tory of Owen Glendower, an inferior person of the 
 long robe, till a stranger would have encroached upon 
 the waste and commons of his neighbour, and then 
 he became a terror to the English nation. " Good 
 kings," the patriotic orator concluded, " after a long 
 and chargeable war, were accustomed to tell their 
 people that they sorrowed for the hardships the nation 
 underwent by long wars and heavy taxes, and that 
 now they would live on their own ; but it is to be 
 feared, if grants are made so large and so frequent, 
 there will be nothing for the king or his successors to 
 call their own to live upon." 
 
 In consequence of these representations, the issue
 
 430 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 of the grant was suspended at the Treasury, and, Mr. 
 Price on a subsequent day presenting a petition from 
 the county against it, made a speech "that will," says 
 his biographer, "remain a permament memorial of the 
 speaker's praise, whilst the blessings of liberty and 
 property are to be found among us." His oratory 
 had so great an effect, that a motion against the royal 
 bounty was carried unanimously, and an address pre- 
 sented to the king by the speaker attended by the 
 whole House. The king assented to this request, but 
 with a growl : " I will recall the grant and find out 
 some other way of showing my favour to him." A 
 resolution, drawn up by Mr. Price, was afterwards 
 entered on the journals — "That the procuring or 
 passing exorbitant grants by any member, then of the 
 privy council, in that or any other reign, to his own 
 use or benefit, was a high crime and misdemeanor." 
 His speech appears to have been too full of libellous 
 truth to bear publication during King William's 
 reign. But, the year after his death, it was printed 
 under the title " Gloria Cambria?, or the speech of a 
 bold Briton against a Dutch Prince of Wales," and 
 bearing the apposite motto, " opposuit et vicit." His 
 harangue is, however, more memorable for the strength 
 of its facts and patriotic boldness than for rhetoric or 
 eloquence, for example : " This grant halts, I suppose, 
 till the parliament rises, and then, I doubt not but it 
 will find legs and take its journey." " The bounty 
 even if perfected, was ominous. History and records 
 tell us that the grants of these lordships have been very 
 fatal to either prince or patentee ; the one either lost 
 his crown, or the other his head." 
 
 The following indignant murmurs at the ruinous, 
 impoverishing influence to which foreign counsels had
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 431 
 
 reduced the honour of the crown and the credit of the 
 people found a responsive echo in the breasts of all 
 who heard him . " I suppose this grant of the princi- 
 pality is a forerunner of the honour too, and then I 
 shall fancy we are returning to our original contract ; 
 for, as story tells us, we were first brought to entertain 
 a Prince of Wales by recommending him to us as one 
 that did not understand the English tongue, and our 
 forefathers thence inferred that he must be our coun- 
 tryman and no foreigner, and one that understood the 
 British language : how we were deceived therein is 
 palpable. I suppose this lord doth not understand our 
 language, nor is it to be supposed that he will come 
 amongst us to learn it; nor shall we be fond of 
 learning his. 
 
 " I would gladly know from those who are better 
 versed in prerogative learning than myself, whether 
 his majesty can by the Bill of Rights, without the con- 
 sent of parliament, alien, or give away the inheritance, 
 or an absolute fee, of the crown lands. If he can, 
 I would likewise know to what purpose the crown was 
 settled for life with a remainder in succession, if a 
 tenant for life of the crown can grant away the revenue 
 of the crown, and which is incident to the crown. It 
 cannot be pretended that he shall know our laws (who 
 is a stranger to us and we to him) no more than we 
 know his counsellors, which I wish we did. Every 
 parliament we find endeavours for a general naturali- 
 zation, and that warmly solicited from court. We 
 see our good coin all gone and our confederates openly 
 coining base money of Dutch alloy for us. We see 
 most places of power and profit given to foreigners. 
 We see our confederates in conjunction with the Scots 
 to ruin our English trade. We see the revenues of
 
 428 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the crown daily given to one or other, who make sale 
 of them, and transmit their estates elsewhere. So that 
 I foresee, when we are reduced to extreme poverty, as 
 now we are very near it, we are to be supplanted by 
 our neighbours, and become a colony to the Dutch. 
 I shall make no remark on this great man, for his 
 greatness makes us little, and will make the crown 
 both poor and precarious; and, when God shall please 
 to send us a Prince of Wales, he may have such a pre- 
 sent of a crown made him as a pope did to King John 
 who was surnamed Sans terre, and by his father Henry 
 II. made Lord of Ireland, which grant was confirmed 
 by the pope, who sent him a crown of peacock's fea- 
 thers, in derision of his power and the poverty of his 
 revenue. I would have us to consider we are English- 
 men, and must, like good patriots, stand by our coun- 
 try, and not suffer it to become tributary to strangers. 
 We have rejoiced that we have beat out of this king- 
 dom popery and slavery, and now do with as great joy 
 entertain socinianism and poverty ! and yet we see our 
 properties daily given away, and our liberties must 
 soon follow." 
 
 It spoke well for the magnanimity of William 
 that, though naturally provoked at the freedom of his 
 speech and the boldness of the honest patriot, who 
 could venture to utter such home truths, he had too 
 much respect for the speaker to oppose his professional 
 advancement, and in 1700 ratified his appointment as 
 Judge of the Brecknock Circuit. Mr. Price resigned 
 his seat for Weobly, which he had represented twenty 
 years, in favour of his son, on the accession of Queen 
 Anne, and was appointed one of the barons of the 
 exchequer. He came within the description which 
 Jethro gave to Moses for appointing judges over Israel.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 433 
 
 " They must be men of courage, and men of truth, 
 fearing God and hating covetousness." Finding his 
 fortune more than sufficient for his wants, in 1710 he 
 built and endowed an alms-house, to maintain six poor 
 people for ever, at the place of his nativity. After 
 continuing in the exchequer twenty-four years, in 1 726 
 Baron Price exchanged that court for the more easy 
 labours of the common pleas. 
 
 The first historian of his life, writing in 1732, 
 takes abundant pains in confuting the rumour, that 
 the worthy judge was induced by motives of profit to 
 make the exchange ; after disproving this notion from 
 the general character of the man, he adds what must 
 satisfy the most sceptical : " Besides, they, who would 
 have the world think thus meanly of the judge, happen 
 to be mistaken in the very foundation of their assertion, 
 for all who know the common pleas and the exchequer 
 know the salaries of the judges of both courts to be 
 the same, and that the casual or adventitious fees for 
 business done in chambers are no higher in one court 
 than in the other." A feeling of dissatisfaction at so 
 many juniors being put over his head might also 
 promote his wish for the change. A perfect master of 
 the business of that court, he would reasonably have 
 expected to fill the highest station in it, had not the 
 exclusive favouritism of the whigs precluded all hope 
 to any of the opposite faction. He had been retained 
 in his seat by George I., but was too good a tory 
 to be preferred. The firmness and integrity of his 
 judicial character were put to the proof, on a very 
 remarkable occasion. A quarrel and open rupture 
 having ensued between George I. and the prince of 
 Wales, on occasion of the baptizing of his son, the prince 
 having wished the duke of York to be one of the god- 
 vol.i. 2 f
 
 434 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 fathers, and the king insisting on the duke of New- 
 castle, an order was sent by Lord Chancellor Cowper, 
 requiring, in his majesty's name, the opinion of all the 
 judges upon the following question: "Whether the 
 education and care of his majesty's grandchildren, 
 and the ordering the place of their abode, and appoint- 
 ing their governors, and governesses, and other in- 
 structors, attendants, and servants, and the care and 
 approbation of their marriages, when grown up, belongs 
 of right to his majesty, as king of this realm, or not ?" 
 Ten of the judges, with Parker and King, chief justices, 
 at their head, afterwards successively lord chancellors, 
 gave an unhesitating opinion in the affirmative, but 
 without stating authorities or reasons. 
 
 Baron Price and Justice Eyre, who differed from 
 the other judges, divided the question r and gave it as 
 their matured judgment that the education and care 
 of the grandchildren belonged wholly to the prince, 
 their father ; but that the approbation of their mar- 
 riages, when grown up, did belong to his majesty, as 
 king of this realm, yet not exclusively of the prince 
 their father. " The rights of the father they founded 
 jure naturae, and, after citing Littleton, Coke, and 
 Vaughan, concluded it to be the general rule of law, 
 that the guardianship of the children is a right common 
 to every subject of this kingdom who is a father, 
 without exception. After distinguishing the cases of 
 civil law in Bracton and Fleta to the contrary, they 
 summed up their elaborate opinion with a proposition, 
 to which a modern lawyer may be expected to give 
 his assent, " that the prerogative claimed in the 
 care and education of your majesty's grandchildren 
 ought not to supersede a father's rights." The 
 cautious writer of the life of Judge Price, sagely
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 435 
 
 remarks upon this : " Now what must afford the reader 
 a most agreeable contrast in so weighty a debate is, 
 that the ten judges could not rind any authority against 
 the whole question, and the two other judges assure 
 his majesty, ' that there is no one expression in any 
 of our law books that warrants any such assertion. 
 We shall not presume to give any opinion of our 
 own. The precipice is too steep for private men to 
 look down !' " 
 
 The poor child, just as this opinion had been de- 
 livered, died, and the Duke of Newcastle, presiding at 
 the funeral, as lord chamberlain, occasioned the sar- 
 casm, "that his Grace had the honour to introduce 
 the prince twice into the church, once into the bosom, 
 and once into the bowels of it !" 
 
 Lord Oxford was a great friend of Baron Price, 
 and, as lord treasurer, told him that he should have any 
 thing he had in his power to give, but the bold Briton 
 would accept of no place under any restrictions. Thus 
 incorrupt and independent, he lived till February, 1732, 
 and then expired in his seventy-ninth year, exclaiming 
 in a violent rack of pain, " It is hard to die. b 
 
 His eldest son, member for Weobly, had perished 
 at Genoa. In his life-time several letters addressed 
 to his father " honoured sir," and signed (t your duti- 
 ful son/' mark the formal manners of the age. The 
 circumstances of his death might have formed the 
 subject of romance. (( His person was very amiable, and 
 more peculiarly so from his having a fine head of air, 
 with which," writes his simple biographer, " the 
 Madonnas became extremely enamoured, and when 
 these ladies had a lover to their liking (especially 
 among all the foreigners they meet with an English 
 b Noble's Continuation of Granger. 
 
 o F 2
 
 436 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 gentleman), if they signify any inclinations of a 
 departure, they make them a present of an unknown 
 dose, which will put a period to their lives according 
 to the time, it is allotted for, either of days, months, 
 or years.'' Another rumour is related, with equal 
 credulity, of the cause of his death. Mr. Price, being 
 at an entertainment, drank to a lady, the wife of a 
 Venetian nobleman, which was by the husband so 
 highly resented, that he vow r ed his destruction. Some 
 gentleman in courtesy desired Mr. Price to go post to 
 Genoa, from which he was at that time about twenty 
 leagues distant. He did so, and arrived there in 
 safety; but he was pursued by bravoes, and through 
 the lattices of his chamber window, in the inn where 
 he lay, shot in his bed the next morning. The 
 senate of Genoa seized all his effects, and, being a 
 Protestant, they permitted his remains no other than 
 a watery grave, letting them down in a leaden coffin 
 into the sea. This country is now held in higher 
 consideration with foreign states, and it may be 
 doubted whether any power would venture to confis- 
 cate the goods of a member of parliament, who 
 chanced to die in their territories, on account of his 
 being a Protestant. Of this there can be no doubt 
 that such an outrage on the law of nations would not 
 now be suffered to pass without inquiry and without 
 redress. 
 
 The contrast is great between the mild and 
 consistent Tory lawyer, Mr. Price, and the fiery 
 Jacobite, Sir Bartholomew Shower, who used, during 
 the reign of King William, to cross the path of 
 the whigs with impetuous conflict, and whose career 
 appears to have been as eccentric as his name. We 
 should feel no surprise that so little mention has been
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 437 
 
 made of this remarkable person in the Cl Biographia 
 Britannica" and "Biographical Dictionary," for these 
 incomplete and partial records are peculiarly unjust to 
 lawyers, and even fail to notice his illustrious patron, 
 Holt, the best and brightest name in the illuminated 
 annals of the Queen's Bench. 
 
 In the memoirs of his brother, Mr. John Shower, 
 late minister of the gospel in London, 1716, we are 
 told, that their father William followed the business 
 of a French merchant at Exeter, with good success, 
 and that in charity he resembled a wealthy merchant, 
 who, having lost £1500 in one ship, ordered his cash- 
 keeper to distribute another £100 among poor minis- 
 ters and Christians; " for," he said, " if it be going 
 by £1500 at a lump, it is time to make sure of some 
 part of it, before it be all gone." 
 
 The second son was an eminent dissenting 
 minister in Exeter. Of the third son, Bartholomew, the 
 author makes only passing mention, nor in his own 
 Diary does the lawyer once allude to his brother, the 
 eminent non-conformist divine, who wrote ably and 
 zealously in defence of the tenets of his party. The 
 difference in their religious sentiments may probably 
 account for this silence, the younger brother being 
 a stanch high-church divine. Among his MSS., so 
 valuable to the lawyer, still preserved in Lincoln's 
 Inn library, are found the following pithy hints for 
 an autobiography. What barrister can fail to admire 
 the author's particularity as to dates ! c 
 
 '* Tuesday, 3 afternoon, December 14, 1658. Was 
 born at Exeter, in Northgate Street. 
 
 "June, 1678. On a Sunday night was my 
 chamber burned, with a great part of the Middle 
 Temple. 
 
 c Shower's Reports by Butt.
 
 438 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 11 Last Friday in Easter term, 1680, I was called 
 to the barre. 
 
 " Saturday, January 21, 1681-2. I was married 
 in Bread Street by Samuel Johnson, afterwards the 
 author of ' Julian the Apostate.' 
 
 "1685-6. Jenner being made a baron, Sir John 
 Holt was made recorder, and he made me his deputy. 
 " Saturday morning being Whitson-eve, May, 
 1687, I was knighted, and then made deputy to Sir 
 John Yate, who was recorder upon Sir John Holt's 
 quitting the same. 
 
 " February 14, 1687-8. I was made king's coun- 
 sel and recorder upon Sir John Yate's being made a 
 Welsh judge. 
 
 " Michaelmas, 1688. I was removed from being 
 recorder, upon restitution of the city franchises by 
 King James. 
 
 "December 15, 1688. King James left England, 
 and Easter term I came the first day without the 
 barre, and so continued every day. 
 
 "April 2, 1692. I built my new chamber at 
 Chelsea.'' 
 
 To these peculiar entries may be added the two 
 following memoranda, amusingly characteristic of the 
 cautious lawyer, and proving the virtue of an &c. : — 
 11 Trinity vacation, 1 James II. King's bench. 
 " In Trinity term, Monmouth's rebellion in the 
 west prevented much business. In the vacation fol- 
 lowing by reason of that rebellion, there was no 
 assize held in the western circuit ; but afterwards five 
 judges went as commissioners of Oyer and Terminer, 
 and gaol delivery, and 351 of the rebels were exe- 
 cuted, fyc. 
 
 "Hilary term we had none, by reason of the Sec." — 

 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 439 
 
 the diarist's singular method of alluding to the 
 abdication of Kins: James. 
 
 The fact recorded in this modest diary, that Sir 
 John Holt chose him for his deputy, at a time when 
 there was no dearth of eminent men below the bar, 
 and he had only attained his twenty-eighth year, 
 proves the extent of his assiduity and talents. He 
 seized the first opportunity to display the loyal nature 
 of his politics, and when James II., on his accession, 
 issued a proclamation to continue the payment of the 
 revenues and excise, until parliament should have 
 settled a sufficient revenue on the crown, drew up a 
 truckling address from the inns of court, declaring 
 with more courtliness than truth, that his majesty's 
 high prerogative was the greatest security of the 
 liberty and property of the subject. This ultra-loyal 
 address, presented, we are told, by Sir Humphrey 
 Mackworth, at the head of a noble train of lawyers, 
 concluded in the full fervour of legal devotion: " May 
 there never want millions, as loyal as we are, to sacri- 
 fice their lives and fortunes in defence of your sacred 
 person and prerogative in its full extent, and inces- 
 santly pray the King of Kings to grant your majesty 
 a long and happy reign !" d 
 
 That the author of such unconstitutional doctrine 
 and such a rhetorical prayer should be promoted to 
 the recordership of London was the natural course of 
 policy pursued in that unhappy reign. That he should 
 have been selected one of the counsel for the seven 
 bishops seems at the first glance more extraordinary, 
 but Sir Bartholomew was a stronger churchman than 
 loyalist, had sacrificed his office from love to the 
 Church of England, and would, even to wearisomeness, 
 
 d Clarke's Life of James II.
 
 440 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 assert the independence of the bar. The following 
 instances during the trial sufficiently attest his pertina- 
 city. 6 Several counsel had been heard in the bishops' 
 case, when the recorder rose. C.J. Wright. — " What 
 again ! Well go on Sir Bartholomew, if we must have 
 a speech ! " The counsel gave way, but when there 
 was a pause for the arrival of Lord Sunderland, the 
 judge interposed : " Sir Bartholomew, now we have 
 time to hear your speech, if you will." Nothing 
 daunted by the sarcasm, the persevering advocate 
 repeated his objection, was answered, and again jumped 
 up. " Will your lordship be pleased to spare me one 
 word ?" 
 
 Chief Justice. " I hope we shall have done by and 
 by." 
 
 Shower, u Tf your lordship don't think fit, I can 
 sit down." 
 
 Chief Justice. " No , no; go on, Sir Bartholomew, 
 you'll say I have spoiled a good speech." 
 
 The vote of abdication of James, which crushed his 
 prospect of immediate promotion and shocked his 
 prejudices, extracted at the same time from the eager 
 tory those zealous efforts of patriotism on which his 
 claims to respectful remembrance are grafted. " This 
 prostitute court -lawyer," says Wallace, with his wonted 
 bitterness/ " made some amends by resisting and 
 exposing the abuses of the whig government, after the 
 Revolution." Returned to the convention parliament 
 for Exeter, the nursing mother of eminent legal wor- 
 thies, he lifted up his voice loudly against the miscar- 
 riages of the new government, and, as reported speeches 
 were not yet tolerated, fanned the national discontent 
 by vehement pamphlets. A stanch supporter of the 
 
 « State Trials. f Wallace's Continuation of Mackintosh.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 441 
 
 * right divine' of kings, be wrote a treatise — "The 
 magistracy and government of England vindicated" — 
 to defend the justice of Lord Russell's attainder, and 
 though he could not establish his position, he proved 
 undoubtedly that it was, in form of law at least, the 
 least flagrantly unjust of those contempts on trial by 
 jury, which stigmatised the closing scenes of the 
 reign of Charles II. s 
 
 A devoted champion of the Church, Sir Bartholo- 
 lomew Shower wrote also a clever tract to enhance the 
 importance of the convocation, when "William III. 
 resorted to the hopeless expedient of summoning his 
 clergy to ward off the distractions of the government. 
 Among the most virulent of the Jacobite tracts, which 
 inveighed against the new regime in a loud and daring 
 tone, inflamed by the numerous and arbitrary commit- 
 ments of the summer of 1691, was one intituled, 
 " Reasons for a new Bill of Rights, humbly submitted 
 to the consideration of a new sessions of parliament, 
 by Sir Bartholomew Shower, Bart., 1692." Some of 
 the passages, in which the author insists most strongly 
 upon a new effort in favour of a bill for regulating 
 trials in cases of treason, as a necessary security for the 
 life of the subject, for the security of the subject's 
 estate against the prerogative court of Chancery, and 
 for the liberty and security of the subject's person 
 against the encroachments of power, deserve to be 
 transcribed for their natural and stirring eloquence. 
 
 " It must provoke an agony of wonder, that no 
 more or better provision is hitherto acquired for the 
 
 insurance of mens' lives and liberties 
 
 In the name of God, what harm can accrue to the pub- 
 lic in general, or to any man in particular, that, in case 
 
 g Phillips' State Trials.
 
 442 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 of state treason, counsel should be allowed the accused? 
 What rule of justice is there to warrant its denial, 
 when, in a civil case of a half-penny value, the party 
 may plead, either by himself or advocate ? That the 
 court is counsel for the prisoner can be no effectual 
 reason, for so they ought to be in every action unto 
 each party,, that right may be done ; but the French- 
 man's remark upon this phantom (for it is no more) 
 hath sufficiently censured it : ' That my counsel ask 
 no good questions for me : my counsel make no good 
 sign for me — me no like my counsel ! ' " 
 
 After stating that the use of parliament is not 
 barely the gift of subsidies, which help the king and 
 people according to their respective occasions, the 
 writer forcibly alludes to the slight actual benefit 
 wrought by the convention. " The reversal of an 
 attainder injuriously procured cannot render any satis- 
 faction : the head returns not to the shoulders, nor 
 life to the party, though the title be restored to the 
 name, and the estate to the son of such a martyr. 
 
 The convention of the estates of the 
 
 realm in 88-9, intended somewhat more than the ejec- 
 tion of thirty or forty fat officers ! " 
 
 Mixed with these valuable maxims of state polity 
 and acute comments on defects in the law, are some 
 sharp strictures on the Court of Chancery, tinctured 
 with the bitter prejudice of a common lawyer. " In 
 Chancery, the single and sudden thoughts of a lord 
 keeper are the only rules for justice. Those mono- 
 syllables ' fraud ' and ' trust ' have already almost 
 devoured every other title in the law. It is one of our 
 first principles, co-natural to an English heart, to be 
 tender and jealous of the loss of liberty of person. 
 
 " That no commitments ought to be, without oath
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 443 
 
 first made, is certainly law. It is an infinite default, 
 that if a man be committed to a county gaol, and per- 
 haps that may be, as it hath been, to Hull, or Canter- 
 bury, this man is remediless till an assize, and that 
 sometimes not happening in several years, and then 
 this wretch can't make his prayer in Banco Regis ; he 
 hath not money to procure a commission of gaol deli- 
 very of oyer and terminer, and if he had, perhaps 'tis 
 denied him, and no provision made against such denial. 
 Now here's an indefinite imprisonment ! A further 
 enemy to liberty is a power, still reserved to judges of a 
 court, to commit upon pretence of contempt to them, 
 and this out of the act, and such an authority hath every 
 little petty court of record in the nation, and mistress 
 Experience tells us every slight matter makes a con- 
 tempt to them, and there 's no examining the cause, 
 for ever)'' court that commits is judge of the contempt. 
 Further, there's no deliverance till submission and their 
 discharge." 
 
 This fiery pamphlet carries a stinging P.S. in its 
 tail. " At last it may be contended, what need of all 
 this bustle and stir about liberty when parliament 
 meets so often, that their awe prevents all these and 
 many more possible oppressions ? To this I'll answer 
 by another query, what new security have we got, 
 that, if the war cease, we shall have a frequency of 
 those assemblies ? " 
 
 The able author of these useful hints for constitu- 
 tional reform lived to see a commencement partially 
 made in the allowance of counsel to prisoners accused 
 of high treason, and availed himself of the privilege 
 just conceded by statute, with such excess of zeal 
 as to bring its provisions into disfavour. The day after 
 this excellent act had come into operation, Ambrose
 
 444 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Rookwood h was put upon his trial for high treason, 
 and Sir Bartholomew, being chosen his leading counsel, 
 instantly seized upon all sorts of captious and frivolous 
 objections to the indictment : one of the most notable 
 was for improper Latin, the indictment being framed 
 at that time, to render it as unintelligible as possible, 
 in a scholastic jargon called the Latin language by- 
 courtesy. " It says ' anno regni dicti domini regis 
 nunc septimo,' and Lewis is the last king mentioned 
 before, and so here is no king of England mentioned." 
 
 His former patron, Chief Justice Holt, shrewdly 
 observed : " Do we call the French king ' Dominus 
 Rex ? ' " but ordered the indictment to be read. On 
 hearing the charge ""Ludovico regi Gallise subjugere 
 et mancipare," he exclaimed pettishly, " Can any man 
 imagine this to be the French king?" to which the 
 counsel retorted with sturdiness : "My lord, your 
 lordship is not to imagine one way or the other." 
 His frivolous objection was, of course, overruled. 
 
 In pleading for the life of Peter Cooke/ another of 
 the suspected traitors, the zealous advocate harangued 
 the jury with more than usual force, in those ineloquent 
 days among lawyers. " You are, gentlemen, to have 
 respect to your consciences, and the oaths which you 
 have now taken, to give true deliverance between the 
 king and prisoner ; you are not to go according to 
 your own private opinions, nor according to public 
 fame, nor according to common report, nor according 
 to the indictment in other cases, nor according to the 
 confessions or dying speeches of criminals who have 
 been executed, whether made by themselves or by 
 others for them, but you are to go by the testimony of 
 credible witnesses, and, if you have not the evidence 
 
 '' State Trials. ■ State Trials.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 445 
 
 of two credible witnesses before you, my lords, the 
 judges will inform you how the law stands." 
 
 Engaged in almost all the important trials of his 
 time, Shower argued as counsel for Lord Banbury in 
 1694, when Chief Justice Holt delivered that famous 
 judgment for the defendant, which so offended the 
 peers that a committee of the House summoned his 
 lordship to give reasons for his decision; but the firm 
 and upright magistrate disdained compliance with 
 such extravagant demands, and maintained the inde- 
 pendence of the bench, even when threatened to be 
 sent to the Tower. The like determined resolution 
 was displayed by Shower, when pleading at the bar of 
 the House of Commons against Fenwick's attainder. k 
 He denounced the measure, with all the boldness of a 
 lover of the constitution, and when, to procure evi- 
 dence for their unscrupulous vengeance, ministers 
 proposed to read Goodman's examination, as taken 
 down in writing by Secretary Vernon, he reminded the 
 House emphatically That, "if they were not bound 
 by the rules of inferior courts, where the deposition 
 could on no account or pretence be admitted, they 
 were yet bound by the eternal and unalterable rules 
 of justice, which such an admission would contradict. 
 Now I would know, whether the form of an oath, 
 which the wisdom of our ancestors has thought fit to 
 use for 800 years, be not the most proper direction to 
 inform us what shall be evidence ? Evidence prima 
 facie must be evidence of living persons. I am speak- 
 ing for the life a man, and for maintaining the rule of 
 law, which I hope shall continue for ever, and one of 
 those rules is, ' that the examination of a person that 
 is absent shall not be read to supply his testimony.'" 
 
 k Parliamentary History, vol. v.
 
 446 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 This intrepid advocate, defeated in the Commons, 
 fought a losing fight with unabated ardour at the bar 
 of the lords, and detained the peers till midnight with 
 his vivid declamation against their tyrannical measures. 
 A violent politician he threatened Lord Somers with 
 parliamentary vengeance for granting to Captain Kidd 
 the forfeited estates of pirates, which he pronounced 
 to be illegal according to the letter and spirit of the 
 law, 1 and plunged headlong into the factious violence 
 of the impeaching House of Commons. Returned to 
 parliament at the dissolution by a triumphant majority 
 of 200 for Exeter, with Sir Edward Seymour, he was 
 meditating a campaign, " helium plusquam civile," 
 when death smote him unawares. He was carried off 
 by an attack of fever, at his seat near Harrow on the 
 Hill, in the autumn of 1700. 
 
 Sir Bartholomew died at the most unluckymoment 
 for his prospects of deserved promotion, on the eve of a 
 tory court and high church government, amongst whom 
 he might have fairly claimed a leading place. He was 
 consistent in his politics, however violent and extreme 
 and, strange for a lawyer of that aera, persisted in 
 the even tenor of his way straightforward to the end. 
 Pie had warred to the death against the whiggish ten- 
 dencies of King William's reign, and given as his 
 watchword a memorable axiom; "that the inclinations 
 of Englishmen and the laws of the land will never 
 quadrate with a commonwealth." 
 
 Equally rapid, impetuous, and eccentric in his 
 meteoric course with the subject of the preceding 
 memoir, was that eminent whig lawyer, who more than 
 any other profited by the accession of the House 
 of Hanover, was Mr. Nicolas Lechmere, the descendant 
 1 Vernon's Letters.
 
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 447 
 
 of an ancient family, which came originally from the 
 Low Countries and served under William the Con- 
 queror. The grandson of a baron of the exchequer, he 
 selected the same profession and signalized the early 
 part of his career by a romantic adventure. 
 
 Having pleaded before the Lords, on the return to 
 a Habeas Corpus contrary to a resolution of the House 
 of Commons, he was ordered, in requital of his manly 
 daring, into the custody of the serjeant, and evaded 
 the attempts of the messengers to seize him with 
 clever hardihood. The baffled serjeant, failing to pro- 
 duce his prisoner, made a special report to the angry 
 Commons, that " he had like to have taken Mr. Lech- 
 mere, but that the young gentleman got out of his 
 chambers in the Temple, two pair of stairs high, at the 
 back window by the help of his sheets and a rope." 
 The prorogation of parliament relieved the fugitive 
 lawyer from further danger. At the Revolution he 
 was made serjeant with eleven others, and gave rings, 
 the mottoes on which conveyed a graceful compliment 
 to King William, " Veniendo restituit rem." 
 
 Returned to parliament for Appleby in the follow- 
 ing reign (1708), he was impetuous enough to speak 
 the instant he had taken the oaths, upon which a 
 country gentleman interrupted his maiden speech and 
 facetiously objected to his right to be heard as he was 
 not a "sitting member" 111 (he had never sat down since 
 he entered the House and could not have qualified). 
 Much as the race of ready talkers has increased, this 
 alacrity of address exceeds any modern instance. Mr. 
 Hunt spoke three times the first night of taking his 
 seat; the Earl Cowper did the same. Mr. Praed and 
 other lawyers are reported to have been equally quick 
 m Nash's History of Worcestershire.
 
 448 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 of tongue, but they one and all took a longer breathing 
 time. In most of the State Trials, so frequent at that 
 day, Mr. Lechmere displayed similar prompt and 
 vigorous ardour. 
 
 In Sacheverell's impeachment, Winston's prosecu- 
 tion, and the trial of the printers, he was instant in 
 bringing legal acumen to the aid of whig principles 
 and practice. He refused all fees for the defence of 
 that eccentric and heretical preacher, wrote a portion 
 of the clever whig pamphlet " The Crisis," and when 
 Secretary St. John, in humble imitation of the Stuart 
 tyranny, caused fourteen booksellers to be taken up at 
 once, and committed to the custody of state messen- 
 gers, for publishing political pamphlets and ballads, 
 he applied to the Queen's Bench for a Habeas Corpus 
 with indignant vehemence, declaring that, if the duties 
 of a secretary of state in England were discharged with 
 outstretching tyranny like this, they would be as bad 
 as those of an inquisitor of Spain ! 
 
 His zeal and ability were rewarded at the Acces- 
 sion with the post of solicitor-general. As counsel for 
 the crown and leader in the House, he moved the im- 
 peachment of Earl Derwentwater, and conducted some 
 important prosecutions for high treason. Amongst 
 these, the most deserving of notice was the trial of 
 John Matthews for printing a treasonable libel. This 
 apprentice to a printer, then only nineteen, had printed 
 a short pamphlet " Vox Populi Vox Dei," the object 
 of which was to prove, not only that every asserter of 
 hereditary right must be a Jacobite, but the extra- 
 ordinary paradox, "That every whig, who makes Vox 
 Populi his rule of government, and every asserter of 
 limited monarchy, must be Jacobites as well." ''The 
 Chevalier," this libel added, " only wants to be known 

 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 449 
 
 to be admired, we only want him to make us happy." 
 This Quixotic tract might have been safely left to 
 moulder in its own insignificance ; but it was un- 
 happily the temper of the times to visit sins of the 
 press with excessive rigour, though the hard case of 
 this stripling is among the few which it persecuted to 
 the death. 11 The attorney-general opened the facts, 
 which were short and clear, in a tone of moderation 
 that contrasts most favourably with the bitter and 
 vindictive spirit by which the public prosecutor was 
 animated in preceding reigns. Since the Revolution, 
 good taste and good feeling have forbidden the scurrilous 
 invectives in which the souls of Jeffries and Sawyer 
 and Williams delighted. " Gentlemen," said Mr. Lech- 
 mere, at the close of his address to the jury, " I have 
 stated to you the circumstances of the evidence, and 
 I have done it without any aggravation. I do not 
 think it wants it : if the evidence comes out, as I 
 have laid it before you, it carries its own force, and 
 you will give it its due weight. I am sorry for any 
 one that falls under such an accusation, but more 
 especially for one so young; but, gentlemen, compas* 
 sion is neither your business nor mine ; that belongs 
 to another place, as the case shall appear." 
 
 In the desperation of their defence, the counsel for 
 the prisoner w T ere compelled to move in arrest of judg- 
 ment, on the ground that the indictment, which an 
 absurd, pedantic, custom still caused to be framed in 
 Latin, was bad, in stating that he " impressit " such a 
 libel, which word did not necessarily import printing, 
 unless explained by an Anglice, for the word might 
 signify several things, besides printing, as sealing, or 
 stamping. As to the original meaning of the word, 
 
 » State Trials. 
 VOL. I. 2 G
 
 450 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 it could never be taken to express printing. The 
 Romans had no printing, and where they had not the 
 thing they could not have the appellation proper for 
 it. To this nice objection, the attorney-general made 
 a conclusive reply, that the usage of two or three 
 hundred years would give a sanction or signification 
 to any word, though applied to a fact not at that time 
 used, and that the words, " imprimatur liber " were as 
 much known to all men and bodies of literature to 
 mean, Let the book be printed, as any words in the 
 language. Not content with this smashing answer, 
 Serjeant Cheshire, his colleague, added that the word 
 " liber " might be objected to with equal propriety, 
 that it signified Bacchus, free, a book, and the bark 
 of a tree. 
 
 Mr. Hungerford took issue with the Serjeant's 
 classicality, and denied that the word liber had so 
 many different meanings. " In the early ages of the 
 world, before writing was a common accomplishment, 
 before vellum, paper, or parchment were found out, 
 people wrote on the inward bark or rind of trees, 
 which bark was called ' liber; 9 thence, when paper or 
 parchment was written upon, that was called liber too. 
 As for liber, free, it is always used in an adjective 
 sense, and a noun substantive is always expressed or 
 understood ; and as for liber signifying Bacchus, the 
 serjeant hath been at dinner, he hath eat and drank 
 plentifully ; I dined with him, and find he hath forgot 
 part of the name of Bacchus, for he is called liber 
 pater, and not liber only, that I remember." 
 
 The judges were unanimous that the word im- 
 preasit was very proper to signify printing, as used in 
 the indictment, and that there was nothing in the 
 objection. The whole discussion forms a curious
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 451 
 
 illustration of the refined and technical niceties upon 
 which counsel for prisoners were then doomed to 
 rely, and to which, from the improvement in plead- 
 ings, and the more liberal exercise of their privileges, 
 they have no longer the misery to stoop. No mercy 
 was extended to this misguided youth, who suffered 
 at Tyburn for his criminal folly, and left his blood- 
 shedding a stain upon the government, from which 
 the attorney-general and chancellor of the duchy of 
 Lancaster (Mr. Lechmere united both these lucrative 
 offices in his person) was not wholly free. 
 
 Against another singular charge, that of corrup- 
 tion, preferred by his own colleague, the attorney 
 obtained a triumphant acquittal. The pest of joint- 
 stock companies at that time overran the country, and 
 the fees upon their patents of incorporation formed 
 no inconsiderable addition to the revenues of the law 
 officers of the crown. The solicitor-general, Sir 
 William Thompson, feeling jealous at the attorneys' 
 receiving much larger sums of money than himself 
 from some of these companies, and being alone con- 
 sulted by others, in a fit of peevish folly denounced 
 his colleague to the committee that had been appointed 
 to inquire into all joint-stock companies applying for 
 charters, and charged him not only with pocketing 
 large bribes, contrary to his oath of office, but with 
 permitting public biddings for charters at his cham- 
 bers, as at an auction. Mr. Lechmere asserted his 
 entire innocence with characteristic and honourable 
 warmth. " He had the honour to be a privy coun- 
 cillor, chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, attorney- 
 general, a member of that House, and, more than all, 
 a gentleman. Such an accusation of sordid baseness 
 could not therefore but fall more heavily upon him. 
 
 202
 
 452 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 He owned himself liable to a great many human 
 frailties and imperfections, but his conscience wholly 
 acquitted him of the crimes laid to his charge. He 
 defied all the world, the worst and bitterest of his 
 enemies, to prove him guilty of corrupt or unwar- 
 rantable practices, and demanded an immediate 
 inquiry. " 
 
 The infamy of the imputation rendered an early 
 investigation essential, and a committee sat at once to 
 hear the evidence. Sir William Thompson called, as 
 his principal witnesses, the attorneys for the mines 
 and battery companies, who proved that they wanted 
 a charter of insurance, and had nine attendances 
 before the attorney-general, with an array of six 
 counsel on their side and three or four on that of 
 their opponents, and kept up the discussion at his 
 chambers from six till ten at night. Sir William 
 Chapman and some others of the petitioners waited 
 on Mr. Lechmere with his fee. He said, " What do 
 they come to me for ? Why do they not leave it 
 with my clerk ?" They said it was a matter of 
 weight, and desired to give it into his own hands. 
 The fee they gave was sixty guineas. Other witnesses 
 proved that they also gave fifty guineas: a large fee, 
 certainly, but far too little for a bribe. Mr. Lech- 
 mere's clerk said, in a cursory way, " They paid 
 handsomely on the other side." 
 
 The clerk to the privy council proved that these 
 references were sometimes ordered to be made to the 
 attorney and solicitor jointly ; there had been in the 
 proportion of five to one at least to the attorney- 
 general alone. Though the attorney-general's clerk 
 had been too eager, there did not rest even a passing 
 shadow of suspicion on his master. It was resolved 
 unanimously, that the informations of Sir William
 
 HOUSE OK COMMONS. 453 
 
 Thompson were malicious, false, scandalous, and 
 utterly groundless, and the committee adopted with 
 one voice a resolution, that "it appears the Right 
 Honourable Nicholas Lechmere has discharged his trust 
 in the matters referred to him with honour and inte- 
 grity." The report was ordered to be printed, that 
 the vindication of his character might be complete, 
 and the futile malice of his accuser become generally 
 known. 
 
 Sir William Thompson had previously suffered 
 from an adverse vote of a committee of the House of 
 Commons. Having petitioned against the validity of 
 a member's return to the parliament of 1710, that 
 tory House, bearing in mind his activity as a prose- 
 cutor of Dr. Sacheverell, voted his petition frivolous, 
 false, and vexatious, and directed that he should pay 
 all the costs to which his opponent had been put. 
 But this vote only affected the politician, and might 
 be easily imputed to party pique ; the present resolu- 
 tion impugned his character as an honourable man. 
 The branded slanderer might have been expected, one 
 would think, to solicit the Chiltern Hundreds, and to 
 have hid his disgraced head in seclusion ; but these 
 are the more delicate and refined notions of our com- 
 paratively scrupulous age. 
 
 Sir William Thompson was dismissed, indeed, 
 from his office for his petulant extravagance, but lifted 
 up his voice again among the loudest in condemnation 
 of some libels, more innocent than his own, became 
 recorder of London, and at last a baron of the exche- 
 quer, where, we may charitably hope, that he pursued 
 with more success the study of temper and of truth. 
 
 Such an indecent accusation made by one law 
 officer of the crown against another was at the time 
 without precedent, and for the honour of the profes-
 
 454 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 sion happily remains without imitation. Through 
 the political as in the legal horizon, the course of the 
 attorney-general may be traced amid those elements 
 in which his nature, like that of the stormy petrel, 
 seemed to take delight. His available services to the 
 whig party were impaired, and in some degree neutral- 
 ized, by a violent, proud, and impracticable temper, 
 which rendered the impromptu orator an unsafe and 
 capricious partizan. 
 
 To all whig measures of severity, for pressing 
 bills of attainder against the exiled ministers of Queen 
 Anne, and enforcing the laws against papists, he gave 
 his eager assent. But, independent as dauntless, he 
 refused, though in office, to support the Septennial 
 Act. " Lechmere," writes a friend to Horace Walpole, 
 " who always damns everything that does not come 
 originally from himself, will battle it against the court 
 to the last," and the prophecy was fulfilled. The 
 douceur of the Duchy of Lancaster, a valuable sine- 
 cure, in the following year, could not wholly subdue 
 his intractable spirit. 
 
 Ready to go out in all weathers, and prompt in 
 debate, he was selected as the leading ministerial cham- 
 pion against Walpole, when that interested politician, 
 for his own private gain, chose to embark in a factious 
 opposition. They recriminated on each other with 
 much personal asperity, but not on equal terms, as Wal- 
 pole had more the ear of the House. Their heat in 
 discussing the South Sea scheme is naively described 
 in the private letter of a spectators " Mr. Lechmere 
 answered Walpole, but little, God wot, to the 
 matter in hand, for quitting that, he fell into invec- 
 tives against his former scheme, giving great prefer- 
 ence to this. Walpole, being irritated, rose again, and 
 
 u Brodrick'a Letter to Lord Middleton. 

 
 HOUSE OF COMMON?. 
 
 455 
 
 began by showing, by papers in his hand, how very 
 unfairly Lechmere had represented facts— then pro- 
 ceeded to show his fallacious mode of reasoning, and 
 concluded with going more particularly into the 
 scheme, which, in several material facts, he exposed 
 sufficiently. Lechmere rose up, having taken time to 
 consider whilst another had spoken, in order to reply : 
 but this was prevented by the whole committee rising 
 at once, and going into the floor; the chairman tore 
 his throat with " to order, hear your member," but 
 all to no purpose, other than to mortify Lechmere, by 
 the members crying out, " We have heard him long 
 enough." 
 
 Thus bitterly opposed in public, Walpole would 
 not scruple in private to rally his rival, upon his 
 turbulence of disposition, and drew a clever parallel 
 between him and one of his coach horses. p The 
 attorney-general, a great lover of fine cattle, overtook 
 Sir Robert coming to London in his coach and four 
 from Chelsea, and stopped to admire his team. Sir 
 Robert agreed they were fine horses, but added with a 
 significant smile, "There is one in the set that is worth 
 all the rest, if he w T ould not be restive but draw 
 in company; sometimes he is bo violent that he will 
 draw all himself, at other times he will hang back, and 
 do a great deal more harm than good! " 
 
 In reward for his powerful advocacy of the Sun- 
 derland administration, Lechmere was called up to the 
 House of Lords in 1721, by the title of Lord Lech- 
 mere, Baron Evesham, and soon distinguished himself 
 by strong speeches and as a stout protester. Though 
 still opposed to Walpole, and forced into active oppo- 
 sition on that minister regaining the ascendant, he con- 
 tinued true to his principles, and, both in writing and 
 
 p Nash's Worcestershire.
 
 456 HISTORY OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 
 
 speech, withstood the grant of any act of grace to Lord 
 Bolingbroke. 
 
 A singular instance of his honest precipitancy is 
 given in Coxe's Walpole, upon finding that nobleman 
 in the royal closet, his access to which had been pro- 
 moted by Walpole himself, that he might prove the 
 futility of his enemy's accusations. While attending 
 in an adjoining apartment, Lord Lechmere came and 
 demanded admission for the signature of papers, which 
 he had brought as Chancellor of the Duchy of Corn- 
 wall. He was informed that Bolingbroke was with 
 the king, and that Walpole was also waiting. In the 
 midst of his surprise, Bolingbroke came out, and 
 Lechmere instantly rushed into the closet, and without 
 making any apology for not entering upon his own 
 business, burst into the most violent invectives 
 against Walpole, whom he reviled as not contented 
 with doing mischief in his own person, but must 
 introduce one, who was, if possible, worse than 
 himself to be his assistant. The king, delighted with 
 his mistake, calmly asked him if he would under- 
 take the office of prime minister. Lechmere made no 
 reply, but continued pouring forth his invectives, and 
 finally departed without having offered any of the 
 papers to sign. Walpole found the king so highly 
 diverted and occupied with this incident, that it was 
 some time before he had an opportunity of inquiring 
 the subject of Bolingbroke's conversation. The king 
 slightly answered Bagatelles, bagatelles. 
 
 This impetuous and precipitate but honest partizan 
 died suddenly when seated at table, from a fit of 
 apoplexy, in June 1727, and, as he left no family, 
 the title became extinct. 
 
 END OF VOL I.
 
 13, Great Marlboroxujh Street, June, 1844. 
 
 MR. COLBURN'S NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 DEDICATED BY PERMISSION TO HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN 
 
 DOWAGER. 
 
 Now ready, in 2 vols, small 8vo , 21s. bound, 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 A BABYLONIAN PRINCESS, 
 
 MARIA THERESA ASMAR, 
 
 DAUGHTER OF EMIR ABDALLAH ASMAR, 
 Written by Herself. And Translated into English. 
 
 " This work forms a complete novelty in literature. The authoress, Maria Theresa 
 Asmar, is the daughter of the late Emir Abdallah Asmar, the head of one of the noblest and 
 most wealthy families of Bagdad, and a Chaldean Christian, whose stern and heroic adhe- 
 rence to his faith subjected him to unceasing exactions, the most cruel tortures, and finally 
 i brought him to an untimely death. His daughter, Maria Theresa, the only one of his nu- 
 imerous family who has escaped the sword of the oppressor, and the ravages of the pestilence, 
 ■was born in a tent pitched on the ruins of ancient Nineveh, where her father had large 
 Handed possessions, and whither her mother had fled to escape the plague which, at the time 
 hen the subject of this memoir was born, raged in the neighbouring city of Mosul. Since 
 tthe death of her father, and the downfall of his house, his ill-starred daughter has led a 
 chequered and eventful life. Animated by the same holy zeal which cost her parent his 
 xistence, she devoted all her energies to the propagation of the Christian religion, and the 
 levation of the female character in the East, a course which often placed her in peril, and 
 m one occasion compelled her to take refuge in the tents of a wild marauding band cn- 
 amped on the banks of the Euphrates, amongst whom she dwelt during six months. Her 
 larrative embraces her residence at Mosul and Bagdad, and her travels to Damascus, Pa- 
 estine, and Syria, in which country she remained for upwards of four years, during whi :li 
 eriod she filled the office of first lady of honour to the wife of the Emir Beshir. at his 
 alace of Beteddin in the Lebanon ; concluding with her arrival in Europe; her visit to 
 lome, where she remained two or three years ; her residence in Paris, and her arrival in 
 ngland. Independently of the interest which must necessarily attach to a work written 
 y so remarkable a personage — perhaps the only Ninevite who ever trod British soil, 
 nd in all probability the only Chaldean woman, at least of modern days, who ever 
 irote a book, — the memoirs will be found particularly entertaining from the many inte- 
 sting particulars interspersed concerning Oriental life and manners, both in cities and 
 nongst the wild and lawless desert tribes. Her Majesty the Queen Dowager has gracious]; 
 emitted the Memoirs to be dedicated to her Majesty.
 
 MR. COLBURN'S NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 DEDICATED BY PERMISSION TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCE ALBERT. 
 
 Preparing for Publication, in 8vo, to range with the Wellington Despatches, 
 
 THE DESPATCHES AND LETTERS 
 
 OF 
 
 ADMIRAL LORD VISCOUNT NELSON. 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 SIR HARRIS NICOLAS, G.C.M.G. 
 
 Although numerous Lives of the Great Naval Hero have been written, no 
 attempt has yet been made to collect his Despatches and Letters, and thus 
 to render him, in a great degree, his own Biographer. The value of such docu- 
 ments, and the powerful manner in which they enhance a Hero's fame, are shown 
 by the publication of the Despatches of the Duke of Wellington, to which this 
 Work will be a fitting, if not a necessary, companion. 
 
 Important as are the illustrations of Naval History, which this Collection will 
 afford, during the most glorious period in its annals, the chief interest, for the 
 public in general, will consist in the lights which it will throw on the private cha- 
 racter of Nelson, without the glitter of biographical encomium, or the mistaken 
 zeal of biographical suppressions. His ardent patriotism, his professional devo- 
 tion, his generous sympathy with the good or ill fortune of his brother officers, 
 his unremitting efforts to promote their wishes, and his complete identification 
 with their feelings, are so strongly depicted in his Letters, that admiration of 
 the Hero is almost lost in affection for the Man. As Nelson thought and 
 felt, he spoke and wrote : hence the few weaknesses of his noble mind are as 
 apparent as its powers; and this singleness of purpose, and disregard of mere 
 effect, impart to his Correspondence a sincerity and freshness, as delightful as 
 they are rare. To the historical value of the " Despatches of the Duke of 
 Wellington," this Collection will consequently unite the general attractions of 
 the celebrated " Letters of Lord Collingwood." — It is intended to insert all 
 Letters of Lord Nelson's of any interest, and no effort will be left untried to obtain 
 such Despatches and Letters as have not yet been printed. For assistance in this 
 essential object, the Editor confidently appeals to individuals who may possess 
 originals or copies of Nelson's Letters, his Public Orders, and Professional Me- 
 moranda. He earnestly invites them to favour him with the loan of such 
 papers, or to send him correct transcripts of them ; and the contributions will 
 be thankfully acknowledged in the printed Avork. He begs leave to address this I 
 request more particularly to distinguished living Officers, the friends and com- 
 panions in arms of Nelson, as well as to the families of those who are no more, 
 believing that no one who loves or reveres his memory will refuse his co-operation. 
 The possessor of these Documents must feel, with the Editor, that though the 
 Nation has lately rendered tardy justice to the Hero's services by erecting a Statue 
 to bis Honour, yet that Nelson's most lasting and appropriate Monument will be 
 a complete collection of his own Letters and Despatches. The extent of the Worl; 
 cannot now be precisely stated, but it is not likely that it will exceed three volumes. 
 Communications are requested to be addressed to the Editor, to the care of the 
 Publisher, Mu. Colburn, 13, Great Marlborough Street.
 
 MR. COLBURN's NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 Early in June will be published, in 2 vols., small 8vo., with Portraits, price 21s. bound, 
 
 MY ADVENTURES. 
 
 BY 
 
 COLONEL MONTGOMERY MAXWELL, K.IL, 
 
 COMMANDING THE 3GTH BEGIMENT. 
 
 These " Adventures" will comprise the facts and experiences of more than twenty years of 
 a life spent amidst the most stirring scenes, and in immediate connexion M'ith the most im- 
 portant and interesting events that have agitated Europe during the most remarkable period 
 of modern history — scenes and events that have changed the destinies of every civilised 
 country in the t world, and which are daily working out new changes, both in the political 
 and the social condition of mankind. But these "Adventures" (as tie phrase is intended 
 to imply) axe nevertheless strictly personal : it is, therefore, hoped and believed that, inde- 
 pendently of the instruction, they will offer matter for the entertainment of every class of 
 reader, however idly or however busily disposed. They will include the minute details of 
 the writer's many personal interviews with several of the most distinguished crowned 
 heads — male and female — of Europe ; — among others, the Emperor Napoleon, the Empress 
 Marie Louise, the King of Spain, his Holiness the Pope, Queen Caroline of England, King 
 Joaehirn of Naples and his Queen, the King and Queen of Sardinia, the King and Queen of 
 Etruria, the Emperor of Austria, the Archduke Charles, the King of Prussia, &c, &c. 
 
 The following are among the various countries (besides England), the manners and cus- 
 toms of which are illustrated in the course of these "Adventures:" — namely, Italy, Sicily, 
 Spain, Erance, Germany, Belgium, Holland, the "West Indies, North America, &c, in 
 each of which the author resided not for a few days, or weeks, but for years, and under 
 circumstances which necessarily imparted to him the most intimate knowledge of their 
 people, their manners, and their social and political institutions. 
 
 Further — the writer's rank and position as a British officer, and his family connexions 
 with several of the most distinguished members of the English aristocracy, afforded him 
 the advantages of that intercourse with the higher classes of the English people, both 
 abroad and at home, which no other circumstances ^can give, and which arc indispensable to 
 a just appreciation and illustration of those habits and manners which are, after all, the 
 most interesting to an English reader and observer, and.which, it is to be expressly under- 
 stood, will claim a leading and important share in these "Adventures." 
 
 It should be added that these " Adventures" are selected ar.d transcribed from more than 
 twenty MS. volumes of a journal kept by the author at the places and periods respectively 
 referred to, and that every thing which is related is strictly, and it may be almost said, 
 literally true. 
 
 Those persons who may be desirous of obtaining the work on the day of publication, are 
 requested to forward their orders to their respective booksellers.
 
 MR. COLBUIIN'S NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 Now ready, in one handsome volume, 8vo, with Portraits, 15s. bd., 
 
 THE MILITARY ANNUAL 
 
 FOR 1844. 
 
 By the Author of" The Artillerist's Manual," &c. 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 " This work is a storehouse of treasure connected with the achievements of our military 
 forces. It abounds in valuable information relative to all branches of the service, to the 
 members of which we heartily recommend it. It holds out every prospect of becoming 
 permanently beneficial, instructive, and amusing to the British army." — United Service 
 Gazelle. 
 
 " A capital Military Library Book of reference, consisting of a careful selection of all 
 that has appeared or occurred relating to the Army during the past year: besides which we 
 have a Military Almanack, an Essay on Arms and Armies, Biography of Warriors of Olden 
 Times, &c." — Naval and Military Gazette. 
 
 " We heartily congratulate our military readers on the establishment of a work devoted 
 to their interests, and conducted with so much of tact, research, and ability. It is embel- 
 lished with splendid portraits of Lord Hill and the Duke of Wellington — fit heroes to grace 
 such a picture gallery ; and the various curious tables and statistical details, with the 
 authentic accounts of all matters connected with the armies of Great Britain, are highly in- 
 teresting and valuable, not only to the professional but the non-professional reader." — 
 Dublin Evening Packet. 
 
 " We shall be much surprised if this Annual be not, at once, recognised by the army as 
 a standard military work, for it contains a mass of intelligence in tlwf highest degree valu- 
 aMe and important to that branch of the service. We do not mean, by this, that being 
 read it may be thrown aside, but that it Mill be kept as a book of reference for official 
 facts, memoirs, &c." — John Bull. 
 
 " The present work contains a carefully-arranged detailed account of all the events that 
 have happened during the past year in reference to the British army. The victories in 
 China and India, with all the Despatches and ' Circulars' connected with these wars, as well 
 as the votes of thanks to the army in both houses of parliament, are recorded with an 
 accuracy of statistical detail wliich to the military man must render the work not merely 
 valuable, but almost indispensable as a work of reference. There is also contained in the 
 vi lume accounts of the presentation of colours to regiments during the year, of the ' general 
 orders' that have been issued from the war-office ; of the various courts martial that have 
 been held ; of the military colleges, academies, and institutions at present hi existence ; oi 
 the scientific operations and inventions that have occurred during the year ; an historical 
 memoir of the different regiments, together with other articles of a miscellaneous character, 
 such as military anecdotes and biographical sketches of the warriors in the olden time. 
 These, all comprised within the small compass of one volume, tend to render the work oi 
 such a nature as that no military man in the service shoidd be without it. There is also an 
 essay upon 'Arms and Armies,' giving a complete history of war from its first commence- 
 ment. The work, we repeat, is one which, from the great variety of military details re- 
 corded in it.no regiment in the service should bo without." — Sunday Times.
 
 MR. COLUUKN'S NKW PUBLICATION'S. 
 
 Now Ready, at all the Libraries, in 3 vols., post 8vo., 
 
 A SECOND EDITION OF " CONING SB Y ; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE NEW GENERATION.'-' 
 
 BY B. DISRAELI, ESQ., M.P. 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 Erom " The Times." 
 
 " The announcement of a new novel, by the able author of ' Vivian Grey,' would be suffi- 
 cient to awaken the eager expectations of those who love lively sketches of society and 
 brilliant descriptions of 'feast and ball,' but ' Coningsby' will attract additional and graver 
 interest from the prevalent idea that he expounds the opinions of ' Young England.' The 
 | story will be found replete with interest." 
 
 Erom "The Morning Chronicle." 
 
 " We may augur for this book a very extensive popularity. It is quite as curious as it is 
 clever." 
 
 Erom " The Morning Post." 
 
 " This book is full of life, spirit, and accurate portraiture. Asa painter of fashionable 
 life we know no one more au fait than M. Disraeli. Never did satire dissect with a more 
 polished knife — never were the ulcers of political and fashionable life laid bare with a more 
 scientific and nervous hand. This work is too cutting, too true, to be passed over un- 
 heeded. It must be read by all. The romantic interest of the story is likewise maintained 
 with consummate skill." 
 
 Erom " The Morning Herald." 
 
 "This is in every respect a very fine and remarkable novel. It is a very successful at- 
 tempt to intertwine the political feelings of the day with the interest and plot of a novel." 
 
 From " The Literary Gazette." 
 
 "This work is destined for extensive popularity. It is a production of much talent — 
 bitterly personal, satirical, political, and is besides the manifesto of ' Young England.' " 
 
 From " The Court Journal." 
 
 "In whatever point of view we examine this work it commands unmixed admiration. It 
 is admirable as a novel of real life — as a picture of English society— as an exposition of 
 political parties and principles — as a gallery of living portraits. The recommendation of 
 such a novel to our readers woulel be a work of supererogation. It is already in their hands, 
 or on its way to them. Every boely wdl read it." 
 
 Erom "The League." 
 
 " A remarkable book, written by a remarkable man, published at a time when l»oth the 
 subject and the author are sure to command general attention. * Coningsby' is like 
 ' Vivian Grey,' a political novel, the actors in which are living characters with fictitious 
 names, and the plot not altogether fabulous." 
 
 From " The Naval and Military Gazette." 
 
 " ' Coningsby' is the novel of the season. It is too late for us to say that it will excite ex- 
 traordinary interest and curiosity; it has already done so throughout the length and breadth 
 of the land — if not by its own immediate and direct dissemination, at least by the unprece- 
 dently extended and repeated notices of it that have occupicel the morning papers day afar 
 day."
 
 MR. COLBURN'S NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 Now iu course of Publication, in Four Quarterly Parts, price 10s. Gd. each, forming a single 
 Volume of upwards of 1600 pages, beautifully printed in double Columns, 
 
 HI S TO It f 
 
 THE LANDED GENTRY: 
 
 £t (toealotjtcal an& JgeraUrfc Htcttoitarg 
 
 OF 
 
 THE WHOLE OF THE LANDED GENTRY, OR UNTITLED 
 ARISTOCRACY OF ENGLAND, SCOTLAND & IRELAND. 
 
 .BY JOHN BURKE, ESQ., 
 
 Author of the " Peerage and Baronetage." 
 
 AND 
 
 JOHN BERNARD BURKE, ESQ., 
 
 OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, BARRISTER- AT-LAW. 
 
 This important work has been undertaken as a companion to Mr. Burke's 
 popular " Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the United Kingdom," 
 and upon a similar plan, in order that the two publications may embrace the 
 whole body of the British Peerage, Baronetage, and Gentry, and may furnish 
 such a mass of authentic information, in regard to all the principal families in the 
 kingdom, as has never before been brought together. 
 
 It relates to the Untitled Families of Rank, as the " Peerage and Baronetage" 
 does to the Titled, and forms, in fact, a Peerage of the Untitled Aristocracy. It 
 embraces the whole of the Landed Interest. 
 
 The Landed Gentry of England are so closely connected with the stirring records 
 of its eventful history, that some acquaintance with them is a matter of necessity 
 with the historical student, the speculator in politics, and the curious in topo- 
 graphical and antiquarial lore ; and even the very spirit of ordinary curiosity 
 will prompt to a desire to trace the origin and progress of those families whose 
 influence pervades the towns and villages of our land. This work, abounding in 
 interesting anecdote, and displaying deep research, must rank among the first 
 class of those publications which elucidate or connect themselves with, the annals 
 of our country. It is, therefore, a most necessary companion to the " Peerage and 
 Baronetage," and indispensable to the library of every gentleman. 
 
 " A work which contains curious information, nowhere else to be found, and to which 
 even professional genealogists may refer with advantage." — Quarterly Review. 
 
 N.B. — Those who desire to obtain this Work immediately on its publication, 
 are requested to send their orders, without delay, to their respective booksellers. 
 
 * # * It [is particularly requested that all Communications intended for this work may be sent, 
 without delay, to J. Burke, Esq., 89, Sloane Street, in order to ensure their appearance in 
 proper alphabetical order.
 
 MR. COLBl'RN S NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 DEDICATED, BY PERMISSION, TO IIER MAJESTY. 
 Now Ready, Yols. I. to Yll., Embellished with Portraits, price 10s. 6<L each, bound, 
 
 LIVES OF THE QUEEKfl OF ENGLAND. 
 
 FROM THE NORMAN CONQUEST, 
 TYTTH ANECDOTES OF THEIR COURTS ; 
 
 Now first published from Official Records and other Authentic Documents, private as 
 
 well as public. 
 
 BY AGNES STRICKLAND. 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 " These volumes have the fascination of a romance united to the integrity of his: 
 Times. 
 
 "A most valuable and entertaining work." — Chronicle. 
 
 "This interesting and well- written work, in which the severe truth of history takes 
 almost the wildness of romance, will constitute a valuable addition to our biographical 
 literature." — Mom em Herald. 
 
 " A valuable contribution to historical knowledge. It contains a mass of every kind of 
 historical, antiquarian, and gossiping matter of ir.: . -' — .i'.henccum. 
 
 NEW EDITION. WITH IMPORTANT ADDITIONS, 
 
 Uniform with Miss Stkic3llaxd*s " Lives of the Queens of England," in Tw 
 with Portrait, &c, 21s. bound, 
 
 LETTERS 
 
 MARY, QUE EX OF SCO IS. 
 
 Illustrative of her Personal History, now first published from the Orij 
 Edited, with~an Historical Introduction a:. 
 
 BY AGNES STRICKLAND. 
 
 opinions of the rr 
 
 '• The best collection of authentic memorials relative to the Queen of Scots that has erar 
 appeared." — Chronicle. 
 
 " No public or private library can be considered complete without tliis valuable work."— 
 Morning P 
 
 '■ Undoubtedly the most valuable, and by far the moSl 
 the life and character of Marv Stuart ever given to the world.'" — Edingburgh Even- 
 
 •• A work deeply interesting, in every personal respect, and of high historical v.. 
 Literary Gazette.
 
 MIL COLBURN'S NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 COMPLETE HISTORY OF THE CHINESE WAR, &c. 
 
 Now ready in Two Volumes, 8vo, with Maps and Plates, 32s. bound. 
 
 NARRATIVE OF THE 
 
 VOYAGES & SERVICES OF THE NEMESIS, 
 
 From 1840 to 1843. 
 
 And of the combined NAVAL AND MILITARY OPERATIONS IN CHINA ; 
 
 Comprising a complete Account of the Colony of Hong-Kong, and Remarks on the 
 Character and Habits of the Chinese, &c. 
 
 From Notes of Commander W. H. HALL, R.N., with Personal Observations, by "W. D. 
 BERNARD, Esq., A.M. Oxou. 
 
 " This is probably the most important publication that has appeared respecting onr 
 late contest with China. In all that relates to the Nemesis especially, and to the naval 
 operations of the Expedition, it is replete with the most lively and stirring interest. 
 The Author grasps a subject which many others have only been able to play with." — 
 Nuval and Military Gazette. 
 
 " This book is, in effect, a complete history of the operations and results of the 
 Chinese war. It is written with greater care than any similar work we have seen. 
 Sketches of men engaged in the actions described are at best but materials of history. 
 Mr. Bernard has had the advantage of professional assistance, and of a non-professional 
 habit of observation. He has been a visiter, without being an actor, at the theatre of 
 war ; and he has used the advantages with excellent effect. He has written a book of 
 evidently good authority, which clears off a quantity of misrepresentation, and gives 
 an altogether calmer and steadier view of the origin, progress, and results of our 
 warlike dealings with the false and flowery people." — Examiner. 
 
 " Our limits will not permit us to say more than to recommend this work to all such 
 of onr readers as may wish to understand the progress of this Chinese war, and to 
 possess the clearest and fullest narrative of those frightful incidents which accompanied 
 nearly all our victories. The writer also made a long excursion into the interior of the 
 Chinese provinces, and describes the country well. His notices of the imperial court 
 are also at once original and picturesque." — Messenger. 
 
 " This is an extremely interesting and valuable narrative. All details which might 
 prove tedious are omitted. There are no lengthened disquisitions, no elaborate or 
 minute pictures, but a constantly varying recital which, with all the satisfactoriness of 
 truth, lias the charm of fiction. If we except the old voyages of discover}', which carry 
 the mind over an unknown and mysterious ocean, where new regions are every moment 
 expected to develope their features before us, we scarcely remember to have read any 
 maritime relation with so much pleasure as this. The Nemesis, it is well known, acted 
 a distinguished part in the war in China, but the details are now for the first time 
 accessible. They will be read with a pleasure proportioned to their importance, and 
 the simplicity and ability with which they are given. What we have said will, we trust, 
 suffice to recommend to our readers the Voyage of the Nemesis, which we regard as, in 
 every respect, one of the best works of the class to which it belongs." — Sunday Time*. 
 
 HENRY COLBURN, PUBLISHER, 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 
 
 Agents : for Scotland, Bell and Bradfutc, Edinburgh ; for Ireland, John dimming, 
 Dublin. Orders received bv all liooksellcrs.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
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