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now peevish from age and gout, seems to have returned a very churlish answer, taking the opportunity to read Francis a sharp lecture on his arrogancy and overweening. These bad qualities the young man earnestly disclaimed, but he submissively promised to profit by such good advice, and so wishing unto his Lordship all honour, and to himself continuance of his Lordship's good opinion, with mind and means to deserve it,' he humbly

took his leave.";

Francis Bacon made, however, his own steady upward way; and, in spite of the coldness or jealousy of the Cecils, father and son, was not only highly popular among his own friends and companions, from his brilliant parts and the charm of his manners, but from his eloquence and professional ability. The reputation his attainments had gained for him, made Elizabeth voluntarily appoint him her "Counsel Extraordinary." This, though an almost barren honour, might lead to something more substantial; and this, at least, the first step to court favour, was obtained without what Lord Campbell himself preferred in better times, calls "mean solicitation."

"The queen frequently admitted him to her presence, and conversed with him not only about matters of law, but points of general learning and affairs of state; finding much satisfaction from the information and illustrations he communicated to her. Nevertheless, he could not remove from her mind the impression made upon her by the representation of his cousin, Sir Robert Cecil, that he was a speculative man, indulging himself in philosophical reveries; and calculated more to perplex than to promote public business.'

"Bacon's higher aspirations prevented him from taking cordially to the profession of the law, and he still longed for leisure to be devoted to literature and science. With this view he continued to solicit for some place which would enable him to retire from the bar. A few

extracts from his letters will best show the state of his feelings at this period of his life.

*

I wax now somewhat ancient: one-and-thirty years is a great deal of sand in the hour-glass. My health, I thank God, I find confirmed, and I do not fear that action shall impair it; because I account my ordinary course of study and meditation to be more painful than most parts of action are. Again, the meanness of my estate doth somewhat move me; for though I cannot accuse myself that I am either prodigal or slothful, yet my health is not to spend nor my course to get. Lastly, I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends; for I have taken all knowledge to be my province, and-if I could purge it of two sorts of rovers, whereof the one with frivolous disputations, confutations, and verbosities, the other with blind experiments and auricular traditions and impostures, hath committed so many spoils-I hope should bring in industrious observations, grounded conclusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries.'"

There was no remarkable sign of debasement in this solicitation to an obdurate and peevish old uncle, who wielded so much of the power of the State. It, however, produced nothing solid; and it may be surmised that with his peculiar tastes and ambitions, Bacon was not calculated to increase his practice at the bar, whatever may have been his legal knowledge and his eloquence. Nor did his appearance in Parliament help his practice, as it has done that of many eminent lawyers, who, nevertheless, pass as very fair characters. Bacon, before obtaining office, was in speech a law reformer, as in mind he must always have But Lord Campbell somewhat rashly concludes that he was "so intoxicated with the success of his first liberal oratorical attempt," that

been.

this alone animated him to the "flaming oration against the court, or, what is the same thing, against a subsidy, which exposed him to a Star Chamber prosecution, and being sent to the Tower Lord Campbell allows no higher motive than vanity to the patriotic harangue which in those times entailed such serious consequences. Surely it would be but candid to give Bacon some small credit at this early period, for boldness, and a degree of honesty of purpose. It required some courage in a very poor lawyer, with little business, whose sole hope was either court favour. or public employment, when the subsidy was proposed, to propound

"Three questions, which he desired might be answered: the first, impossibility or difficulty; the second, danger and discontentment; and, thirdly, a better manner of supply. For impossibility, the poor men's rent is such as they are not able to yield it. The gentlemen must sell their plate, and farmers their brass pots, ere this will be paid; and as for us, we are here to search the wounds of the realm, and not to skin them over. We shall breed discontentment in paying these subsidies, and endanger, her Majesty's safety, which must consist more in the love of the people than in their wealth. This being granted, other princes hereafter will look for the like, so that we shall put an evil precedent on ourselves and our posterity. : The courtiers were thrown into a state The Queen, in the present of horror and amazement. temper of the House, and with news of the approach of the Spanish Armada, deemed it prudent to take no public notice of this outrage; but she was deeply incensed, and desired it to be intimated to the delinquent, by the LordTreasurer and the Lord Keeper, that he must never more look to her for favour or promotion. An eloquent eulogist says, he heard them with the calmness of a philosopher.

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The "eulogist" referred to is, we presume, Mr. Basil Montague, and Lord Campbell takes pains to show that Bacon was struck with "repentance and remorse," and promised to be an obedient courtier in all time coming.

The animus with which this life is written is shown in the note which Lord Campbell appends to Bacon's apologetic letters to Burghley and Puckering

"He must be supposed to have been sobbing when he thus addresses the flinty-hearted Puckering-Yet notwithstanding (to speak vainly as in grief,) it may be her Majesty has discouraged as good a heart as ever looked towards her service, and as void of self-love. And so, in more grief than I can well express, and much more than I can well dissemble, I leave your Lordship; being as ever your Lordship's entirely devoted, &c.'"

The perfect impunity with which a modern lawyer may make "a flaming patriotic oration” in the House of Commons, be lauded in all the newspapers, and returned for Westminster, is something widely different from the displeasure of the "lion-hearted" Queen, the Star Chamber, and the Tower. Lord Campbell surely assumes against Bacon more than candour entitles him to do, when he says

to the subsidy was aggravated by the opportunity which "The following year his compunction for his opposition occurred of obtaining professional honours. Egerton, the Attorney-General, was made Master of the Rolls. Some of Bacon's friends were sanguine enough to think that per saltum he ought to have been appointed to succeed him; but Sir Edward Coke, who had served as Solicitor General for two years, was promoted almost as a matter of course,-and the great struggle arose respecting the

office of Solicitor. To this Bacon had the strongest claim,
from the respect entertained for his father's memory,-
from his relationship to the Prime Minister, from his
high accomplishinents,-from his eminence at the bar,
from his success in parliament, and from the services he
had rendered as Queen's Counsel Extraordinary. He had
twy obstacles to surmount-his unlucky speech, and the
jealousy of the Cecils.
Burghley, and his
hopeful son Robert, now coming forward as Secretary of
State, pretended to support their kinsman, but in reality
were afraid that, with favourable opportunities, he would
disconcert their deep-laid scheme of making the Premier-
ship hereditary in the house of Cecil.

Francis himself considered this the crisis of his fate, and resorted to means of gaining his object which would bespurned at by a modern candidate for the office, who does not acknowledge that he expects it, or interferes in any way regarding the appointment till he receives a letter from the Lord Chancellor or the First Lord of the Treasury asking him to accept it. His application to his uncle was excusable, although the manner of it was rather abject."

This is all very well; but they must have but a slight knowledge of the pivots on which public appointments often turn, even in modern times, who will unreservedly adopt the estimate of Bacon's course of solicitation, which is given above, The treachery and dissimulation of the Cecils mast have been more than suspected by Bacon; but from whom was he to look for support if they opposed him? Frustrated in his just hopes, Bacon took the bold resolution to write to the Queen herself; and the bias, or, shall we say it, the strong prejudice of Lord Campbell is shown in the colour which he gives to this letter, which he regards not as creditable to the character of the writer, but to the character of the Queen herself, the natural assumption, as estimated by the candidate for office; for says prejudice

For from his [Bacon's] language to the Lord Treasurer and the Lord Keeper, we need not doubt that he would have addressed her in the most fulsome and slavelike strain, if he had not thought that he was likely to succeed better by pretending independence, and avowing a consciousness of his own worth."'

We humbly submit that Bacon's letters to his jealous and dissembling kinsman, and to Lord Keeper Puckering, do by no means bear out the accusations made, even in the passages selected by Lord Campbell, and as seen in the following extract:

"The anxious aspirant wrote repeatedly to Lord Keeper Puckering, remonstrating with him, and trying to soften him. If your Lordship consider my nature, my course, my friends, my opinion with her Majesty if this eclipse of her favour were past,* I hope you will think I am no unlikely piece of wood to shape you a true servant of. I understand of some business like enough to detain the Queen to-morrow, which maketh me earnestly to pray your good Lordship, as one that I have found to take my

fortune to heart, to take some time to remember her Majesty of a Solicitor. If it please your Lordship but to call to mind from whom I am descended, and by whom, next to God, her Majesty, and your own virtue, your Lordship is ascended, I know you will have a compunction of mind to do me any wrong; and, therefore, good my Lord, where your Lordship favoureth others before me, do not lay the separation of your love and favour upon myself.'

We are at a loss to find here anything so very "fulsome” and so "slave-like" in strain. Nay, The subsidy speech.

except in Bacon's case, Lord Campbell, we are
persuaded, could have found something indepen
dent and even manly in the style in which Bacon
wrote after the failure of his just hopes, whether
these had been frustrated by remembrance of the
subsidy speech, or by the undermining of Raleigh.
It is said-

"Bacon's patience had become entirely exhausted.-
le thus writes to Foulke Greville: What though the
Master of the Rolls, and my Lord of Essex, and yourself,
and others, think my case without doubt, yet, in the mean-
time, I have a hard condition to stand, so that whatever
service I do to her Majesty, it shall be thought but to be
servitium viscatum-lime twigs and fetches to place my-
self; and so I shall have envy, not thanks. This is a
course to quench all good spirits, and to corrupt every
man's nature, which will, I fear, much hurt her Majesty's
service in the end. I have been like a piece of stuff be,
spoken in the shop; and if her Majesty will not take me,
it may be the selling by parcels will be more gainful.
which, when he is nearest, flieth away and lighteth a little
For to be, as I told you, like a child following a bird,
before, and then the child after it again, and so in infini-
tum,I am weary of it, as also of wearying my good

friends.'

So bitterly did Bacon feel the ill usage he had received-for there was here much more than ordinary disappointment-that, had his circumstances allowed, it is probable that he would forever have abandoned public life, and devoted himself wholly to the pursuit of science and philo sophy.

Bacon's conduct, in relation to Essex, is the point of his history which lays him most nakedly open to attack; nor is it palliation to say, that his interests were probably rather retarded than promoted by the temerity and indiscreet zeal of his friend and patron, the Queen's petulant and spoiled young favourite. It is, however, but too much the nature of an intellect majestic as that of Lord Verulam, to regard other men as a Napo-" leon did his military machines, or an anatomist' does the animal on his dissecting table. Each are alike considered mere means to a grand end.

Bacon, shortly after being disappointed of ob
taining the place of Solicitor-General, published
his ever-memorable Essays; rose once more into
favour with the Queen; and, again in Parliament, i
introduced certain bills, which deserve more praise
than Lord Campbell has given them. They were
founded on the maxim that "property has its
duties as well as its rights."

his account of Bacon's: ourtship of Lady Hatton,
Lord Campbell's bias is strongly betrayed in »
which he describes as an attempt to "restore his
fortunes by matrimony," and "a scheme to make
the pot boil." The very worst interpretation
that a bitter enemy could give, is put upon the
whole of this abortive courtship to a rich, witty,
and high-spirited, but capricious, and imperious
widow, who preferred the elderly, but wealthy
Sir Edward Coke, to her accomplished, poor
cousin, Francis Bacon.

Bacon had, subsequently, every cause to rejoice
in his escape; and the lady had her reward. To
the failure of this match Lord Campbell imputes
the temporary arrest of this great man, as if it had
been the cause of relentless creditors pouncing
upon him, for a 'debt of three hundred pounds;

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which was discharged after he had certainly been but for a very few days "languishing in a spunging-house." No irremediable disgrace this either, except, as it appears, in the eyes of Lord Campbell.

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schemes for simple and cheap law were properly opposed
impracticable and mischievous, that he complained so
He thought that the controverted rights of property were
bitterly of being worsted by the sons of Zeruiah.'
to be decided by an English judge in Westminster Hall,
like disputes in an Eastern bazaar by the Kadi.
cannot mention the reform of the law,' said he, but the
whereas the law, as it is now constituted, serves only to
lawyers presently cry out, You design to destroy property,
maintain the lawyers, and to encourage the rich to op-
press the poor. Coke, late Solicitor for the people of
England at the trial of Charles Stuart, when I sent him,
more causes in a week than all Westminster Hall in a
year. The English people will take Ireland for a prece-
dent; and when they see at how easy and cheap à rate
property is there preserved, they will never permit them-
selves to be so cheated and abused as now they are.'"

Any one, we are persuaded, who dispassionately reads Lord Campbell's account of the courtship, and the episode of the spunging-house, will agree with us, that his usual impartiality, not to say candour and indulgence, have entirely deserted him while writing the Life of Bacon. The indig-with full powers as Chief Justice, to Ireland, determined nation which he may have conceived while contemplating Bacon's coldness or indifference to Essex, who, with all his failings, had been to him a generous and warm friend, pervades the whole tone and colouring of the composition. The prejudice continually breaks out; and the biographer strains so hard against his unfortunate subject, as to defeat his own purpose. But no memoir of Bacon could be written that would not be found full of interest and instruction; and cer

tainly the elaborate memoir of Lord Campbell possesses both qualities in a high degree, though liable to those strong objections, which make a Life of this illustrious man still as much a desideratum as before Lord Campbell commenced the biography-in which he often stands forth

more like a counsel fee'd to make out a case against Bacon's memory, than a calm, candid, and philosophical judge of a great man's whole scope of character and life. Yet, much as we have said, very much may be learned, even from this prejudiced account of the man of whom Lord Campbell is finally constrained to say

"Thus died, in the 66th year of his age, Francis Bacon, not merely the most distinguished man who ever held the Great Seal of England, but, notwithstanding all his faults, one of the greatest ornaments and benefactors of

the human race."

The memoirs of the Chancellors of Charles I.Lord-Keeper Williams, Coventry, Finch, and Littleton-all well written, have more historical than personal interest; and, though the entire series of Lives of the Chancellors of James I, and Charles I., and the Commonwealth and Protectorate, are highly creditable to the abilities and patient investigation of the author, it is not till we reach the Life of Lord Clarendon, that the work regains the biographical interest which closes with that of Bacon. Readers may be amused by contrasting the strictures of Lord Campbell upon the "wild notions" which broke forth about law and the administration of justice in Cromwell's time, with those of Mr. Carlyle, in his "Correspondence of Oliver Cromwell," who finds much to approve, which the regular lawyer utterly denounces. "There were," Lord Campbell says

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Very wild notions then afloat respecting law reform. A party was for utterly abolishing the whole of the common and statute law of England, and substituting the Mosaic law in its place. A very strong prejudice existed against lawyers, who were quaintly denounced as a pursemilking generation,' and were accused of always bleeding their clients in the purse vein.' Cromwell himself was by no means above such absurd and vulgar notions, and was more inclined, on those subjects, to listen to such a fanatical buffoon as Hugh Peters, than to eminent jurists, like Whitelock or Hale. It is because his preposterous

Lord Campbell is, however, obliged to admit that there are important law reforms of the date of the Commonwealth; and he says:-

"The common-law bench was exceedingly well filled during the Commonwealth and Protectorate, and the law was well administered through them, except when his Major-Generals and his High Courts of Justice."' Cromwell was occasionally driven to supersede them by

The Major-Generals might, however, give judgments not so far amiss; and at all events they got through their business.

is the most elaborate in these volumes. It is true Next to the Life of Bacon, that of Clarendon historical biography; and though not free from an occasional shade of party feeling, is, upon the whole, as just as discriminating, until the character of Clarendon is fairly and even generously summed up, whether as a statesman, an author, or as a man. We can give but one extract from this Life, which we think peculiarly opportune to passing events:

"In the next controversy in which Clarendon was engaged, he gained great distinction with the judicious, although he was denounced by the landed interest as 'a friend of free trade.' The importation of cattle from Ireland had lately considerably increased. The landlords, headed by the Duke of Buckingham, instead of pretending to stand up as the advocates of the tenant-fariners, or that, from a fall in the price of cattle, their rents were of the labourers, or of the public, plainly spoke out, lowered to the amount of £200,000 a-year, which they could not afford.' A bill was therefore brought in abso lutely to prohibit such importation in future; and this was followed by another bill, equally to prohibit the importa(according to the notions of law then prevailing), that tion of any cured meat or provisions from Ireland, which the King might not afterwards be able to permit it by his dispensing power, was declared to be a nuisance.' These bills passed the Commons by great majorities; and when they came to the Lords, the Duke of Buckingham denot Irish estates or Irish understandings.' The chancel clared that they could not be opposed by any who had lor, however, had the courage to deliver a most admirable speech against them, pointing out the injustice of these measures to our fellow-subjects in Ireland, and the imdemand for which from Ireland must cease,-and even to policy of them with a view to English manufacturers, the English agriculture, which could not fail to prosper with the increased prosperity produced by a free interchange of commodities between the two islands. He was told, however, that the heavily taxed English could not enter into a competition in the breeding of cattle with the lightly taxed Irish, and that without the proposed protection' tenants would be bankrupt, labourers must come upon the parish, and the kingdom must be ruined. He was shamefully beaten in all the divisions on the bill; and all that he could effect was, in the Committee, to carry an amendment, by 63 to 47, to strike out the word

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nuisance,' and to insert detriment and mischief' in its stead. The Chancellor's amendment set the Commons in a fare, and many sarcasms were uttered upon the presumption of a lawyer, who had hardly inherited an are from his father, either in Ireland or England, preteading to speak upon such a subject. Several conferences took place between the two Houses, the King for some time, at the request of the Duke of Ormond, supporting the Chancellor; but the squires declared that they had not yet completed the supplies, and that they would stop them at all hazards if they were to be thus dictated to by wild theorists, who had no practical knowledge of the breeding of cattle, or of the true interests of the country."

Finally, the importation of Irish provisions was by Parliament declared "a nuisance to all his Majesty's English subjects;" and, by the act of exclusion "a more permanent injury," continues Lord Campbell, "was done to the country than by the Plague or the Fire of London," which happened about the same period.

In hastening to the Second Series, we have left ourselves no space to notice the Chancellorship of Bridgeman, nor yet the far more interesting life of Shaftesbury, whether we regard the man or the official personage, and the intrigues and complicated affairs in which he was engaged; nor yet those of his successors, Nottingham and Guildford. The courtship of the latter may, however, be detached as a good specimen of Lord Campbell's familiar style, and a picture of the manners of the age of FRANCIS NORTH.

Lord Guildford, while a young lawyer, was rapacious for money, that he might squander it profusely.

"I must not pass over his loves, although they were not very romantic nor chivalrous. He was desirous of being married-among other reasons,-because he was tired of dining in the Hall and eating a costelet and salad at Chastelins in the evening with a friend,'-and he wished to enjoy the pleasures of domestic life. One would have thought that the younger son of a Peer-of great reputation at the bar,-Solicitor-General at thirtyone, and rising to the highest offices in the law,-might

have had no difficulty in matching to his mind, but he net with various rebuffs and disappointments. Above all, he required wealth, which it seems was not then easily to be obtained without the display of a great rentrell. He first addressed the daughter of an old usurer in Gray's Inn, who speedily put an end to the suit by asking him what estate his father intended to settle upon him for present maintenance, jointure, and provision for children?' He could not satisfy this requisition by an Abstract' of his profitable rood of ground in Westminster Hall.' He then paid court to a coquettish young widow; but after showing him some favour, she jilted him for a jolly knight of good estate. The next proposition was made to him by a city alderman, the father of many daughters, who, it was given out, were to have each a portion of £6000. North dined with the alderman, and liked one of them very much; but coming to treat, the fortune shrunk to £5000. He immediately took his leave. The alderman ran after him, and offered him to boot £500 on the birth of the first child, but he would not bate a farthing of the £6000.”

"At last his mother found him a match to his mind in the Lady Frances Pope, one of the three daughters and co-heirs of the Earl of Down, who lived at Wroxton, in Oxfordshire, with fortunes of £14,000 a-piece. We are surprised to find that, with all his circuit and Westminster Hall earnings, he was obliged to borrow £600, from a friend before he could compass £6000, to be settled upon ber. He then ventured down with grand equipage and attendance, and, in less than a fortnight, obtained the young lady's consent, and the writings being sealed, the

lovers were happily married. The feasting and jollities in the country lasted three weeks, and Mr. Solicitor, heartily tired of them, was very impatient to get back to his briefs. However, he seems always to have treated his wife, while she lived, with all due tenderness. He took a house in Chancery Lane, near Serjeant's Inn, and acquired huge glory by constructing a drain for the use of the neighbourhood, a refinement never before heard of in that quarter. This was the happiest period of his life." The character of North is this summed up:"North's 'parts,' I think, are greatly overrated. He was sharp and shrewd, but of no imagination, of no depth, of no grasp of intellect,-any more than generosity of sentiment. Cunning, industry, and opportunity may make such a man at any time."

In addition, "Guildford had as much law as he could contain;" so much, we apprehend, that, within the narrow limits of his intellect, there was room for nothing else; no uncommon case.

The life of the infamous Jeffreys is written with gusto. Lord Campbell inquires whether this ruffianly and brutal person has not been sufficiently abused, and concludes that it is impossible to exaggerate his misdeeds, or, in short, to paint him in colours too black. Besides his thorough moral depravity, Jeffreys was an incarnation of all the peculiar faults and worst vices of his profession. He was cunning, over-reaching, mean, insolent, and of brazen impudence, "most ignorant, and most daring." Yet, from the many strong points in Jeffreys' character and history, and the variety of anecdote with which the memoir is illustrated, the narrative is made highly entertaining and interesting. It keeps the reader in a lively state of excitement, and communicates that powerful sensation of indignation, which, if not edifying, is highly stimulating.

All that Lord Campbell is able to say for Jeffreys is, "that when quite sober he was particularly good as a Nisi Prius Judge." Habitual and excessive drunkenness was one of Jeffreys' least vices. Lord Campbell also finds something redeeming in what he is pleased to term Jeffrey's "agreeable manners," his "roistering," namely, his drinking songs, and his love of "bantering" companions and low mimics; one of whom the Lord Chancellor kept in his house to ape and ridicule the Judges for the entertainment of his guests. Such were the social amenities of the man whose name has become proverbial for that atrocity and hardened cruelty which would have enabled him, according to his biographer, to have "sent his own mother to the scaffold," with as much sang froid as any other of his victims.

It is now that the series just published properly commences, and though it purports to start with the Revolution of 1688, the life of Lord Commissioner Maynard by retrospection comprehends the whole period of the civil wars, the Commonwealth, and the Protectorate, as he was born in 1602, and sat in the first parliament of Charles I., in 1625, and when there were no longer any Parliaments comforted himself by counting larger circuit fees. From the first he was of the country party, and a zealous Presbyterian, having subscribed the solemn League and Covenant. He was also a member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, but we do not find that he ever courted persecution.

and he was employed. I asked them, Can a godly man, because he is godly, make a watch or a pair of boots?'

After the period of the Commonwealth we have this amusing account of a consultation which he, as an English commissioner, along with Whitelock, held, In old age, he became bolder and more indewith the commissioners from Scotland, appointed pendent in politics. It is amusing to find the "to treat of the best mode of establishing Presbyte- question of "Church accomodation" in those days rianism over the whole Island of Great Britain." exactly on the ground that it stood but the other "Master Maynard and Master Whitelocke ye ken vary year with ourselves. Lord Campbell remarks:→→→ weele that Lieutenant-General Cromwell is no freend of "Beyond the precincts of the law, Maynard's vioors, and since the advance of our army into England hesion was very contracted. Along with wiser men, hath used all underhand and cunning means to take off who lived in the sixteenth and seventeenth cenfrom our honour and merit of this kingdom; an evil returies, he had a great dread of the increasing size of the metropolis. He was alarmed by the town being extended so far to the west as St. Giles's; and he warmly supported a bill, which was rejected, to prevent further building in London or the neighbourhood."(This building,' he said, pathetically, is the ruin of the gentry, and ruin of religion, leaving so many good people without churches to go to. This enlarging of London makes it filled with lacqueys and pages. In St. Giles's parish, scarce the fifth part can come to church, and we shall have no religion at last.' Some amusing and charac teristic anecdotes are related of this true black, letter lawyer, who, by caution and consistency, maintained a fair reputation among all parties, after a public life of half a century.

quital of all our hazards and services, but so it is, and we are nevertheless fully satisfied of the affection and gratitude of the gude people of this nation in general." [After dilating at some length on Cromwell's enmity to Scotland and the Presbyterian Church, on the suspicion that he was no well-wisher to his Excellency, and on the necessity, for the benefit of the twa kingdoms, that some course should be taken for prevention of impending mischief, his lordship proceeds]-Ye ken vary weele the accord 'twixt the twa kingdoms, and the union by the Solemn League and Covenant, and if any be an incendiary between the twa nations how he is to be proceeded against. Now, the matter is wherein we desire your opinions, what you tak the meaning of this word incendiary to be, and whether Lieutenant-General Cromwell be not sike an incendiary, as is meant thereby, and whilke way wud be best to tak to proceed against him if he be proved to be sike an incendiary, and that will clepe his wings from soaring to the prejudice of our cause. Now you may ken that by our law in Scotland we clepe an incendiary whay kindleth coals of contention, and raiseth differences in the state to the public damage, and he is tanquam publicus hostis patria; whether your law be the same or not, you ken best who are mickle learned therein, and therefore, with the faveure of his Excellency, we desire your judgments in these points.'

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The brief life of Trevor can be of little interest

to any onc. A good Equity Judge, a corrupt and jobbing politician, and a sordid miser-what more need be said of him? His successor was Lord SOMERS, the glory, and we may almost say, the founder of the Whig party; and to the biogra phy of this eminent person, Lord Campbell addresses himself, with the zeal and reverence which might be expected from another eminent Whig lawyer and lover of letters.

Lord Somers, whom party spite loved to repre sent as sprung from the dregs of the people, belonged to a family who, in Gloucestershire, had

Mr. Maynard did not seem clear as to whether Oliver was an incendiary or not; but he made a long reply, and stated that "Lieutenant-General Cromwell was a person of great favour and interest with the House of Commons, and with some of the House of Peers likewise;" and that it would not do to vote such a one an incendiary-a term unknown in English law. Some of the hotter Presbyterians were for instantly denouncing Crom-long had a hold on the soil. They held another well as an incendiary, but the cautious counsels of Maynard prevailed, and, soon after Oliver, become Protector, made him "Protector's Sergeant," thus placing a Presbyterian at the head of the bar. Maynard, however, on several occasions, showed independence of mind. He was undeviating in hatred of "the Papists."

"In the spirit of the Whigs of that day he strongly supported the bill for disarming Roman Catholics, saying, We are so mealy-mouthed and soft-handed to the Papists that it occasions their insolence. I think it is fitting that all Papists should resort to their own dwellings, and not depart without licences from the next Justices; and another thing that all those of that religion bring all their fire-arms in, unless for the necessary defence of their houses, to officers appointed. I would not imitate their cruelty. I would let them have their religion in their private houses-but no harbouring of priests or Jesuits. And if any Papist have a hand in firing houses, he should be compelled to help to rebuild them.' Holding an office at the pleasure of the Crown, but not being a member of the Cabinet, the old patriot showed his independence by occasionally censuring the conduct of the Government. He was particularly severe against the administration of the navy. I hear,' said he, there are young men put to command ships that never were at sea before, because they are well affected to the present settlement. The question used to be Is he a godly man?

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property in Worcestershire, "The White Ladies," a despoiled nunnery, and a place of some note in English annals. The Chancellor's father practised successfully as a country solicitor; but in the time of the troubles, Attorney Somers sided with the Parliament, raised a troop, and became Captain Somers. His distinguished son was born at the White Ladies, in 1649; went to the College School of Worcester, and was admitted at Trinity College, Oxford, where his residence was short, as while still very young he mounted a desk in his father's office, much against his inclination. "But," says his admiring biographer, "idleness could never be imputed to him; nor did he now cross his father's soul by penning a stanza when he should engross; for it was not till some years after, that, initiated by the young Earl of Shrewsbury, by whose introduction he afterwards drank champagne with the wits, he first displayed his poetical vein." The restoration arrived, but the elder Somers obtained a pardon under the Great Seal, carried on a flourishing business, and presided over a truly patriarchal establishment at the White Ladies, a house that would have accommodated five hun

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