LXXII. CHAP. reproach pursued their labours. In a petition presented to parliament for regulating the Court of Chancery, the prevailing opinion is thus expressed, "as long as long as the bar is more able than the bench, as of late it hath been, the business of the Court can never be well despatched." "The Chancery," says a contemporary pamphlet, "is a great grievance, one of the greatest in the nation. It is confidently affirmed by knowing gentlemen of worth, that there are depending in that Court 23,000 causes; that some of them have been depending five, some ten, some twenty, some thirty years and more; there have been spent in causes many hundreds, nay thousands of pounds, to the undoing of many families; what is ordered one day is contradicted the next, so as in some causes there have been 500 orders." Lay Peers, like Manchester, Kent, and Grey, must have made but a bad figure in giving their opinions on nice questions of conveyancing, or the common practice of the Court. Whitelock, sitting by himself, would have proved a good Equity Judge, but he was thwarted and embarrassed by his colleagues. "The burthen of the business," says he, "lay heavy on me, being ancient [senior] in commission, and my brother Keeble of little experience, and my brother Lisle less, but very opinionative. The business of the ChanA. D. 1652. cery was full of trouble this Michaelmas term, and no man's cause came to a determination, how just soever, without the clamour of the party against whom judgment was given; they being stark blind in their own causes, and resolved not to be convinced by reason or law."* When Whitelock had resigned, Lisle, who was grossly ignorant of his profession, "bore himself very highly and superciliously." The chief weight of the Equity business lay on the shoulders of Lenthal, the Master of the Rolls; but his time was much occupied with politics till after the dissolution of the Long Parliament, and he lost character greatly in the year 1654, when, after boasting that "he would sooner suffer himself to be hanged over the Roll's gate than submit to Cromwell's absurd and illegal ordinance to regulate the Chancery," and seeing * Mem. 548. - two Lords Commissioners dismissed for denying its validity, -he agreed to acknowledge it, sooner than lose his place*, and he made himself the laughing-stock of the bar by trying, along with Fiennes and Lisle, to put a reasonable construction upon nonsense. CHAP. LXXII. Desire of Lenthal, to be a He farther lowered himself by his childish anxiety to get one of Cromwell's peerages. The House of Lords being to be restored, it was then thought that, being an attend- the Rolls, ant on that House as Master of the Rolls, he could not Peer. sit in the House of Commons, and "he complained that he, who had been for some years the first man of the nation, was now denied to be a member of either House of Parliament. This complaint coming to the ears of Cromwell, he sent him a writ which so elevated the poor man, that riding in his coach through the Strand and meeting a friend of Sir Arthur Hazelrigge, who had received a similar writ, and was disposed to treat it with contempt, he said with great earnestness, "I pray write to him and desire him by no means to omit taking his place in the House of Lords, and assure him from me that all that do so shall themselves and their heirs be for ever Peers of England."† The Lords Commissioners, while they resisted the preposterous plans of Cromwell and his officers for reforming the Court of Chan- Chancery cery, from time to time issued very sensible orders for remedying abuses, and under their auspices an ordinance was passed in 1654, abolishing the sixty clerks, introducing many excellent regulations for the conducting of suits, and enacting a table of fees to be received by the Master of the Rolls, the Master's in Chancery, the counsel ‡, and the solicitors. Although no such monument of juridical improvement as Comparithe "Code Napoleon" was transmitted to us by the English "Lenthal who seemed most earnest against the execution of this ordinance, and protested that he would be hanged at the Rolls gate before he would execute it, yet now, when he saw Widdrington and me put out of our places for refusing to do it, he wheeled about, and was as forward as any to act in the execution of it, and thereby restored himself to favour."- Whit. Mem, 627. Lud. Mem. 227. "When Cromwell had dissolved this parliament, he assured his Lords, that notwithstanding the practices that had been used against them, they should continue to be Lords."-Ib. 228. The fee to a barrister with a stuff gown on the hearing of a cause was only 14., and to a Lord Protector's counsel or serjeant-at-law, 21.- Ordinance, anno 1654. c. 44. Scobell's Acts, p. 324. See also, 1654, c. 25.; 1656, c. 10. Whit. Mem. 421. 562. 608. 621, 622. Orders and ordinances improving practice. son be tween Re 94 CHAP. LXXII. publicans in England and in France. Commonwealth, we ought to be grateful to the enlightened men who then flourished, for they acomplished much, and a comparison between them and the leaders of the French revolution would turn out greatly to the advantage of our countrymen, who not only showed a much greater regard for justice, humanity, and religion, but a sounder knowledge of the principles of government, not changing merely for the sake of change, but only where they thought they could improve. The French copied the most exceptionable measures of the English Revolution-such as the execution of the King, the commencement of a new æra from "the first year of liberty," and the appointment of "a Committee of Public Safety," which disposed in an arbitrary manner of the lives and fortunes of the citizens. But they wholly neglected the wise lesson set before them to preserve what is good-to amend what is defective-to adapt ancient institutions to altered times—and to show some respect for the habits, the feelings, and the prejudices of the people to be governed. It is difficult for us to separate the men who suggested and supported the wise civil measures of the Commonwealth parliaments from the excesses and absurdities of the Puritans; and the Cavalier party having gained a complete victory over them, we take our impressions of them from their enemies; but I believe that many of them were of the same principles, and actuated by the same spirit, as Lord Somers and the authors of the Revolution of 1688, whom we are all taught to admire and venerate. If the Restoration had not been conducted with so much precipitation, if the proposition of the virtuous Lord Hale had been acceded to, "that before recalling Charles II., they should consider what reasonable restrictions on the abuse of prerogative the late King had consented to, and what good laws had been passed in his absence as the basis of a happy settlement,” the nation might have escaped much of the misgovernment, dissolution of manners and political convulsions, which marked the history of England during the remainder of this century, and we should have been taught habitually to do honour to the memory of those by whose wisdom and patriotism such blessings had been achieved. CHAPTER LXXIII. LIFE OF LORD KEEPER HERBERT. CHAP. LXXIII. Reasons for Life of I SHOULD now naturally proceed to the Life of the Earl of Clarendon, who executed the duties of Chancellor in England upon the Restoration; but as Sir EDWARD HERBERT actually held the Great Seal for a considerable time, writing with the title of Lord Keeper, although in partibus only, Lord and as his name is always introduced into the list of Lord Keeper Chancellors and Lord Keepers, some account of him may be expected in this work. He acted a prominent part in one of the most memorable passages of English history. HERBERT Charles II.'s Great On the execution of Charles I., the Prince, being in Holland, Feb. 1649. took upon himself the royal title, and had a Great Seal engraved; but he did not deliver it to any one, although he im- Seal. mediately swore in some of his fellow-exiles Privy Councillors. He carried this Seal with him into Scotland when he A. D. 1650. was crowned King there, having subscribed the "Covenant," and he still kept it in his own custody when he advanced at the head of the Scottish army into England. After the fatal Sept. 3. battle of Worcester, this Great Seal was lost. It would rather have been an incumbrance to Charles in the royal battle of oak, and in his marvellous adventures with the Penderells, the Mortons, and the Lanes. It was probably thrown into the Severn, that it might not be sent to the parliament as a trophy of Cromwell's victory. When Charles was again in safety under the protection of the King of France, he caused another Great Seal of England to be engraved in Paris, chiefly as a bauble to be kept by himself, till, upon a fortunate turn in his affairs, it might be handed over to a Lord Chancellor or Lord Keeper, to be used for actual business within his recovered realm. But it became an object of ambition and contention among his courtiers, who amused the tedium of their banishment by intrigues for the titles of offices of state and offices of the royal 1651. Lost at Worcester. New Great Seal in A. D. 1652. CHAP. household, although no power or profit for the present belonged to them. LXXIII. Struggle between Hyde and Herbert. April, 1659. Herbert, Lord Keeper. His birth. bar. Charles himself favoured the pretensions of Hyde to the Great Seal; but this minister was most particularly obnoxious to the Queen Dowager, Henrietta Maria, on whom her son chiefly depended for a subsistence; and out of spite to the man she hated, she warmly supported the cause of his rival, Sir Edward Herbert, about whom she was indifferent. Her importunity succeeded: the Great Seal was delivered by the King, with all due solemnity, to her candidate as Lord Keeper: he took the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and the oath of office, before a meeting of the pretended Privy Council; and from thenceforward, on all occasions of mock state, when the King of England was supposed to be attended by his high functionaries, he strutted about bearing the purse with the Great Seal in his hand, and he was addressed as "Lord Keeper Herbert." This gentleman, whose professional honours brought him so little comfort or advantage, was nobly descended, being the son of Charles Herbert, of Aston, in the county of MontgoPractice at mery, of the family of Lord Herbert of Cherbury. After leaving the University, he was entered of Lincoln's Inn, that he might be qualified for the profession of the law. He applied himself very diligently to his studies, and on being called to the bar, from his connections and his own industry he rose into good practice, without gaining any great distinction. In the famous masque given by the Inns of Court to the Queen in 1633, he was one of the managers for Lincoln's Inn, and assisted Mr. Attorney General Noy in exposing to ridicule the projectors who, about this time, anticipated some of the discoveries of the philosophers of Laputa. Strong prerogative lawyer. He likewise assisted him and Banks, his successor, in the scheme for taxing the people without authority of parliament, under the name of "ship money,”- an invention as new and impracticable as many of those which were ridiculed. He actually abetted all the measures of the Court, and was one of those who hoped that parliament would never more meet in England. Their wish would very likely have been fulfilled, had it not been from the Scottish insurrection, caused by the |