ed by his retinue and the aforesaid vehicle, proceeded to the court-yard of St James's palace, and after ordering the driver to shoot the rubbish, he stalked back indignantly to Northumberland house, accompanied by the same cavalcade, in precisely the form in which he had left it." 2 The court must have been exceedingly amused at the proud duke and his dust-cart. There are many other anecdotes on record, equally illustrious of the duke's miserable pride. His second dutchess, Lady Charlotte Finch, daughter of the earl of Winchelsea, having, in a moment of playfulness, given him a familiar tap on the shoulder with her fan, he turned round, and sternly observed, "My first dutchess was a Percy, and she never took such a liberty!" Noble relates that the duke having the celebrated painter, James Seymour, one day at his table, was pleased to drink to him in these terms, "Cousin Seymour, your health;" but, on the painter replying, "My lord, I really do believe I have the honour of being of your grace's family;" the duke blushing with offended pride, rose from table, and desired his steward to pay Seymour his bill, and dismiss him. On some occasions his intolerable pride was deservedly dealt by. "Get out of the way!" said one of the outriders, who commonly preceded the duke's carriage, to a countryman who was driving a hog along the path, by which the great man was about to pass. "Why?" inquired the boor. "Because my lord duke is coming, and he does not like to be looked at," rejoined the courier. "But I will see him, and my pig shall see him too!" exclaimed the clown, enraged at the imperious manner of the lacquey, and, seizing the animal by the ears, he held it up before him until his grace and retinue had rolled past.

His grace died in 1748. There is a fine statue of him, by Rysbrack, in the senate-house of the university of Cambridge. Algernon, earl of Hertford, succeeded him in the dukedom.

William, Earl Cowper.

BORN A. D. 1670.-DIED A. D. 1723.

THIS eminent lawyer was the son of Sir William Cowper, Bart., of Hertford. He was educated for the bar, and became recorder of Colchester soon after his entering upon practice. In 1695 he was returned to parliament for the town of Hertford, and made a very successful debut in the house. In the next year he assisted as one of the crowncounsel in the trial of Sir William Perkins for high treason. supported the bill of attainder against Fenwick.

He also

His ser

In October, 1705, he was made keeper of the great seal. vices in promoting the union of the Scottish and English crowns were rewarded by a peerage. On the 9th of November, 1706, he was created Baron Cowper of Wingham; and in the month of May following he was appointed lord-high-chancellor of England.

On the resignation of the whig ministry in 1710, he resigned the seals of office, which were reluctantly received by his royal mistress. George I. restored him to the chancellorship in August, 1714. In

'Memoirs of the Kit Cat Club, p. 10, 11.

April, 1718, he resigned the great seal, having previously been raised to an earldom. In 1723 his political integrity was impeached by one Christopher Layer, who having been apprehended on a charge of high treason, in the course of his examination insinuated that Lord Cowper was connected with certain parties who were aiming at the expulsion of the house of Brunswick. His lordship indignantly denied the charge, and demanded an investigation of the whole affair by his brother-peers, but this was declined as unnecessary for the vindication of his character, which was unsullied. Among the latest acts of his lordship's life was his opposition to the bill of pains and penalties against Atterbury, and his protest against an act for imposing a tax upon Roman Catholics. He died in October, 1723.

All parties concur in ascribing considerable professional talents to Chancellor Cowper. Chesterfield declares, that, as a speaker, he was almost without a rival. "He never spoke without universal applause," he says. "The ears and the eyes gave him up the hearts and understandings of the audience." A writer of his own time has applied to him the compliment passed by Ben Jonson on Lord Verulam :-" He commanded when he spoke; he had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion. No man had their affections more in his power; and the fear of every man that heard him was lest he should come to an end." In general politics, Cowper was liberal; but he was not a partyman, though he usually voted with the whigs, and shared their triumphs or reverses. Swift, in speaking of Queen Anne's advisers, says of him :-" Although his merits are later than the rest, he deserveth a rank in this great council. He was considerable in the station of a practising lawyer; but as he was raised to be a chancellor and a peer without passing through any of the intermediate steps which, in the late times, have been the constant practice; and little skilled in the nature of government or the true interests of princes, further than the municipal or common law of England; his abilities, as to foreign affairs, did not equally appear in the council. Some former passages of his life were thought to disqualify him for that office, by which he was to be the guardian of the queen's conscience; but these difficulties were easily overruled by the authors of his promotion, who wanted a person that would be subservient to all their designs, wherein they were not disappointed. As to his other accomplishments, he was what we usually call a piece of a scholar, and a good logical reasoner; if this were not too often alloyed by a fallacious way of managing an argument, which makes him apt to deceive the unwary, and sometimes to deceive himself."

Thomas, Earl of Macclesfield.

BORN A. D. 1667.-DIED A. D. 1732.

THOMAS PARKER, lord-chancellor of Great Britain, was the son of an English attorney of good family. He was born at Leeke, in Staffordshire, in 1667; and educated at Trinity-college, Cambridge. Having adopted the profession of the law, in 1705, he was appointed coun

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sel to Queen Anne; and in the same year he was returned member for the city of Derby.

He succeeded Sir John Holt, as chief-justice in the king's bench, being recommended to that office by Godolphin and Sunderland. George I. created him Baron Macclesfield, and, on the 12th of May, 1718, appointed him lord-chancellor. In 1721 he was created earl of Macclesfield.

court.

Macclesfield was an able lawyer, and an equitable judge, but not free from the charge of venality. On the 6th of May, 1725, he was formally impeached by the commons, in twenty-one articles, for having disposed of certain offices in chancery to incompetent persons, and with having embezzled funds placed under the guardianship of that His trial lasted thirteen days, and was conducted with great spirit by the impeachers. He was unanimously pronounced guilty by upwards of ninety of his peers, and fined in £30,000. It is said that Macclesfield's impeachment originated in the dislike of the prince of Wales, whom the chancellor had offended by asserting, that his royal highness had no right to control the education of his own children, and that the king gave Macclesfield a promise, that his fine should be paid out of the privy purse. Be that as it may, the death of his majesty threw the full burden of the fine upon the earl himself, who, mortified and irritated, retired at once from public life, and spent the remainder of his days at his seat of Sherborne castle, in Oxfordshire, where he died in April, 1732.

Sir Charles Wager.

BORN A. D. 1666.-DIED a. D. 1743.

THIS distinguished admiral was born on the 28th of October, 1666. He entered, while yet very young, into the naval service. of June, 1692, he was appointed captain of the Razée fire-ship; from On the 7th which he was soon removed to the Samuel and Henry, of forty-four guns. In 1695, he had the command of the Woolwich, a ship of fiftyfour guns, employed in the channel-fleet under Sir Cloudesley Shovel. Soon after the accession of Queen Anne, he became captain of the Hampton-court, of seventy guns. He subsequently served, in succession, under the orders of Shovel, Rooke, and Leake; with the latter of whom he acted at the taking of Majorca. On his return from the Mediterranean, he was despatched, in 1707, with a squadron of nine ships of the line, to the West Indies, having under his convoy a valuable fleet of merchantmen, which he escorted safely to their respective destinations. Having received information, in the month of December, that the French admiral, Du Casse, had put to sea for the protecting some Spanish galleons homeward-bound, he set sail with the purpose of Expedition, Portland, Kingston, and a fire-ship, for the purpose of attacking the galleons before Du Casse could join them. On the 28th of May, 1708, he descried the enemy's fleet, consisting of seventeen sail, galleons and ships of war, standing towards Carthagena. At sunset, he gallantly attacked the largest vessel, which, after having sustained an engagement for about an hour and a half, was blown up. His two

consorts had, however, disregarded his signals to attack; and, night coming on, he could only keep one of the enemy in sight. He came up with her about ten o'clock, and his own vessel, the Expedition, being now assisted by the Kingston and Portland, the enemy's ship, which carried fifty guns, was compelled to surrender. Meantime, the galleons had dispersed and escaped.

Admiral Wager's conduct, respecting the ship which he had captured in the engagement, gained him universal esteem. At that time, there were no regulations as to the distribution of prize-money; but, whenever a vessel was captured, it fell a prey to a general pillage. To remedy this evil, an act of parliament was passed, in 1707, regulating the future allotment of prize-money, but this not being known to Wager or his crew, they had proceeded on the old principle in making the division. But upon receiving intelligence of the new law, Wager ordered his captain to deliver up, for fair distribution, all the silver and valuable effects he had seized for his own and the admiral's use. Wager, shortly afterwards, received, by a vessel from England, a commission as rear-admiral of the blue; and, on the 2d of December, 1708, was made rear-admiral of the white. He remained until 1709 in the West Indies, where the ships under his command were very successful in capturing prizes. On his return to England, he was immediately made rear-admiral of the red; and, on the 8th of December, received the honour of knighthood.

During the remainder of the reign of Queen Anne, he does not appear to have been employed in actual service; but, shortly after the accession of George I., he was appointed commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, and, nearly at the same time, comptroller of the navy. On the 16th of June, 1716, he was made vice-admiral of the blue; on the 1st of February ensuing, vice-admiral of the white; and, on the 15th of March, vice-admiral of the red. In 1718, he was appointed a lord of the admiralty, on which occasion he resigned the comptrollership of the navy.

Betwixt the years 1718 and 1730, Sir Charles performed a variety of services for his country, which our limits will not permit us to detail. In July, 1731, he was made admiral of the blue; and, about the same time, had the command of a large armament, with which he set sail, for the purpose of seeing carried into execution the particulars of a treaty entered into at Vienna. The object of his mission being accomplished, he returned to England, where he arrived on the 10th of December, and never afterwards assumed any naval command.

On the 21st of June, 1733, Sir Charles Wager was nominated first lord of the admiralty; in January following, he was made admiral of the white; and having, on the 19th of March, 1741, quitted the admiralty board, he was, in the month of December, appointed treasurer of the navy. This station he held until his death, which took place on the 24th of May, 1743, in the seventy-seventh year of his age. A splendid monument was erected to his memory in Westminster-abbey.

Sir Charles Wager was a good naval officer, and remarkable for coolness in the midst of danger and difficulty. While he was at the head of the admiralty, an expedition, conducted by Captain Middleton, was sent out for the discovery of a passage to the South seas by the north-west part of Hudson's bay; and Commodore Anson perform

ed his celebrated voyage round the world, the original idea of which is said to have been formed and matured by Sir Charles himself.

Marshal Wade.

BORN A. D. 1673.-DIED A. D. 1748.

He entered the army

GEORGE WADE was born in the year 1673. in 1690, and became a major-general in 1709. On being placed at the head of the ordnance department in Scotland, he conferred a singular benefit on that kingdom by employing the military in cutting roads and otherwise improving the means of communication in the Highlands. In this undertaking he displayed considerable skill and great perseverance; and being aided by the resident gentry, as well as supported by the government, after ten years of the most strenuous and persevering efforts he succeeded in throwing open a great part of the northern portion of Scotland to ready and easy access from the Lowlands. The consequences were of incalculable benefit to the Highlanders themselves, as well as to the country at large. Wade set about making his roads in the true military style of his great predecessors in the art, the Roman legionaries. In Chambers's amusing Book of Scotland' one of Wade's roads is described as presenting only four deviations from a direct line in the long distance of sixteen miles, and these were all occasioned by the necessity of carrying the work across rivers. Wade, says Chambers, seems to have communicated his own stiff, erect, and formal character to his roads, but above all to this particular one, which is as straight as his person, as undeviating as his mind, and as indifferent to steep braes as he himself was to difficulties in the execution of his duty."

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In 1715, the marshal was returned to parliament for the borough of Hindon. In 1722, he was elected for Bath, and continued to represent that city until his death, which occurred in 1748.

Wade has been accused of cowardice by some, and of military incapacity by others, on account of his conduct during the rebellion of 1745. He was placed at the head of a body of troops destined to act against the rebels, but lingered inactively at Newcastle, when, as it is alleged, he ought to have been marching into the north. There is no proof, however, that the marshal was at all deficient in courage; on the contrary, on more than one occasion he gave eminent proofs of his being possessed of a high degree both of honour and animal courage; and it does not appear that his conduct in 1745 ever drew down upon him the censure of the government; he died a privy-councillor, and in possession of his full military rank.

Lord Viscount Bolingbroke.

BORN A. D. 1678.-died a. D. 1751.

HENRY ST JOHN, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke and Baron St John of Lidvard Tregoze, was born about the year 1678. Common fame has