reading the riot act; and his suggestions being acted on, secured at once the peace of the metropolis. Immediately after the commotion, he was made chiefjustice of the Common Pleas; and, on the 14th of June, in the same year, he was raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Loughborough.

In 1783, he became first commissioner for keeping the great seal, but afterwards opposed Mr. Pitt's administra tion. Subsequently, however, in 1793, he joined the government as lord high chancellor; which office he held till he was succeeded, in 1801, by Lord Eldon. He had, in 1795, obtained a new patent of a barony, with remainder to his nephews; and, on the 21st of April, 1801, he was created Earl Rosslyn. He retired into private life, but died shortly after, of apoplexy, between Hough and Salthill, on the 3rd of January, 1805, being in the seventysecond year of his age. He was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral, by the side of the body of Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Earl Rosslyn was a man of limited ability, but his ambition was considerable, and his ingenuity in argument, added to the pliancy with which he accommodated himself to the views of his party, rendered him an useful member of government. His oratorical powers were uncommanding, and much detracted from by the weakness of his

voice, as well as the diminutiveness of his person. In allusion to this latter defect, added to his having framed a bill to prevent the introduction of supplies to America, he was given, by Wilkes, the name of Starvation Wedderburn. He had a quick, penetrating eye, and his countenance indicated the possession of genius. He was facetious in conversation, an agreeable companion, and ranked among his friends many eminent literary characters. According to Mr. C. Bulla, he was a great benefactor to the French emigrants; and, on being told, one day, that the chancellor of France was distressed by not being able to procure the discount of a foreign bill, he observed, "The chancellor of England is the only person to whom the chancellor of France should apply to discount his bills." The same authority relates, that the money was immediately sent, and that Lord Rosslyn remitted, annually, to the French chancellor, a sum of equal amount. He possessed considerable learning, political as well as legal, and was the author of a book, printed in 1793, with the title of Observations on the state of the English Prisons. He was twice married: first, to Mrs. Elizabeth Dawson, who died, without issue, in 1781; and, secondly, to Charlotte, daughter of the first Viscount Courtenay, by whom he had no children.

THIS eminent laywer was born at Gredington, in Flintshire, on the 5th of October, 1733; and having been educated at Ruthin, in Denbighshire, was articled, at an early age, to Mr. Tomlinson, an attorney, at Nantwich, in Cheshire. On the expiration of his articles, Mr. Kenyon became, in Trinity term, 1754, a student of Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the bar in Hilary term, 1761. He applied himself originally to conveyancing and chancery; and, though his progress was at first slow, for want of opportunity, he gradually gained the reputation of being a sound lawyer, and his legal opinion had considerable weight and influence.

In 1773, he married Miss Mary Kenyon, his cousin; and, about the same period, contracted an intimacy with Mr. afterwards Lord-chancellor Thurlow.

About two years after his marriage, travelling towards Bath, with his wife, he stopped at the Black Bear Inn, kept by the father of the late Sir Thomas Lawrence, when the future painter, then a mere child, exhibited his skill by taking the likenesses of Mr. and Mrs. Kenyon with remarkable accuracy. In 1780, he distinguished himself by his defence of Lord George Gordon against a charge of high treason; and, in 1782, was elevated to the office of attorneygeneral, and appointed chief-justice of

Chester. About the same time he came into parliament, where he attached himself to Mr. Pitt's party in parliament; and, in 1784, was made master of the Rolls, and created a baronet; but the emoluments of his high office fell short of those he had lost by relinquishing his practice as a counsel. He continued to support the measures of the ministers in parliament, and, on the 9th of June, 1788, he succeeded Lord Mansfield as chief-justice of the King's Bench; and was raised to the peerage by the title of Lord Kenyon, Baron of Gredington. He was appointed one of the council to assist Queen Charlotte in the care of the king's person; and, in 1796, was made custos rotulorum and lord-lieutenant of his native county.

He continued to exercise his functions as judge, and to take part in the principal political questions of the period, constantly voting with the Tories, and opposing the liberal party, till his death, which took place on the 2nd of April, 1802, at Bath, owing to a decay of nature; he having taken but little nourishment or sleep for several weeks previous. A splendid monument was erected to his memory in Hamner Church, Flintshire; and he is said to have died worth £300,000, the proceeds of his legal practice. "Lord Kenyon," says a writer of his own time," was much esteemed in private life; and was, perhaps, one of the most temperate and regular men of his rank in his day. He constantly rose at six in the morning, and retired to rest, except when engaged on public business, by ten in the evening. He seldom drank wine or spirits; was always punctual in his attendance at divine service; and, in his family and amongst his relations and immediate associates, was greatly beloved." He was, however, according to Sir N. Wraxall, "irascible in his temper, destitute of all refinement in his dress or external deportment, and parsimonious, even in a degree approaching to avarice. Nevertheless," adds the same authority, "he more than balanced these defects by strict morality, probity, and integrity." His benevolent attentions to the numerous distressed and injured persons, who applied to him for legal advice, was a truly amiable trait in his character,

which cannot be too much known or too highly estimated. Of his habits, when chief-justice, the following anecdote gives a remarkable trait:-A gentleman, who had sold Lord Kenyon a cottage at Richmond, going into the neighbourhood, had a mind to take a view of his old residence; and, on application, was readily admitted by the housekeeper. Entering the principal room, he saw on the table some books, which proved to be the Bible, Epictetus, and the Whole Duty of Man. "Does my lord read this?" said the gentleman, taking up the Bible. "No, sir," replied the woman; "he is always poring over this little book," pointing to Epictetus: "I don't know what it is," added she; "but my lady reads the other two. They come down here on a Saturday evening, bring a shoulder or leg of mutton with them, which serves for Sunday, and they leave me the remains, which serve me for the week."

As a speaker, though his ideas were strong, and his diction often energetic, he sacrificed the graces of oratory to technical phrases and a quaint formality of expression, which he had acquired from his intense study of the law writings. So far from being suspected of a want of integrity in his conduct, he was charged with an excess of zeal for the virtue and religion of his country; which he displayed in his constant endeavours to check those moral vices by which social life is polluted and embittered. By his strong animadversions against seduction and gaming, he succeeded in, at least, restraining some fashionable profligacies; and he cleansed the law of many of those sordid practices by which it was corrupted. Though an active politician, he does not seem to have degraded his official character by subserviency to any party, but generally supported conscientiously the measures of a Tory ministry.

In private life, he was accounted amiable; but he seems to have been parsimonious in his own domestic arrangements. He does not appear, however, to have been illiberal, though there are no records of his charity. He was lampooned in the Rolliad, a satire, that was published with his portrait. He seems to have enjoyed the confidence of his sovereign, George the

Third, with whom he corresponded on the subject of the coronation oath, as affecting the claims of the catholics,

EDWARD THURLOW, the son of a clergyman, was born at Ashfield, in Suffolk, in 1736; and was sent to school at Canterbury, where, although idle and obstinate, he, by his harsh disposition, contrived to maintain a sullen superiority over his youthful fellows. At Peter House College, Cambridge, he was still more overbearing; and, although he obtained a reputation for talent, extracted the respect of his college companions less by merit than arrogance and assumption. His habits were dissolute and irregular; and, on one occasion, having been absent from chapel, the dean, who was a man of little learning, desired him to translate into Greek a paper from the Spectator. Having performed his task, he carried it to his tutor, instead of the dean, on which he was summoned before the master and fellows, to explain his conduct; when he coolly observed, that "what he had done, arose not from disrespect, but tenderness, for the dean, whom he did not wish to puzzle;" a reply which nearly occasioned his expulsion from the college. The matter was, however, allowed to rest, lest it should excite ridicule; and when he became chancellor, Thurlow rewarded one of the fellows, who had recommended lenient measures, by a valuable church preferment.

which correspondence was published by his son, the present Lord Kenyon, about 1826.

On leaving the university, he became a member of the Inner Temple, where he lived with more regularity, and applied himself closely to his legal studies. Having been called to the bar in 1758, he remained for some time unemployed; and, it is said, he seldom had the means of carrying himself even the first stage on the circuit; and an anecdote is related of his having, on one occasion, reached the assize town on a horse he had taken from London upon trial. At length, he was one day idling in Nando's coffee-room, when he was requested to draw a statement of

the facts in the famous Douglas case; a task he performed with so much ability, that a retaining fee was given him, and he greatly distinguished himself upon the trial. On account, however, of the violence of his language, he was challenged by Mr. Stewart, a gentleman of the adverse party, and a duel ensued, which terminated without bloodshed. By the influence of the Duchess of Queensberry, he was presented with a silk gown, by Lord Bute, in 1761, when he encountered, and often defeated in argument, the ablest cotemporary lawyers. He was appointed solicitor-general in 1770; and, in the following year, was made attorney-general, and elected a member of the house of commons, where he spoke strongly in favour of allowing to that officer the power to file informations ex-officio. He conducted the prosecution against Horne Tooke; and he, likewise, in parliament, opposed a motion for a committee to inquire into the administration of criminal justice. "If," said he, "we allow every pitiful patriot thus to insult us with ridiculous accusations, without making him pay forfeit for his temerity, we shall be eternally pestered with the humming and buzzing of these stingless wasps. Though they cannot wound or poison, they can teaze and vex. I hope we shall now handle them so roughly, as to make this the last of such audacious attempts." He took an active part in a debate on the suspension of the habeas corpus act, in the course of which he exclaimed, “treason and rebellion are properly and peculiarly the native growth of America!" One of the last occasions on which he spoke in the house of commons, was the debate on a bill for the relief of the Roman catholics, a measure which he declared he had no intention to oppose. He succeeded to the woolsack on the 2nd of June, 1778, and was raised to the peerage, by the title of Baron

Thurlow, of Ashfield. Soon after his entrance into the house of lords, he was taunted, by the Duke of Grafton, with the obscurity of his birth, when Thurlow, in a tone of subdued indignation, having stigmatized the duke, in allusion to the impure source of his honours, as the "accident of an accident," thus concluded: "No one venerates the peerage more than I do; but, my lords, I must say, that the peerage solicited me, not I the peerage. Nay, more I can say, and will say, that as a peer of parliament, as speaker of this right honourable house, as keeper of the great seal, as guardian of his majesty's conscience, as lord high chancellor of England, nay, even in that character alone, in which the duke would think it an affront to be considered, but which character none can deny me,―as a man, I am at this moment as respectable,-I beg leave to add, I am as much respected,-a -as the proudest peer I now look down upon." He resigned the great seal in 1783, but resumed it soon afterwards, on Mr. Pitt's accession to power. In 1788, on the discussion of the regency, he made a solemn declaration of fidelity and attachment to the king, his master, praying, "that in that hour when he forgot his king, his God might forget him." Wilkes wittily observed, on hearing it, "Forget you! he'll see you d-d first!" and Burke was also satirical at the chancellor's expense, comparing the tears he shed on the occasion "to those of iron which flowed down Pluto's cheek, resembling rather the dismal bubbling of the Styx, than the gentle murmuring streams of Aganippe."

It appears, from subsequent disclosures, that there was some foundation for the suspicions of his opponents; and, that Thurlow had been in negociation with the prince's friends a few days before he made his famous declaration of fidelity to his sovereign.

The dictatorial tone of Mr. Pitt was by no means agreeable to the chancellor; and their mutual obstinacy rendered harmony between them impossible. On one occasion, when the premier, in an argument on the Latin language, claimed superiority for it over the English, on the ground that two negatives made a thing more positive than any affirmative could render it,

Lord Thurlow is said to have replied, "then your father and mother must have been two negatives, to have made such a positive fellow as you are." The misunderstandings between the two great men ended in the determination of the government to remove the chancellor; and on Lord Melville coming to breakfast with him, intending, at the same time, to demand the seals, Thurlow coolly said to him, "I know the business on which you have come: you shall have the bag and seals. There they are, and there is your breakfast;" of which they sociably partook, and parted apparently very good friends. He was, however, much mortified at his removal from office, and particularly by the conduct of the king; "who," he once said, "has treated me in a way in which no man has a right to treat another." He retired to his villa, having previously secured for himself a tellership of the exchequer, and a new patent of peerage, extending his title to his nephews. In 1806, he repaired to Brighton, and died there of a lethargy, on the 12th of September, in the seventyfirst year of his age. He left three daughters, by a Miss Hervey, with whom he had become acquainted in early life, during his visits at Nando's coffee-house.

He was a good classical scholar, and had a strong natural genius, which was held in such high estimation by Dr. Johnson, that he declared there was no man in England he would condescend to prepare himself for but Thurlow. In religion, Lord Thurlow had but little conscience, and confessed himself always a supporter of that which was uppermost. He once said to a dissenter, "I would support your d-d religion, if it was that of the state;" and to a deputation that had waited on him to solicit his vote in favour of the repeal of the test act, he replied that he would not give it; and added, "I care not whether your religion has the ascendancy, or mine, or any, or none; but this I know, that when you were uppermost, you kept us down; and now, that we are uppermost, with God's help, we'll keep you down."

He never allowed his principles to stand in the way of his elevation; but though aggrandisement was his object, he seemed to seek it more for emolu

ment than honour. He displayed an utter contempt for every kind of flattery, and even a proper expression of thanks was irksome to his feelings. He appears to have been of a generous disposition, and after failing in his endeavours to obtain an increase of pension for Dr. Johnson, he offered him the liberty of drawing for £500 or £600, to enable him to travel.

In his manner he was uncouth, and, at the cabinet dinners, would withdraw from the table after the cloth was removed, and throwing himself on two chairs, indulge in sleep during the most important deliberations. He was fond of conviviality and select society, when he would throw off the severity which, on other occasions, seemed a part of his nature, and converse with a pleasing affability. His eloquence was characterised by a vehement strength of language, a closeness of argument, a solemn tone of conviction, and a dignified utterance. His sentences were frequently confused, and even ungrammatical; and it has been said, "such was sometimes their obscurity, that reason was rather silenced by them than convinced." As

a judge, it was his pride that not one of his decrees had been reversed; and, as a senator, he was a staunch opponent to every attempt at encroachment on the royal prerogative. After his rupture with Pit, he became more liberal, and opposed some of that minister's measures, which tended to curtail the rights and privileges of the people. He seldom considered delicacy in conversation; and it is recorded of him, that being asked to partake of some grapes, by the noble proprietor of a mansion, in the grounds belonging to which he was walking, he coarsely replied, "Grapes! didn't I tell you just now I had got the gripes." He had contracted, in his youth, a habit of swearing, which he never afterwards abandoned; and an oath frequently accompanied the expression of his

sentiments.

He had been united, in early life, to a daughter of Dr. Lynch, the Dean of Canterbury, who did not long survive her marriage, and after leaving the house of lords, though he kept an establishment in St. James's Square, he always proceeded to the residence of Miss Hervey, at Dulwich. He did not,

however, allow this connexion to influence him in the dispensation of his patronage, and admitted no one to any office through Miss Hervey's interposition. His distribution of church preferment was always extremely disinterested, and was bestowed, on almost all occasions, with a view to the merits of the party on whom it was conferred. Having, when at college, given offence to a person, by affixing to him, in raillery, the name of "Mr. Dean," he, some years afterwards, met the same individual, whom he addressed by his old title. The other sullenly remarked on the impropriety of the appellation, which Thurlow assured him was now correct, "for," said he, "you are a dean;" and informing him of his promotion, apologized for any uneasiness that his conduct might have ever occasioned to the object of his generosity. His feelings were generally humane, though such was his devotion to the strict administration of the law, that all his efforts were successfully directed to prevent mercy from being extended to the brothers Perreau, the first who suffered death for the crime of forgery. He strongly supported Bishop Barrington's bill for the discourage ment of adultery; declaring that, "if he had the blood of forty generations of nobility flowing in his veins, he could not be more anxious to procure it that assent and concurrence it deserved from their lordships." He was never known to be vindictive, but in the case of his daughter, Mrs. Brown, who had offended him by her marriage. He, however, forgave her before his death, though by his will he left her but £50 per month; and on condition of her living apart from her husband.

In appearance he was stern of aspect, with harsh but regular and strongly marked features. His eyebrows were large and shaggy, protruding over his penetrating eyes which gleamed with intellect. Lavater said, on seeing one of his pictures, "whether this man be on earth or in hell, I know not; but wherever he is, he is a tyrant, and will rule if he can." The Duke of Norfolk kept owls, one of which was called Lord Thurlow, from its supposed resemblance to the chancellor; and once, while in close conference with his solicitor, the