nouncing the counterfeiting of the Great Seal by the parliament as High Treason,”-forbidding the use of it,-declaring null and void all done under it, and threatening to prosecute, as traitors or accessories, all who should use it or pay respect to it. But this was treated at Westminster as brutum fulmen, and was not thought even worthy of an answer.*

By several supplemental ordinances and resolutions of the two Houses, offices were provided for the "Lords Com[JAN. 1644.] missioners" and "His Honour,”—and, after an interruption of nearly two years, the Court of Chancery was re-opened at Westminster, and the business proceeded with full vigour. On the first day the Commissioners sat, they sealed above five hundred writs. In judicial matters they were left to their own discretion; but in putting the Seal to grants and appointments to offices they acted ministerially, under the orders of the two Houses.

The House of Commons immediately ordered an account of all sums paid into the Court of Chancery for the last twenty years, and that if any should prove to be the monies of malignants or delinquents, or to be dead stock, it should be applied to the public service. † This is the origin of the "Suitors' Fund."

In answer to a proclamation under the King's Great Seal, adjourning the Courts to Oxford, the first state document to which the Lords Commissioners put their Great Seal, was a counterproclamation, by which all judges, officers, suitors, and other faithful subjects of his Majesty, were enjoined under a heavy penalty, to attend the Courts at Westminster.f

Serjeant Wilde appears to have been by far the most active of the Six Commissioners, and next to him, at a long interval, came Oliver St. John, who was an able lawyer, but devoted much of his time to politics. One of the noble Lords Commissioners always sat along with the Commoners, but did not interfere unless on occasions of ceremony.

A commission was soon after issued, authorising the Master of the Rolls, and certain of the Judges, to assist in the hearing of causes in the Courts of Chancery.

Things continued on this footing at Westminster till the month of August, 1646, when the King's Great Seal, having been taken at Oxford, was broken in pieces with much solemnity in the presence of both Houses, and there ceased to be rival Great Seals in England. At the same time the Earl of Salis

bury, who had been appointed in the place of [AUG. 11. 1646.]

the Earl of Bolingbroke, deceased, was sworn as a Lord Commissioner. The Earl of Kent, having taken his place as a Peer, came down to the bar and received the parliamentary Great Seal from the other Commissioners. He presented it to the Clerk of

* Nov. 29. 1643. Doquets of Great Seal at Oxford, Temp. Car. I.

† Com. Jour. iii. 346. The return made would be very curious, but I have not been able to meet with it.

Jan. 6 1644. Com. Jour. iii. 359,

§ Ante, Vol. II. p. 503.

the Parliament, by whom it was carried to the Speaker of the House of Lords, and laid on the woolsack. The Earl of Salisbury then at the table took the oath of supremacy, the oath of allegiance, the oath of office, and the oath under the triennial act. Finally, the Speaker of the House of Lords carried the Seal to the bar, where the Commons, with their Speaker, then stood, and delivered it to the Earl of Salisbury to be kept by him with the rest of the Commissioners.*

Violent disputes now arose respecting the Commissionership of the Great Seal and other offices. Oliver Cromwell, who at first was probably influenced only by a fanatical zeal for religion and liberty, had for some time been goaded on by personal ambition, and distinctly aimed at supreme power. With this view he was pursuing his "Self-denying Ordinances," from which he meant that he himself should be excepted, whilst they should deprive of all power the Earl of Essex, the Earl of Manchester, and the leaders in both Houses, whose ascendancy he dreaded. Accordingly, on the self-denying principle, he caused an ordinance to be brought in by which it was declared that the Great Seal should not, in future, be held by any member of either House, and three new Commissioners, not in parliament, were named to supersede the six now in office. In the Commons, a vote was obtained, by a majority of 75 to 65, "that no member of either House should be a Commissioner of the Great Seal, and three Commissioners were agreed upon, who were not in parliament,-Sir Rowland Wandesford, Sir Thomas Biddingfield, and Bradshaw, afterwards President of the High Court of Justice. At the same time it was provided that the presentations to livings and the appointment of Justices of the Peace should be in the two Houses; and an order was made, "that the Commissioners for the custody of the Great Seal do not relieve any person in Chancery in any case where the party may be relieved by the common law."t

But the self-denying system was not at all approved of by the Lords, as it operated most unequally, by at once disqualifying the whole body of the Peerage from holding any public employment. They therefore rejected the ordinance for transferring the Seal to the three new Commissioners.

The Commons then passed another ordinance, as a compromise for the present, "That the Speakers of both Houses should have power to seal all original writs and processes, and likewise commissions and pardons, which have usually passed, and ought to pass, under the Great Seal, as fully as any Lord Keeper or Commissioner for the Great Seal for the time being ought and might have done;" and sent it up to the Lords with a message, "That in regard of the great obstruction of the proceedings in Chancery because the Commissioners of the Great Seal are not settled, and in regard of the great prejudice the subject suffers for want of

* Lords' Jour. 458.

† Com. Jour. iv. 701.

sealing of writs, there being now 8000 writs ready to be sealed, the Commons had framed an ordinance for preventing of these inconveniences, wherein they desire their Lordships' concurrence."

The Lords agreed to the ordinance with some immaterial amendments; and it was followed by another, for appointing the Master of the Rolls and certain Judges to hear causes in Chancery in the absence of the Lords Commissioners.

An order was thereupon made that the late Commissioners should deliver the key of the chest in which the Great Seal was kept to the Speaker of the House of Commons; and Lenthal accordingly received it from Serjeant Wilde. The sum of 10007. was voted to each of them for their trou. and it was ordered that such of them as were of the Long Robe should thenceforth have the privilege of practising within the bar.

On the 31st of October the two Speakers were sworn in, both Houses being present. The Earl of Manchester, standing in his place on the woolsack, took the following oaths:-1. The oath of supremacy. 2. The oath of allegiance. 3. The oath of office, which he read himself;—and, 4. The oath under the triennial act, administered to him by the clerk of the Crown. Then Lenthal had the same oaths administered to him,-the two first at the bar, the third read to him by the Speaker of the Lords' House. This being done, the Earl of Manchester went down to the bar, and the Great Seal being brought from the woolsack and taken out of the purse and opened, the Speaker of the Lords' House took it into his hand, and said,-" According to the ordinance of both Houses of parliament authorising me to be a Commissioner of the Great Seal, I do receive it and deliver it unto you (the Speaker of the House of Commons) as the other Commissioner."*

On the 2d of November the new Lords Commissioners began the business of the Seal, and a Judge and a Master in Chancery by turns assisted them; but their sittings were very irregular, and there were heavy complaints of delays and illconsidered decrees. Their authority was set at defiance by Jenkins, a common-law Judge, who had stoutly adhered to the King, and had tried and executed several persons for taking arms against him. This spirited Welshman being brought up in custody for disobedience to the process of the Court of Chancery, was required to put in an answer to a bill filed against him, imputing to him gross fraud and breach of trust; but he told them "that he neither ought nor would submit to the power of that Court, for that it was no Court, and their Seal was counterfeit."

An ordinance being introduced to attaint him for this contumacy and his other misdeeds, he was brought to the bar to make his defence; but he refused to kneel, denied their authority, and told them that they wronged the King, and that there could be no law without a King. The house fined him 10007. for his contempt.

*Lords' Jour. viii, 552.

36

LIFE OF LORD COMMISSIONER WHITELOCK.

At another day he was specifically called upon to plead to the charges of "having given judgment of death against men for assisting the parliament, having been himself in arms against the parliament, having persuaded others to do the like, and having denied the power of the parliament;" but he still said they had no power to try him, and he would give them no other answer. The attainder passed the Commons, but was allowed to drop in the Lords; and afterwards, in the year 1651, when the government was better established, on a slight submission Jenkins received a pardon under the Great Seal of the Commonwealth.*

It was meant that the present arrangement respecting the Great Seal should only be temporary, and a joint committee of the two Houses, consisting of fifteen Peers and thirty Commoners, repeatedly met in the Painted Chamber, with the view of devising some plan that might be more satisfactory to the public. The Commons, now more and more under the influence of Cromwell, were for extending the self-denying ordinance to the Great Seal; but the Lords, feeling their influence declining, would not part with this remnant of their power, and came to a resolution "that among the Commissioners of the Great Seal there should be one or more members of their House."

These disputes rendered it necessary that the time should be prolonged for which the two Speakers were to be the Lords Commissioners, and this was repeatedly done by ordinance,―generally from twenty days to twenty days. But the King was now a prisoner: military despotism was established under the semblance of liberty, and the discerning saw that the struggle of the Peers to maintain their independence would be unavailing, and that every thing must bend to the mandate of Cromwell.

CHAPTER LXIX.

LORDS COMMISSIONERS OF THE GREAT SEAL FROM THE FIRST APPOINTMENT OF WHITELOCK TILL THE ADOPTION OF A NEW GREAT SEAL BEARING THE INSIGNIA OF THE REPUBLIC,

[A.

AMIDST the stirring political events which for some time occupi. ed the public, the negotiations with the King at A. D. 1648.] Holmby, his being violently carried off by Joyce,his flight from Hampton Court,-his imprisonment in Carisbrook Castle,—and the attempts of the army to overpower the parliament, the custody of the Great Seal, and the administration of justice in the Court of Chancery, excited little attention.

* Whit. Mem. 291, 292, 301, 347. 389. 464. 511.

† Lords' Jour. viii. 560, et seq.

[MARCH 17.]

But in an interval of comparative quiet which occurred in the spring of 1648, loud complaints were heard of the absurdity of having for the two supreme Equity Judges a lay Peer, because he happened to be Speaker of the House of Lords, and the Speaker of the House of Commons, who, though he had been bred to the law, was now completely absorbed in his parliamentary duties. In the hope of satisfying the people and reconciling the clashing pretensions of the two Houses, an ordinance was introduced into the Commons, and immediately passed, for the appointment of three new Lords Commissioners, the Earl of Kent, Bulstrode Whitelock, Esq., and Sir Thomas Waddrington, Serjeant-at-law. When the ordinance came up to the Lords, they insisted that there should be an equal number of their body appointed Commissioners, and added the name of Lord Grey de Werke,—with a proviso that no act should be done by the Commoners, unless with the concurrence of one Peer and one Commoner. To these amendments the Commons reluctantly assented, and the ordinance was law.

Three of the new Lords Commissioners of the Great Seal were mere ciphers, and there would be no amusement or instruction in trying to trace their origin or their career; but WHITELOCK is one of the most interesting as well as amiable characters of the age in which he lived, and as afterwards, on the deposition of His Highness the Lord Protector Richard, he was for a time sole Lord Keeper of the Great Seal under the Commonwealth, I am required to write his Life as if he had presided in the Court of Chancery and on the woolsack by the authority of an hereditary sovereign.

This distinguished republican lawyer was of an ancient family. and very proud of his seventeen descents recorded at the Herald's College. He was the only son of Sir James Whitelock, a Judge of the Court of King's Bench, and Elizabeth, daughter of Edward Bulstrode, Esq., of Hedgely Bulstrode, in the county of Buckingham, and sister of Bulstrode, the famous law reporter. He was strongly connected with the law, Sir George Croke, a Judge successively of the Common Pleas and King's Bench, and the publisher of law cases in three reigns*, being his mother's uncle. In the house of this venerable magistrate in Fleet Street, young Bulstrode Whitelock first saw the light, on the 6th of August, 1605.

After passing with credit through Merchant Taylors' school, he was entered in Michaelmas term, 1620, a gentleman commoner of St. John's College, Oxford. Laud was then the master of the

"But some amidst the legal throng

Who think to them thy streams belong,

Are forced to cite opinions wise,

Cro. Car.-Cro. Jac.-and Cro. Eliz."-Plead. Guide.

Judge Croke's Reports are thus cited by the names of the princes in whose reigns the cases were described.