The Lord Keeper was a little but handsome man, and is said to have had “an ingenuous aspect," his motto being "Il volto sciolto, i pensieri stretti."

He left behind him Francis, his son and heir, the second Baron Guilford, father of Francis, the third Baron Guilford, on whom descended the Barony of North, by failure of the elder branch of the family, and who, in 1752, was created Farl of Guilford, and was the father of Lord North, the prime minister, so celebrated for his polished oratory, his refined wit, and amiable manners. His daughter, Lady Charlotte Lindsey, still survives, the grace and ornament of her sex, in the reign of Queen Victoria.

The title of Guilford is now enjoyed by Francis, the sixth Earl.* When we estimate what the Lord Keeper achieved, we should bear in mind that he died at forty-eight, an age considerably more advanced than that reached by his immediate successor; yet under that at which other Lord Chancellors and Lord Keepers began to look for promotion. Although I have brought him into existence three years sooner than former biographers,-he was in truth Solicitor General at thirty-four, Attorney General at thirty-seven, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas at thirty-eight, and Lord Keeper and a Peer at forty-five. It is probably well for his memory that his career was not prolonged. He might have made a respectable judge when the constitution was settled; but he was wholly unfit for the times in which he lived.

I ought not to conclude this memoir without acknowledging my obligations to "Roger North's Life of the Lord Keeper;" which, like "Boswell's Life of Johnson," interests us highly, without giving us a very exalted notion of the author. Notwithstanding its extravagant praise of the hero of the tale, its inaccuracies, and its want of method, it is a most valuable piece of biography, and with Roger's Lives of his brothers" Dudley and John," and his "Examen," ought to be studied by every one who wishes to understand the history and the manners of the reign of Charles II.

CHAPTER XCVIII.

LIFE OF LORD CHANCELLOR JEFFREYS† FROM HIS BIRTH TILL HE

WAS APPOINTED RECORDER OF LONDON.

Ir is hardly known to the multitude that this infamous person ever held the Great Seal of England, as, from the almost exclusive

.:

* Grandeur of the Law, p. 64.

†The name is spelt no fewer than eight different ways:-" Jeffries," "Jefferies," Jefferys," "Jeffereys," Jefferyes," Jeffrys," "Jeffryes," and "Jeffreys," and he himself spelt it differently at different times of his life; but the last spelling is that which is found in his patent of peerage, and which he always used afterwards,

recollection of his presiding on criminal trials, he has been execrated under the designation of "JUDGE JEFFREYS,"-which is as familiar in our mouths as household words. Yet was he Chancellor a considerably longer time than Chief Justice, and in the former capacity, as well as the latter, he did many things to astonish and horrify mankind.

He has been so much abused, that I began my critical examination of his history in the hope and belief that I should find that his misdeeds had been exaggerated, and that I might be able to rescue his memory from some portion of the obloquy under which it labours; but I am sorry to say, that in my matured opinion, although he appears to have been a man of high talents, of singularly agreeable manners, and entirely free from hypocrisy, his cruelty and his political profligacy have not been sufficiently exposed or reprobated; and that he was not redeemed from his vices by one single solid virtue.

George Jeffreys was a younger son of John Jeffreys, Esq., of Acton, near Wrexham, in Denbighshire, a gentleman of a respectable Welsh family, and of small fortune. His mother was a daughter of Sir Thomas Ireland, Knight, of the County Palatine of Lancaster. Never was child so unlike parents; for they were both quiet, sedate, thrifty, unambitious persons, who aspired not higher than to be well reputed in the parish in which they lived, and decently to rear their numerous offspring. Some imputed to the father a niggardly and covetous disposition; but he appears only to have exercised a becoming economy, and to have lived at home with his consort in peace and happiness, till he was made more anxious than pleased by the irregular advancement of his boy George. It is said that he had an early presentiment that this son would come to a violent end; and was particularly desirous that he should be brought up to some steady trade, in which he might be secured from temptation and peril. The old gentleman lived till he heard, after the landing of the Prince of Orange, of the Lord Chancellor being taken up at Wapping disguised as a sailor, being assaulted by the mob, being carried before the Lord Mayor, and dying miserably in the Tower of London.*

He, of whom such tales were to be told, was born in his father's lowly dwelling at Acton in the year 1648.† He [A. D. 1648.] showed from early infancy, the lively parts, the active temperament, the outward good humour, and the overbearing dis

* Pennant saw a likeness of this old gentleman at Acton House, taken in 1690, in the 82d year of his age.-See Pennant's Tour in Wales, i, 296.

†This is generally given as the year of his birth, but I have in vain tried to have it authenticated. There is no entry of his baptism, nor of the baptism of his brothers, in the register of Wrexham, the parish in which he was born, nor in the adjoining parish of Gresford, in which part of the family property lies. I have had accurate searches made in these registers by the kindness of my learned friend Mr. Serjeant Atcherly, who has estates in the neighbourhood. It is not improbable that, in spite of the Chancellor's great horror of dissenters, he may have been baptized by a dissenting teacher."

position which distinguished him through life. He acquired an ascendancy among his companions in his native village by coaxing some and intimidating others, and making those most opposed to each other believe that he favoured both. At marbles and leapfrog he was known to take undue advantages; and nevertheless, he contrived, notwithstanding secret murmurs, to be acknowledged as "Master of the Revels."

While still young he was put to the free school at the town of Shrewsbury, which was then considered a sort of

metropolis for North Wales. Here he continued for [A. D. 1656.] two or three years: but we have no account how he demeaned himself. At the end of this time his father, though resolved to bind him apprentice to a shopkeeper in Wales, sent him for a short time to St. Paul's School, in the City of Lon

don. The sight of the metropolis had a most extra- [A. D. 1659.] ordinary effect upon the mind of this ardent youth, and exceedingly disgusted him with the notion of returning into Denbighshire, to pass his life in a small provincial town as a mercer. On the first Sunday in every term he saw the judges and the Serjeants come in grand procession to St. Paul's Cathedral, and afterwards go to dine with the Lord Mayor,-appearing little inferior to this great Sovereign of the City in power and splendour. He heard that some of them had been poor boys like himself, who had pushed themselves on without fortune or friends; and though he was not so presumptuous as to hope, like another Whittington, to rise to be Lord Mayor, he was resolved that he would be Lord Chief Justice or Lord Chancellor.

Now it was that he acquired whatever scholarship he ever possessed. The Master of St. Paul's School, at this time, was Samuel Cromleholme, or Crumlum, who, for his skill in languages, obtained the name of Ilokvylor105, and with him Jeffreys applied with considerable diligence to Greek and Latin, though occasionally flogged for idleness and insolence. He at last ventured to disclose his scheme of becoming a great lawyer to his father, who violently opposed it, as wild and romantic and impossible,—and who inwardly dreaded that, from involving him in want and distress, it might lead to some fatal catastrophe. He wrote back to his son, pointing out the inability of the family to give him a University education, or to maintain him at the Inns of Court till he should have a chance of getting into practice,-his utter want of connections in London,-and the hopelessness of his entering into a contest in an overstocked profession with so many who had the advantage of superior education, wealth, and patronage. Although the aspirant professed himself unconvinced by these arguments, and still tried to show the certainty of his success at the bar,—he must have stood a crop-eared apprentice behind a counter in Denbigh, Ruthyn, or Flint, if it had not been for his maternal grandmother, who was pleased to see the blood of the Irelands break out, and who, having a small jointure, offered to contribute a part

of it for his support. The University was still beyond their means; but it was thought this might be better dispensed with if he should be for some time at one of our great schools of royal foundation, where he might form acquaintances afterwards to be useful to him. The father reluctantly consented, in the hope that his son would soon return to his sober senses, and that the project would be abandoned with the general concurrence of the family. Meanwhile young George was transferred to Westminster School, then under the rule of the celebrated Busby.

There is reason to fear that the zeal for improvement which he had exhibited at St. Paul's soon left him, and that he here began to acquire those habits of intemperance which after[A. D. 1661.] wards proved so fatal to him. His father hearing of these had all his fears revived, and when the boy was at Acton during the holydays, again tried in vain to induce him to become a tradesman. But finding all dissuasions unavailing, the old gentleman withdrew his opposition, giving him a gentle pat on the back, accompanied by these words,-"Ah, George, George, I fear thou wilt die with thy shoes and stockings on!"

Yet the wayward youth while at Westminster had fits of application, and carried away from thence a sufficient stock of learning to prevent him from appearing in after-life grossly deficient when any question of grammar arose. He was fond of reminding the world of the great master under whom he had studied. On the trial before him as Chief Justice, in the year 1684, of Rosewell, the dissenting minister, for high treason in a sermon delivered from the pulpit, an objection was taken to the sufficiency of the indictment, in which it was alleged that the defendant had said, “We have had two wicked kings together, who have permitted Popery to enter in under their noses, whom we can resemble to no other person but to most wicked Jeroboam; and if they would stand to their principles, he did not fear but they would overcome their enemies, as in former times, with rams' horns broken platters, and a stone in a sling." The counsel insisting that it was not sufficiently averred who were thus to overturn the government by physical force, the Chief Justice, who, on account of a suggestion from the government, wished in this case to procure an acquittal, favoured the objection, and said, "I think it must be taken to be an entire speech, and you lay it in the indictment to bo so, and then the relative must go to the last antecedent, or else Dr. Busby (that so long ruled in Westminster School) taught me quite wrong, and who had tried most of the grammars extant, and used to lay down, as a positive rule of grammar, that the relative must refer to the last antecedent.”*

* 10 St Tr. 299.-The bitter spite always shown against Jeffreys by Roger North is explained by this trial. As junior counsel for the Crown he had drawn the indictment, and was eager to defend it against the intimation of the opinion of the Bench.-Mr. North. "Will your Lordship please to spare me a word ?"—L. C. J.

His confidence in his own powers was so great, that, with out conforming to ordinary rules, he expected to overcome every obstacle. Being now in the neighbourhood of Westminster Hall, his ambition to be a great lawyer was inflamed by seeing the grand processions on the first day of term, and by occasionally peeping into the Courts when an important trial was going forward. He must have been much struck by the grandeur of the Earl of Clarendon, who then presided in the Court of Chancery. In his waking moments he could scarcely have hoped to succeed him, but such visions passed before his imagination, and when he was actually Lord Chancellor he used to relate that, while a boy at Westminster School, he had a dream, in which a Gipsy read his fortune, foretelling "that he should be the chief scholar there, and should afterwards enrich himself by study and industry, and that he should come to be the second man in the kingdom, but in conclusion, should fall into disgrace and misery."

He was now sixteen, an age after which it was not usual to remain at school in those days. A family council was called at Acton, and as George still sanguinely adhered to the Law, it was settled that, the University being quite beyond their reach, he should immediately be entered at an Inn of Court; that, to support him there, his grandmother should allow him forty pounds a year, and that his father should add ten pounds a year for decent clothing.* The aid which has since been found available to poor students, from literary labour, and of which, when a student at Lincoln's Inn, I availed myself, was then unknown; so that this was the whole revenue he could calculate upon till it should be augmented by the distant and uncertain accession of clients and fees.

However, he believed in his dream, and, on the 19th of May, 1663, to his great joy, he was admitted a member of the Inner Temple. He got a small and gloomy [A. D. 1663.] chamber, in which, with much energy, he began his legal studies. He not only had a natural boldness of eloquence, but an excellent head for law. With steadiness of application he would have greatly excelled Lord Keeper Guilford, and in the mastery of this science would have rivalled Lord Hale and Lord Nottingham. But he could not long resist the temptations of bad company. Having laid in a very slender stock for a Counsel or a Judge, he

Ay, sir, let every man be heard, in God's name." Roger makes some observations, which I must acknowledge are rather foolish, and then the C. J thus puts him down:-" Mr. North, the argument turns both ways upon that. It is so loose a hung-together indictment, as truly I have scarce seen.” The Court took time to consider, and the prisoner was pardoned.

* Though so small, it was not much less than that of Lord Keeper Guilford, the son of a peer, ante, 348.

Jefferies (Gs.) Georgius Jefferies de Acton in Comitatu Denbigh Generasus admissus est in hanc Societatem, &c." May 19, 1663. Admission Book, Inner Temple, folio 918.

VOL. III.

34