though probably not entirely in their present form. There is one very able pamphlet, however, which has been printed from his own manuscript. It is entitled "A Treatise on the King's power of granting pardons in cases of impeachment," and was written, as his son informed Mr. Speaker Onslow, on the occasion of the question being mooted in the affair of Lord Danby. This manuscript was sold among the collection of Mr. Carteret Webb, and came, we believe, into the possession of the Marquis of Lansdowne. It was particularly alluded to in parliament, at the time of Warren Hastings' impeachment; and in a debate in the House of Lords, some doubts were expressed as to its authenticity, because in sections 61, 62, and 63, the author maintains a doctrine different from that which he is reported to have delivered in the case of Lord Stafford. Mr. Hargrave had seen the pamphlet, and to remove all doubts, it was published in 1791. If we except two speeches and one official letter of Lord Nottingham's in the Harleian manuscripts, and various other loose reports of speeches contained in different works, these are, so far as we know, all the productions attributed to him as directly or indirectly their author.

Out of fourteen children, Lord Nottingham left behind him eight; one daughter and seven sons. Of these, the eldest, Daniel, succeeded to his father's title, and on the failure of issue in the elder branch of the Finch family, took also those of Earl of Winchelsea, and Viscount Maidstone, with the large possessions thereto attached. There was a younger son who followed the law with some reputation; but the second, Heneage, also a barrister, almost rivalled his father in the brilliancy and success of his professional career. A natural gift of eloquence was held, it seems, at that time, to be an hereditary talent in the Finch family; for North, in his discourse on the study of the laws, where he is expatiating on the necessity of a lawyer's endeavouring to acquire readiness of speech, after quoting the familiar saying of Serjeant Maynard, that the law is ars bablativa, adds that "all the learning in the world will not set a man up in bar practice without the faculty of a ready utterance; and that is acquired by habit only, unless there be a natural felicity of speech, such as the family of the Finches is eminent by." This reputation was not only well kept up,

but considerably added to by Heneage Finch, the second son of the chancellor. He was called, for his eloquence, silver tongued Finch; and this qualification, together with his legal learning, so effectually "set him up in bar practice," that he was considered fit to hold the office of solicitor-general shortly after his father was appointed Chancellor (1678). From this post he had the honour to be removed by James the Second, in 1686. In 1688 he was one of the principal counsel for the seven bishops. Subsequently, during the reign of Queen Anne, (15th March 1702) he was called to the upper house by the title of Baron Guernsey, and on the accession of George the First was created Earl of Aylesford (19th October 1714); thus attaining the same rank which his father had acquired in the peerage, and completing the list of the eminent men who have made the name of Finch so honourably conspicuous in our legal annals of the seventeenth century".

* In one of the caustic notes written by Swift on the margin of Burnet's History, Lord Aylesford is designated as an arrant rascal." If Swift's character stood as high for impartiality as for wit, this imputation would be a serious one: as it is, it only proves that Aylesford was a staunch whig, and therefore obnoxious to a man who, like all renegadoes, was more violent in behalf of his new faith than those who had professed it all their lives. Besides the five eminent Finches we have enumerated above (not including Francis, the younger son of the Chancellor), we find a Nathaniel Finch called to the degree of serjeant at law in 1640.

90

SIR JOHN HOLT.

If we were to admit the general truth of an observation often made, that the biography of a lawyer, however eminent, unless he have also won his way to political distinctions, and bequeathed his fame to posterity as a statesman or an orator, cannot be expected to afford much of interest for the general reader; it is at least subject to some striking exceptions, one of which presents itself in the instance of the illustrious judge of whom we are about-it may be said for the first time—to collect the scattered notices. Although disconnected by his station and duties, during the greater part of his mature life, from any direct interference in the conflict of politics, and undistinguished by any brilliancy of oratorical talent, the Lord Chief Justice Holt filled his high office so long and so worthily, and in times when the bold and honest administration of justice, above all of criminal justice, was so intimately essential to the welfare of his country, and so contrary, unhappily, to the melancholy experience of many years;-he presided on so many occasions most interesting to every student of our constitution ;-finally, his personal character and history presented so many points, not only to excite the admiration and respect, but also to minister to the curiosity and even amusement of the reader, that the narrative of his life can hardly be altogether unattractive to any, who look back with gratitude on the period when their country's liberties, so long the spoil of pensioned kings and servile judges, first found the security, not only of just and equal laws, but of an incorrupt and fearless application of them. To legal readers, at all events, it may furnish matter of interesting contemplation to trace the

pure and honourable career of one of the most learned and virtuous of their profession, even, as we hope, in so brief and imperfect a record as we are able to present of it.

John Holt was born at the little market-town of Thame, in Oxfordshire, on the 30th of December, 1642. He was the eldest son of Sir Thomas Holt, knight, a bencher of Gray's Inn, and a gentleman of some property in Oxfordshire, who was called serjeant in the year 1677, rather, as it would seem, in virtue of his son's reputation and practice, which had then become very extensive, than of his own, of which few traces are to be discovered. Sir Thomas was a fast adherent of the court-party of Charles II., and one of the abhorrers of petitioning for the sitting of parliament, who fell under the displeasure of the Commons in the unruly session of 1680. The son, after spending seven or eight years, unprofitably enough, at the free school of Abingdon (his father being at the same time recorder of that borough), was transferred, in his sixteenth year, as a gentleman commoner to Oriel College, Oxford, where he was placed, as Anthony Wood informs us, under the tuition of a Mr. Francis Barry. Of the tutor's qualifications we have no account; but the pupil, who had brought with him from school the reputation of a determined idler, and a reckless perpetrator of mischief, was by no means estranged from his disposition to forbidden gratifications, by the greater opportunities of indulgence afforded by a university life; and he is reported, accordingly, to have signalised himself by an abandonment to all kinds of license, and continual infractions of discipline. To such a length, indeed, did some of his escapades proceed, and so little consideration did he exercise in the choice of his associates, that tradition even reports him as having recognised, many years afterwards, one of his old companions in a prisoner convicted before him of felony; and, on visiting the culprit in gaol, and inquiring the fate of certain of their college intimates, having received for answer,-"Ah, my lord, they are all hanged but myself and your lordship!"

Another story of his juvenile extravagances, which perhaps has been too long current to be set down as altogether apocryphal, is supplied with a more extraordinary sequel in his judicial history. Having prolonged one of his unlicensed

rambles round the country, in company with some associates as reckless as himself, until their purses were all utterly exhausted, it was determined, after divers consultations how to proceed, that they should part company, and try to make their way singly, each by the exercise of his individual wits. Holt, pursuing his separate route, came to the little inn of a straggling village, and, putting the best face upon the matter, commended his horse to the attentions of the ostler, and boldly bespoke the best supper and bed the house afforded. Strolling into the kitchen, he observed there the daughter of the landlady, a girl of about thirteen years of age, shivering with a fit of the ague; and on inquiring of her mother how long she had been ill, he was told, nearly a year, and this in spite of all the assistance that could be had for her from physicians, at an expense by which the poor widow declared she had been half ruined. Shaking his head with much gravity at the mention of the doctors, he bade her be under no further concern, for she might assure herself her daughter should never have another fit: then scrawling a few Greek characters upon a scrap of parchment, and rolling it carefully up, he directed that it should be bound upon the girl's wrist, and remain there till she was well. By good luck, or possibly from the effect of imagination, the ague returned no more, at least during a week for which Holt remained their guest. At the end of that time, having demanded his bill with as much confidence as if his pockets were lined with jacobuses, the delighted hostess, instead of asking for payment, bewailed her inability to pay him as she ought for the wonderful cure he had achieved, and her ill-fortune in not having lighted on him ten months sooner, which would have saved her an outlay of some forty pounds. Her guest condescended, after much entreaty, to set off against his week's entertainment the valuable service he had rendered, and wended merrily on his way. The sequel of the story goes on to relate, that when presiding, some forty years afterwards, at the assizes of the same county, a wretched decrepid old woman was indicted before him for witchcraft, and charged with being in possession of a spell which gave her power to spread diseases among the cattle, or cure those that were diseased. The Chief Justice desired that this formidable implement of sorcery might be handed up to him; and there,