CHAP. April, 1579. Clamour for the ap pointment of a Chancellor. Queen's There being now an outcry that no injunctions could be obtained, and that the hearing of causes was suspended, the Queen, who personally made all such appointments, and sometimes vacillated much about them, was informed that Westminster Hall could go on no longer without a Lord Chancellor or Lord Keeper. She was determined that the clergy should be kept to their spiritual affairs; a mere politician could not be fixed upon without great scandal, and there was no lawyer whom she considered eligible. Sir Gilbert Gerrard had been Attorney General ever since her perplexity. accession to the Crown; but although he was well learned in his profession and very industrious, he was awkward and ungainly in his speech and manner, and not considered fit for such a place of representation and dignity. Yet there was a reluctance to pass over a man of approved service. Sir Thomas Bromley, the Solicitor General, was inferior to him in legal acquirements, but was much more a man of the world, and had shown himself a most zealous partizan, and ready, without scruple, to perform any task that might be Sir THOMAS assigned to him. After much intriguing, the friends of the Solici- Mr. Solicitor prevailed with the Queen; and on a suggestor General, tion that, on account of his inferior rank, there might be a appointed Lord disposition not to treat him with proper respect, she added to Chancellor. their triumph by delivering the Great Seal to him, with the title and rank of "Lord Chancellor." * BROMLEY, Sir Gilbert Gerrard, the Attorney General, was consoled with a promise of the office of Master of the Rolls, which was actually given to him on the 30th of May, 1581. clusum et sigillo ipsius Nihi ut predicitur munitum de manibus ejusdem Dne Anne Bacon recipien. illud circa horam decimam ante meridiem predicti diei prfe Dne Regne in sua privata Camera infra palacium suum Westmon. ibidem juxta ipsius Dne Regne benepltum obtulerunt et presentaverunt ac eadem Dna Regina," &c. (received the Seal and kept it till Feb. 24., when she delivered it to Burghley and Leicester,) "pro tempore utend. et exercend. Quo accepto iidem Wills Dns Burghley et Comes Leicester tunc immediate usque Magnam Cameram Concilii infra palacium prdm asportari fecerunt et sigillum illud ibidem extra bagam prm adtunc extrahi fecerunt et eodem sigillo sic extracto divers. literas patentes processus et brevia de communi cursu Regni Angl. in presencia Thom. Poole, &c. sigillari fecerunt." Then comes a statement of their having, at seven o'clock, restored the Seal to its integuments, and given it to the Queen in her private chamber, and that the Queen kept it there till the 8th of March,― the whole history being repeated toties quoties. • Rot. Cl. 21 Eliz. p. 201. XLIV. Although Sir THOMAS BROMLEY held the Great Seal CHAP. during eight years, he would hardly have been known to history, had it not been from the part he acted in the proceedings against the unfortunate Mary Stuart; but he will be remembered to the latest times as the person who framed the measures intended to bring her to the scaffold, and who actually presided at her mock trial in the hall of Fotheringay Castle. He was the son of George Bromley and Jane, daughter of His birth. Sir Thomas Lacon of Whitley, and was born in the year 1530 at Bromley, in the county of Salop, where the family had been seated many ages, their name being territorial.* I do not find any information respecting his school or academical education. He was bred to the law in the Inner Bred to Temple, and was there remarkable for his proficiency and the the law. regularity of his conduct. Rapidly rising to eminence at March 14. the bar, he was, in 1566, elected Recorder of London, and Solicitor having secured the good opinion and patronage of Lord General. Keeper Bacon, in 1570 he was made Solicitor General.† Made Norfolk. His first great public appearance in his official character Jan. 1572. was on the trial of the Duke of Norfolk for high treason, His con before the Court of the Lord High Steward. The counsel trial of for the Crown were Barham the Queen's Serjeant, Gerard Duke of the Attorney General, Bromley the Solicitor General, and Wilbraham, the Queen's Attorney of the Court of Wards. We have a shorthand writer's report of the trial, which is extremely curious, and shows that Bromley was exceedingly zealous in bringing about the conviction. The Court consisted of the Earl of Shrewsbury, appointed Lord High Steward, the Great Seal being in the keeping of a Commoner, and twenty-six Peers triers, attended by all the common-law Judges as assessors. The indictment had been settled at a conference of all the Judges before it was preferred to the grand jury. No regularity was observed, much of the time As we say in Scotland, "Bromley of that ilk." This family produced several other distinguished lawyers; among these were Sir Thomas Bromley, made a Judge of the King's Bench, 36 H. 8.—and Sir George Bromley, a brother of the Chancellor, a Justice of North Wales. Dugd. Or. Jur. 1 St. Tr. 957. † Pat. 11 Eliz. Or. Jur. s. 3. XLIV. CHAP. being occupied with dialogues between the prisoner and the Judges, and interlocutory speeches by the Lord High Steward, the Lord Triers, the Judges, and the counsel. The French fashion of interrogating the prisoner then prevailed in England, and the Duke was frequently asked to admit or to deny certain facts, to explain his conduct on particular occasions, and to reconcile the evidence adduced against him with his alleged innocence.* Barham, the Queen's Serjeant, holding an office which had precedence of that of the Attorney General till the regency of George IV., began, and gave in evidence copies of letters, examinations, and confessions, mixing them up with speeches from himself and questions addressed to the prisoner, to show that the Duke persisted in his design to marry the Queen of Scots after his promise not to do so, and that he was engaged in a plot to further her escape. Mr. Attorney having followed in the same strain, Bromley, Solicitor General thus began:-"For that the time is spent, and your Lordships I think are weary, I will not now make any collection what hath been gathered of the attempt of marriage with the Scottish Queen; only I will deal with the matter of Rodolph's message, and the effect thereof; and the Duke's adhering to the Queen's enemies and rebels, shall be another part." He then proceeded, at considerable length, to detail the supposed plan of invading the kingdom by the intrigues of Rudolfi, an Italian banker, with the Duke of Alva, and gave in evidence a decyphered copy of a letter from Rudolfi to the Duke, alleged to have been delivered to him by one Barker, who was supposed to have taken the copy.-Duke. "It may be Barker received this letter as you spake of, and that it was decyphered, and that it contained the matters that you allege, but it may be that they kept that letter to themselves, and might bring me another letter containing only such matter as I was contented with."- Solic. "An unlikely matter! But thus you see the Duke confesseth the receipt of the letter; he He was first very artfully asked "whether he knew that the Scottish Queen' pretended title to the present possession of the crown of England," and wishing to evade the question, he is pressed, "Did you know that she claimed the present possession of the Crown?-that she usurped the arms and royal style of this realm? - and that she made no renunciation of that usurped pretence?" only denieth it was to this effect.". Duke. "I know not. Barker presented me the letter out of cypher, and I had not the cypher, nor saw any such letter as you allege."- Solic. "The Pope sent letters to the Duke and the Scottish Queen, that he liked well of their enterprise. Would Rodolph have gone to the Pope and procured letters if he had not had instructions accordingly? The Duke himself hath confessed such a letter."-Duke. "Barker indeed brought me about six or seven lines written in a Roman hand in Latin, beginning thus, Dilecte fili, salutem. I asked what it was? Barker told me it was a letter from the Pope to me, wherewith I was offended, and said, 'A letter to me from the Pope! How cometh this to pass?' Barker excused it, and said that Rodolph had procured it for his own credit."- Solic. "The Duke received it and read it, and said, Rodolph hath been at Rome: I perceive there nothing be done this year. By this it appeareth that he reproved not Barker for bringing it unto him." Mr. Solicitor having proved his position according to the law and logic then prevailing, thus concluded: “I have also, my Lords, one thing more to say to you from the Queen's Majesty's own mouth. The Lords that be here of the Privy Council do know it very well, not meet here in open presence to be uttered, because it toucheth others not that are not here now to be named but by her Highness's order. We pray that their Lordships will impart it unto you more particularly. In Flanders, by the ambassador of a foreign prince there, the whole plot of this treason was discovered, and by a servant of his brought to her Majesty's intelligence; the minister not meaning to conceal so foul and dishonourable a practice, gave intelligence hither by letters, and hath therein disclosed the whole treason in such form as hath here been proved unto you: whereupon I refer the more particular declaration thereof to the Peers of the Privy Council." CHAP XLIV. to support the charge. So a capital charge was to be made out by the parol state- Evidence ment, in the absence of the accused, of the Queen's ministers (who had advised the prosecution) of the contents of a despatch from a foreign minister, giving an account of something he had heard from others abroad respecting a plot to XLIV. CHAP. be carried into effect in England;-but no doubt could be entertained either as to the admissibility or conclusiveness of this evidence, for it was produced by an express order from the Queen's Majesty's own mouth. Found guilty, and executed. April 30. 1572. Grief of After a speech from Wilbraham, the Attorney of the Court of Wards, said to have been the most eloquent that had then ever been heard at the English bar, and some more copies of letters, confessions, and examinations,—without any witness being called, the case for the Crown was closed. The prisoner had asked for the assistance of counsel; but the Chief Justice declared the unanimous opinion of the Judges, that to allow counsel against the Queen was contrary to all precedent and all reason.* He was asked whether he had aught else to say? He answered, "he trusted to God and truth." He was then removed, and the Lord High Steward summed up the case to the Lords Triers, and willed them to go together. They withdrew from Westminster Hall into the Court of Chancery, and after a consultation of an hour and a quarter returned with an unanimous verdict of Guilty. On the prayer of the Queen's Serjeant, the frightful sentence in cases of high treason was pronounced on the undaunted Norfolk.+ But this conviction, even in that age, caused such dissatisfaction, that the government did not venture to carry it into execution for several months; nor until the public mind had been alarmed by reports of an insurrection to rescue him from the Tower, and to dethrone the Queen. ‡ Mary was thrown into the deepest grief by the fate of Norfolk. If his manly beauty and elegant accomplishments * Before they are heavily censured for the horror with which they viewed such a proposal, let it be remembered that the bill to allow prisoners the assistance of counsel in cases of felony was strongly condemned by all the Judges of England, except one, in the reign of King William IV. † 1 St. Tr. 978. I ought not to have any bias in favour of the Duke of Norfolk, for he seems to have thought that all my countrymen were without honour or veracity, and he was ready, in a very peremptory manner, to avow this sentiment. The written examination of Leslie, Bishop of Ross, being given in evidence against him, he considered that it required no other answer than this: - Duke. “He is a Scot." The reply was, "A Scot is a Christian 1;" but this did not at all satisfy the Duke. 1 1 St. Tr. 978. |