CHAP. XCVII. His literary accom plishments. His style of living. Although he never aimed at oratory, it is said that he meditated a "History of his own Times." He might have transmitted to us many curious anecdotes, but the performance must have been without literary merit; for some of his notes which he had written as materials are in the most wretched style, and show that he was unacquainted with the first principles of English composition, and even with the common rules of grammar. He did publish two or three short tracts "on Music" and other subjects,-which were soon forgotten. He was well versed in music, conversed with Sir Peter Lily about painting, speculated with natural philosophers on the use of the bladder of fishes, and learned several of the continental languages; but he seems never to have looked into a classical writer after he left college, and to have had the same taste for the belles lettres as his brother Roger, who, placing them all in the same category, talks with equal contempt of "departed quacks, poets, and almanack makers." Although his two immediate predecessors were libelled and lauded by popular verses in the mouths of every one, I can find no allusion in any fine writer either of the Court or Country party to North; and it may be doubtful whether he knew any thing of the works of Butler, of Dryden, of Waller, or of Cowley, beyond the snatches of them he may have heard repeated in the merry circle at Whitehall. He lived very hospitably,-receiving those who retailed the gossip of the day in his house in Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, then the fashionable quarter of the town for the great nobility as well as for eminent lawyers. He had a large range of stables near his house, under the superintendence of his "Master of the Horse," an old cavalier officer who could smoke tobacco and taste claret, though not very skilful or careful in his office. There were various tables in the house daily,—from that of the Major Domo, or the "prefect of eating," down to that of the inferior servants, who "ate like harpies at the catch, and, to say truth, most scandalously." The nobility and chief gentry coming to London frequently dined with him. The dinner was at a * Preface, vi. very early hour, and did not last long. "After a solemn service of tea in a withdrawing-room, the company usually left him." He had a Court-room fitted up on the groundfloor, which he then entered, and there he continued hearing causes and exceptions, sometimes to what was considered a late hour. About eight o'clock came supper, which he took with a few private friends, and relished as the most agreeable and refreshing meal of the day.† In the vacations, when he could be spared from London, he retired to his seat at Wroxton. For some years he likewise rented a villa at Hammersmith, but this he gave up soon after his wife's death. He had the misfortune to lose her after they had been married only a few years. She seems to have been a very amiable person. She found out when her husband had any trouble upon his spirits, and she would say, Come, Sir Francis (as she always styled him), you shall not think; we must talk and be merry, and you shall not look on the fire as you do. I know something troubles you; and I will not have it so." He would never marry again, which in his last illness he repented, for "he fancied that in the night human heat was friendly.” CHAP. XCVII. Attach ment of his wife to him. Guilford He was extremely amiable in all the relations of domestic Lord life. Nothing can be more touching than the account we amiable in have of the warm and steady affection subsisting between domestic him and his brother, who survived to be his biographer. "Il life. The Lord Keeper was a little but handsome man, and is His person. said to have had "an ingenuous aspect," his motto being volto sciolto, i pensieri stretti." He left behind him Francis, his son and heir, the second His deBaron Guilford, father of Francis, the third Baron Guilford, scendants. on whom descended the Barony of North, by failure of the elder branch of the family, and who, in 1752, was created Earl 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 *Life, ii. 319. 167. Ibid. 316. ↑ Ibid. 195-210. CHAP. XCVII. His early 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 promotions should bear in mind that he died at forty-eight, an age consiand early death, derably 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. Merits of North as a I ought not to conclude this memoir without acknowledging my obligations to "Roger North's Life of the Lord biographer. 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. * Grandeur of the Law, p. 64. CHAPTER XCVIII. * LIFE OF LORD CHANCELLOR JEFFREYS FROM HIS BIRTH TILL HE CHAP. XCVIII. IT is hardly known to the multitude that this infamous person ever held the Great Seal of England; as, from the almost exclusive recollection of his presiding on criminal trials, "Judge he has been execrated under the designation of "JUDGE Jeffreys." 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. Q whether Jeffreys has been too much, or not suffi abused? 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 ciently, 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., His parentof Acton, near Wrexham, in Denbighshire, a gentleman of age. 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 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. XCVIII. CHAP. 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 advanceHis father's ment of his boy George. It is said he had an early prepresentiment as to sentiment 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.* his end. A. D. 1648. He, of whom such tales were to be told, was born in his His birth. father's lowly dwelling at Acton in the year 1648. † He showed, from early infancy, the lively parts, the active temperament, the outward good humour, and the overbearing disposition which distinguished him through life. He acquired an ascendency 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 leap-frog he was known to take undue advantages; and nevertheless he contrived, notwithstanding secret murmurs, to be acknowledged as "Master of the Revels." A.D. 1656. At school at Shrewsbury. While still very young he was sent to the free school at the town of Shrewsbury, which was then considered a sort of metropolis for North Wales. Here he continued for two or three years but we have no account how he demeaned him 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. I 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. 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." |