an upstart, and she herself having been educated as a Roman Catholic, had great scruples about being united to a Protestant. Williams, having a living in the neighbourhood, had frequently visited at Belvoir, and, enjoying a great reputation for sanctity, stood high in the good graces both of the father and daughter. he Buckingham applied to the rector of Waldegrave to become a mediator for him in this affair. He readily undertook the mission, and sped so well that the old Earl consented to take Buckingham for his son-in-law, and the young lady swayed by the cogent theological arguments submitted to her, and the softened accounts of the gallantries of her lover now hinted to her, renounced the errors of Popery, and agreed to be married to him according to the rites of the Church of England. So complete was the negotiator's success, that he was allowed himself to draw the marriage-settlement, and to perform the marriage ceremony. He used to say "that this negotiation was the key-stone in the arch of his preferment."* He now considered himself regularly enlisted among Buckingham's retainers; and, that he might be constantly near the spot where intrigues were to be successfully carried on, he immediately applied to his patron to be made Dean of Westminster, saying, “I am an humble suitor, first, to be acknowledged your servant, and, that I may be nearer, and better able to perform my desires, to be by your happy hand transplanted to Westminster. If your honour be not bent upon an ancienter servant, I beseech you think upon I am true, and so reputed by my former, and, by the grace of God, will prove no otherwise to my second, master."* The application succeeded, and Williams, taking up his abode at the Deanery, while he bestowed much labour [A. D. 1621.] upon the financial concerns of the Chapter, which he found in sad disorder, frequently attended the Court at Whitehall, and was ready to avail himself of any chance which might happen for his farther advancement. me. On the 30th of January, 1621, the parliament met, from which James and his ministers expected nothing but supplies and submission, but which Williams, from having mixed with the lower and middling ranks, and being aware of the discontents which had been long accumulating, early perceived would make an irresistible attack on certain political abuses which even Court preachers could not defend. He saw the Commons begin with Sir Giles Mompesson and Monopolies, but knew they would not stop there, and, well pleased-not surprised, he heard of the committee appointed to inquire into the corrupt practices prevailing in the Court of Chancery, and of the charges of bribery against Lord Chancel lor Bacon. But he was surprised as well as pleased when, the day after, Sir R. Philips, chairman of the committee, had presented a report which declared these charges to be true and the fit subject of impeachment, he was sent for by Buckingham, and confidentially consulted as to the measures to be adopted by the Court for quelling the storm. Whether Williams at this moment dimly discovered any shadow of his coming greatness it is impossible to say. Though the advice he gave coincided with his own interest, it must be allowed to have been sound. The vote of the House of Commons against the Lord Chancellor having been nearly unanimous, and the evidence against him being conclusive, he was already condemned by the public voice, and he must have been found guilty by the Lords. To stifle the prosecution, while parliament was allowed to continue sitting, was impossible. An abrupt dissolution might have been resorted to. This was the favourite expedient of the Stuarts; but producing a temporary respite, it fatally increased their difficulties. On the present occasion, Williams truly urged "that the House of Commons as yet had given no just cause of complaint; ́that if the abuses complained of existed, the whole nation would say they ought to be removed; that the government would not long be carried on without parliamentary aids, and that another parliament would only be more formidable to the prerogatives and to the ministers of the Crown." We have already related how Buckingham and the King, convinced that this was the safest course, put themselves under the guidance of the Dean of Westminster, who was supposed by the public, and even by Bacon, to be only occupied with saying prayers in the Abbey; how Sir Edward Villiers was sent on his embassy,-how Mompesson and Michell were surrendered up as victims to the public indignation, and how the impreachment of the Chancellor was allowed to proceed, with every disposition to save him or to soften his fall.* A long adjournment at Easter having been found ineffectual to divert the Commons from their purpose, Bacon, as the most expedient step for himself and the government, confessed the truth of all the charges brought against him.-Sentence being pronounced upon him, the difficult question arose, who was to be his successor? The bold and wise step would have been to have at once offered the Great Seal to Sir Edward Coke, who would have eagerly accepted it, and whose formidable patriotism would thus have been for ever extinguished, instead of blazing through the remainder of this reign, and causing a conflagration in the beginning of the next; but he had rendered himself personally so obnoxious to the King, that his promotion could not be proposed without making James threaten to abdicate the English throne and to return to his own country. Buckingham, likewise, though now connected with him by marriage, was afraid of his occasional fits of independence and his ungovernable temper. * Ante, p. 325, et seq. There was more deliberation about Ley, the Chief Justice, who had very creditably performed the duties of Speaker of the House of Lords since Bacon's retirement; but it was thought that his subserviency might prove more valuable by retaining him to preside in the Court of King's Bench. Hobart, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, had great hopes from the favour of the Prince, to whom he was Chancellor; but Buckingham had a particular antipathy to him, from his resistance to some illegal patents when he was Attorney General. The competitor who had the best chance was Sir Lionel Cranfield, Master of the Court of Wards, who though slenderly educated, having been a merchant's clerk, had considerable natural abilities, was related to Buckingham, and was his slave. The other aspirant was Williams. Having insinuated himself into the confidence of the King and the minister,-" out of this bud the Dean's advancement very shortly spread out into a blown flower."* For some reasons, he would have been greatly preferred to all the rest, but there were obvious objections to the appointment, which kept it for some time a measuring cast between him and Sir Lionel Cranfield. Under these circumstances he was desired to draw up a statement of the profits of the office, from the information he had derived in the situation he had held under Ellesmere. His panegyrist says, with true simplicity, that "he returned an answer on the 10th of May, with the best advantage he could foresee to the promotion of the Master of the Wards;" but it seems quite clear to me, that his object was to undervalue and disparage the office that it might come to himself: Although the more I examine myself the more unable I am made to my own judgment to wade through any part of that great employment which your Honour vouchsafed to confer with me about, yet because I was bred under the place, and that I am credibly informed my true and noble friend, the Master of the Wards, is willing to accept it, (and if it be so, I hope your Lordship will incline that way), I do crave leave to inform your Honour, by way of prevention, with secret underminings, which will utterly overthrow all that office and make it beggarly and contemptible. The lawful revenue of the office stands thus, or not much above at any time. In fines certain, 13007. per annum, or thereabout. In fines casual, 1250l., or thereabout. In greater writs, 140%. For impost of wine, 100%-in all 27907-and these are all the true means of that great office." He then proceeds to state how it was likely * Hacket, 51. † Ibid. 52. This must be a most extravagant understatement of the profits of the office. I say nothing of bribes and presents, said in Lord Bacon's four years to have amounted to 100,000l.; but the regular legitimate fees and perquisites enabled the Lord Chancellor to maintain a princely establishment, and with common prudence to amass a great fortune. In a MS, treatise on the Court of Chancery by Sir Robert Cotton, which I have seen, it is said, "the Lord Chancellor hath for his allowance, and of the Masters of the Chancery, 5421. 15s.-and 300l. for his attend to become still poorer by the Lord Treasurer claiming a certain part of the fines, and the under officers petitioning "to have some collops out of the Lord Chancellor's fees "*;-thus concluding, Now, I hope when your Lordship shall use this information to let the King see it, that you will excuse me for the boldness that I am put upon by your commands.”+ According to Hacket, Buckingham carried this letter, "the ink scarce dry," to the King,--when the following dialogue took place between them.-King. "You name divers to me to be my Chancellor. Queen Elizabeth, after the death of Sir Christopher Hatton, was inclined, in her own judgment, that the good man, Archbishop Whitgift, should take the place, who modestly refused it because of his great age, and the whole multitude of ecclesiastical affairs lying upon his shoulders. Yet Whitgift knew not the half that this man doth in reference to this office.”—Buckingham. Sir, I am a suitor for none but for him that is so capable of the place in your great judgment."-King. "Be you satisfied then, I think I shall look no further."—Buckingham instantly sent a message to Williams, that the King had a preferment in store for him; he, not thinking of the Great Seal, conjectured it must be the Bishopric of London, then vacant, for which he had been a suitor: so it happened to him as is related of Scipio Emilianus: " Ædilitatem petens Consul creatus est." The friendly biographer admits that when the appointment was announced to the public, it caused great astonishment. "It was much and decidedly spoken of as a paradox of honour. Some could not believe it. Some said it was no new way, but an old one renewed; and God give him joy of it. The best professors of our laws took it sadly, without doubt, that one did never run in their race had got their garland."§ ance in the Star Chamber,-2001. for wine,-641. for wax, and 61. yearly for the casual fines,-communibus annis, 3001.-Item 21. of every patent, and the fines of all extents." But this beggarly account cannot be at all relied upon. * Hacket, 51. † Ibid. ‡ Hacket, 59. § Hacket, though he vouches his credit for the truth of this story admits that a different report was spread abroad as to the manner in which the appointment was finally settled, and I must confess my belief that Sir Lionel Cranfield was induced by the letter to prefer the snug place he then held to one attended with so much envy and danger, and seemingly so little profit,-whereupon Buckingham resolved that Williams should have it, on a promise to dispose of its patronage as directed, and that his Dad immediately acquiesced in the proposal made to him. Williams himself, I doubt not, gave his biographer the narrative in the text; but Clarendon has shown that where his personal honour was concerned, his testimony is of no value.-Hist. Reb. vol. i. 345. Hist. Reb. vol. i. 345. See Hacket, 52. A piece of legal preferment is said to have been still more unexpectedly conferred in the time of Lord Thurlow. A briefless barrister, the height of whose ambition was to be a commissioner of bankrupts,-an office then worth not more than 100l. a year,-asked the Duke of Gloucester to apply for it to the Chancellor, and the following dialogue took place between them :-D. of G. "I am very desirous to obtain for a friend of mine at the bar an office in your Lordship's Court, bat unfortunately I have forgot the name of it.-Thurlow. “There is a Mastership in Chancery now vacant1; perhaps that is what your Royal Highness means."—Ď. of VOL. II. 1 Worth 3000l. or 4000l. a year. ans. This appoinment has not been sufficiently censured by historiIt affords a striking proof of the arbitrary principles on which the government was conducted, and the total disregard of the public opinion which was manifested in furtherance of any scheme or whim of the King or the minister. Equity had be come a branch of jurisprudence applicable to a great portion of the property of the kingdom, and (as Lord Bacon's Orders demonstrate) the practice and doctrines of the Court of Chancery had assumed a systematic form. No one was fit to preside there till after legal lucubrations of twenty years-and a Cambridge scholastic divine, although when chaplain to a Lord Chancellor he had affected to read and talk a little law, must have been as ignorant of the questions coming before him as the door-keepers of his Court. He was to superintend the general administration of justice throughout the realm, who had never acted as a Judge, except at the Waldegrave Petty Sessions, in making an order of basThe case tardy, or allowing a rate for the relief of the parish poor. bore no resemblance to the elevation of such men as Warham, Morton, or Wolsey, who had regularly studied the civil and canon law, and who lived in times when the Chancellor was expected to act according to his own notions of justice without regard to rule or precedent. A story was afterwards circulated, that when the Great Seal was brought from Lord Bacon to King James, he exclaimed: "Now, by my saul, I am pained at the heart where to bestow But this this; for as to my lawyers, I think they be all knaves."* saying is quite apocryphal, and, if genuine, would equally have justified the appointment of the Dean of Westminster to be Chief Justice of the King's Bench or Common Pleas. We may rest assured that James was very little consulted upon the occasion, and that Buckingham, in this outrageous act, considered only what would best suit his own arbitrary schemes for governing the country. A serious difficulty immediately arose about the installation of the new Lord Keeper. It was now Easter Term, and he ought forthwith to have taken his place in the Court of Chancery; but an apprehension was entertained that, from his gross ignorance of all that was to be done there, he might make some ludicrous blunders, so as to stir the indignation not only of the suitors and the lawyers, but of the House of Commons,-a body now regarded with considerable awe. After much deliberation it was resolved, on Williams's own suggestion, that the Great Seal should remain in commission till the commencement of the long vacation. "Thus popular discourse, inclining much to descant upon this mat G. "I think, my Lord, that must be the very thing."-Thurlow. "Sir, I cannot refuse any application from your Royal Highness which it is in my power to comply with, and your friend shall be appointed." Appointed he was, and held the office very creditably many years. * Parks on Court of Ch. p. 93. |