over, Lord Campbell has antedated the gene- be demonstrated by undeniable facts. ral use of carriages. John Aubrey, writing Shaftesbury received the Great Seal on the of Dr. Harvey, some years later (1680), 17th November, 1672; he took his seat in says: He rode on horseback, with a foot the Court of Chancery on the eighteenth; cloth, to visit his patients, his man following and the minutes in the Registrar's office on foot, as the fashion then was, which was show that he never sate without assessors. very decent, now quite discontinued. The He had the Master of the Rolls and Mr. judges rode also with these footcloths to Baron Windham with him the first day, and Westminster Hall, which ended at the death either the Master of the Rolls or a Common of Sir Robert Hyde, Lord Chief Justice. Law judge, and Masters in Chancery, every Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury, would have other day till the end of the term. He revived it, but several of the Judges, being might have sate alone had he thought fit. old and ill horsemen, would not agree to it.' Did he invite these learned personages to sit Mr. Christie adds that Chief Justice Hyde with him to witness his mode of trampling died in May, 1663; so that the custom re- upon their forms! vived by Shaftesbury had not been disused for more than ten years.

Lord Campbell admits that Shaftesbury never took bribes, would not listen to private solicitations in favour of litigants, and never had more than one political case before him (the Injunction Case) in which he came eventually to a right conclusion. But, except being free from gross corruption, he was the worst judge that ever sate in the court. This was inevitable; for he might as well have tried to sustain the principal part in an opera without having learned the first rudiments of music.' That, like many of his predecessors and successors, he was deficient in technical knowledge, was no reason why he should be worse than the rest, than Hatton or Williams, for example, who knew nothing of the practice of the court when they came to it. Roger North says that after he (Shaftesbury) was possessed of the Great Seal, he was in appearance 'the gloriousest man' alive. As for the Chancery, he would teach the bar that a man of sense was above all their forms. He swaggered and vapoured what asses he would make of all the council at the bar; but the month of March, as they say, "In like a lion, and out like a lamb." Their alleged mode of taming was this: "They soon found his humour, and let him have his caprice, and after, upon notice, induced him to discharge his orders, and thereupon, having the advantage upon the opening, to be heard at large, they showed him his face, and that what he did was against common justice and sense. And this speculum of his own ignorance and presumption coming to be laid before him every motion day, did so intricate and embarrass his understanding, that, in a short time, like any haggered hawk that is not let sleep, he was entirely reclaimed.'

....

The utter falsehood of this account may when his steed, getting frisky, pitched him head over heels amongst the staff, not a little to their and their great king's amusement, which was enhanced by the discovery of the mistake.

6

It is remarkable (observes Hume) that this man, whose principles and conduct were in all other respects so exceptionable, proved an excellent Chancellor, and that all his decrees, whilst he possessed that eminent office, were equally remarkable for justness and integrity. Quoting only the first half of this commendation, Lord Campbell adds, and all the historians of the eighteenth century, reading Dryden or copying each other, write to the same effect.' Such is the learned lord's method of accounting for the unanimous acceptance by successive ages of the very worst chancellor as an excellent one. Dryden's praise of Shaftesbury's judicial character is imbedded in his bitterest satire.

'Yet fame deserved no enemy can grudge;
The statesman we abhor, but praise the judge.
In Israel's courts ne'er sat an Abbethdin
With more discerning eyes or hands more
clean,

Unbribed, unsought, the wretched to redress,
Swift of despatch and easy of access.'

Lord Campbell objects that, had Dryden been sincere, his testimony ought not to have much weight, for he was probably never in a court of justice in his life; and though the first of English writers in polite literature, he could not have formed a very correct opinion as to the propriety of an order or decree in Equity.' This argument would disqualify any writer, not a practising lawyer, from ever embodying the public estimate of a judicial worthy-a Hardwicke, a Mansfield, an Eldon, or a Lyndhurst-in poetry or prose. But, it is urged, the panegyric was purchased. The lines did not appear in the first edition of the poem; they were added in the second, out of gratitude for a nomination to the Charter House given to the poet for his son in the intervening period by the Lord Chancellor. This story when King Charles II. read these (the added) was first told by Dr. Kippis, who adds that lines, he told Dryden that he had spoiled by them all which he had before said of Shaftes

bury. Examples of such alterations may be found in literary history. The first manuscript copy of English 'Bards and Scotch Reviewers' contained these two lines amongst others on rhyming lords:—

'On one alone, the muse still deigns to smile And hails a new Roscommon in Carlisle.'

Before the poem was published, the noble poet took offence at Lord Carlisle's real or supposed neglect and substituted the couplet :

'No muse will cheer with renovating smile, The paralytic puling of Carlisle.'

Poets are a susceptible as well as irritable race, and Dryden might have done from gratitude what Byron did from spite. He is known to have omitted in the reprints of the 'Spanish Friar' some passages which had given offence to the Duke of York. But he left the rest of his immortal diatribe against Achitophel without one softening epithet, and followed it up by a (if possible) still bitterer attack in 'The Medal.' The date of young Dryden's admission to the Charter House on the King's (not Shaftesbury's) nomination happens to be subsequent to the appearance of the corrected edition of the poem; and, all things considered, we incline to Sir Walter Scott's theory of the correction: namely, that there must be an appearance of candour on the part of the poet, and just so much merit allowed, even to the object of his censure, as to make the picture natural: that Dryden considered the portrait of Shaftesbury deficient in this respect, and added the laudatory lines with a view to effect. Besides, the recognition of Shaftesbury's judicial merit was not altogether an afterthought. The first edition of the poem contained these lines:—

'Oh! had he been content to serve the crown
With virtues only proper to the gown,
Or had the rankness of the soil been freed
From cockle that oppressed the noble seed,
David for him his tuneful harp had strung
And Heaven had wanted one immortal song!'

With regard to Charles II.'s criticism, it
must be remembered that, shortly before
Shaftesbury broke with the Court, his Ma-
jesty asseverated, with his favourite oath,
that his Lord Chancellor knew more law
than all his judges, and more divinity than
all his bishops. The royal praise may serve
to counterbalance the royal censure; but
both were valueless. Shaftesbury had full
credit for law and divinity only so long as he
was ready to aid in superseding law by pre-
rogative and divinity by papal infallibility.

At the opening of the first Session after he

6

received the Great Seal, his devotion to the
King's wishes was exuberant and unre-
strained. He attacked Holland, exclaiming
Delenda est Carthago:' he justified the
shutting up of the Exchequer, and he
sneered at the Triple Alliance. His speech
was preceded by a scene which might well
have ruffled his nerves, if it did not check
the effusion of his royalty. It had been
settled at the Restoration that the King's
brothers should occupy seats on the left of.
the throne, the seat on the right being reserved
for the Prince of Wales. Some years after-
wards (as the incident is related by Martyn),
upon the queen's apparent barrenness, the
Duke of York being looked on as the cer-
tain successor to the crown, and his power
increasing at court, he took the chair on the
Lord Chancellor
right-hand of the throne.
Shaftesbury, the first day he sat as speaker,
resolved to replace the Duke in his proper
He informed him that he was in the
seat.
wrong chair, and that his place was on the
other side of the throne, as only heir pre-
sumptive. The Duke being unwilling to quit
his seat, Lord Shaftesbury told him that he
could not proceed upon business till the
house was in form. At length the Duke was
obliged to submit, but said, in a passion,
"My lord, you are a rascal and a villain."
He, with great composure, immediately re-
plied, "I am much obliged to your royal
highness for not calling me likewise a coward
and a papist.'

Shaftesbury speedily repented of his speech on the opening of the session, and apologised for it on the untenable ground that he spoke it as the mouthpiece of the Cabinet or Cabal.

That he was not their mouthpiece was proved, within a few days, by his speech in answer to Clifford, the Lord Treasurer, in a debate on the Declaration of Indulgence, or (according to Echard) 'a project for establishing a perpetual fund to free the King from his dependence on Parliament.' Before Shaftesbury had done speaking, the Duke of York whispered the King, who was standing at the fire, 'What a rogue you have for a Lord Chancellor.' The King replied, 'Cods-fish, what a fool have you for a Lord Treasurer.' Clifford, a bigoted Catholic, went heart and hand with the Duke: and one of Shaftesbury's objects in supporting the Test act, including the declaration against Transubstantiation, was to displace, on the chance of replacing, the Lord Treasurer. On Clifford's resignation the coveted staff was given to Osborne, afterwards Earl of Danbury; and Shaftesbury saw that his power, instead of being on the increase, was on the wane. Although he did not at once break up the Court, he seems to have scented the

.

After sermon Shaftesbury carried the Great Seal home with him; and in the course of the afternoon his brother-in-law, Mr. Secretary Coventry, came for it, and is reported to have said: 'My Lord, you are happy; you are out of danger, and all safe; but we shall all be ruined and undone; I desired to be excused from this office, but, being your relation and friend, they put it as an affront on me.' Shaftesbury replied with alacrity, 'It is only laying down my gown and putting on my sword.' Martyn adds, that he immediately sent for his sword

Popish Plot and the great Exclusion battles | told the Duke of York that all their mea from afar; for affecting to think his life sures were broken.' in danger from the Papists, he turned his house into a garrison all the summer; and, when Parliament met for the autumn Session of 1673, he stirred up a formidable opposition in the Commons to the projected marriage of the Duke with Mary of Modena. The cup of his transgressions was now full to overflowing, and the King shared the distrust of the Popish junto headed by the Duke. It was after supper at the Duchess of Portsmouth's, when the King had drunk freely, that they pressed him to dissolve Parliament. They so far succeeded that he sent the next morning for Shaftesbury, and, tak-thus most prosaically converting a metaing him into the closet, after some immaterial conversation, asked him if he had brought his robes, as the instant prorogation of Parliament had been resolved upon. Shaftesbury interpreted this resolution as involving his own dismissal, and ended a manly remonstrance with these words: 'But, sir, you may fancy what you please of the Romish religion, I shall leave this as a maxim with you: if you and butter in the morning, and govern well, it will make you more healthy and happy here, and bring you to heaven much sooner, than Popery or the exorcisms of its priests.'

eat sage

The prorogation took place, and Shaftesbury was required to give up the Great Seal to the Attorney-General, Finch; the next morning but one, Sunday, November 9th, being fixed for the purpose. According to Martyn and Stringer, who are followed by Lord Campbell and doubted by Mr. Christie, as soon as he (Shaftesbury) arrived at Whitehall, he presently attended the King in the closet, while the prevailing party waited in triumph to see him return without the purse. Being alone with the King, he said, "Sir, I know you intend to give the Seals to the Attorney-General, but I am sure your Majesty never designed to dismiss me with contempt." The King, always good-humoured, replied, "Cods-fish, my Lord, I will not do it with any circumstance as may look like an affront." Then, sir," said the Earl, "I desire your Majesty will permit me to carry the Seals before you to Chapel, and send for them afterwards to my own house." To this his Majesty readily assenting, Shaftesbury entertained him with conversation, purposely to tease the courtiers and his successor, who, he knew, were upon the rack of fear he should prevail upon the King to change his mind. The King and the Chancellor came out of the closet talking together and smiling as they went to the chapel, which was so contrary to the expectations of those who were present, that some went immediately and

phorical form of expression into a fact.*

It is clear from one of Colbert's letters, that an attempt was made to induce Shaftes bury to resume office, backed by a covert bribe of ten thousand guineas from France. 'But now,' to adopt the keen and quaint expressions of Roger North, our noble Earl and mighty statesman having, as it seems, missed his aim at Court, takes over to the country party (as it was called) openly. And from thenceforward we find the party itself at work upon a new foot. There was no more depending on the King, as formerly, to make him destroy himself the shortest way, since he showed a dexterity to save himself at any time, by a short turn, as if he had learnt the art of his great High Chancellor.'

The City was the principal scene of Shaftesbury's machinations, and he announced an intention of taking a house there for fear of having his throat cut by the Papists if he ventured to sleep west of Temple Bar. The King, forgetting that he had not yet assimilated the English monarchy to the French, sent a message forbidding him, at his peril, to carry out the intention, and intimating that he would do well to go down to the country as soon as the weather would permit. Amongst other aggressive measures against the Court, he carried addresses for a public fast to implore the protection of the Almighty for the preservation of Church and State against Popish recusants, for the removal from office of all counsellors Popishly affected, and specifically for the dismissal of the Dukes of Lauderdale and Buckingham, his former colleagues in the Cabinet. This was in the spring session of 1674. In the spring session of 1675 he was joined by the Duke of Buckingham, who

*Shaftesbury was ordered to deliver up the Great Seal, and instantly carried over his front Opposition.' (Macaulay.) Why tongue of poi of brass and tongue of poison to the ranks of the son? The expression is singularly inappropri ate and unjust.

This was not the only occasion on which he came into conflict with the Bishops. Speaking on a question of privilege and defending the purity of the judicial decisions in the House of Commons, some ladies were in of the House of Lords in spite of notorious ders. The Speaker spying them called out, attempts to corrupt them, he said: 'Pray,What borough do those ladies serve for?' To my Lords, forgive me if, on this occasion, I put you in mind of committee dinners, and the scandal of it; as also, those droves of ladies that attend all causes. It was come to that pass, that men hired, or borrowed of L-12