LIVES OF THE LORD CHANCELLORS OF ENGLAND. CHAPTER CIII. LORDS COMMISSIONERS OF THE GREAT SEAL ON THE ACCESSION OF WIL- THE interregnum, which began on the 10th of December, 1688, when of the crown from the Lords and Commons, under the conditions specified in the “Declaration of Rights," were proclaimed King and Queen. Most of the high offices of state were immediately filled up; and nearly all the common law judges being very properly removed, on account of their corruption and insufficiency, the bench was replenished with a most excellent new set,-Holt being at their head, as Chief Justice of England. So far no difficulty was experienced in determining and executing what was fit to be done in Westminster Hall. But much doubt and hesitation arose respecting the disposition of the Great Seal. A rumour was propagated which I think rests on no sufficient grounds, that it was seriously offered-with the title of Lord Chancellor-first to Lord Nottingham, and then to Lord Halifax; and that they both declined it.* The perversion of law through the instrumentality of corrupt courts, having mainly brought about the Revolution, William and his ministers were anxious above all things to obtain credit for a satisfactory administration of justice, and it would require strong evidence to convince us that they proposed appointments to which the public could hardly have submitted under the exiled sovereign. Equity had * See 3 Kennett, 550. 3 Burnet, O. T. 4. now assumed a systematic form; the decisions of the Chancellor were reported and cited as authority, like those of the common law judges; Guilford and Jeffreys, however venal where the crown was concerned, were regularly trained lawyers, and they were capable of deciding satisfactorily between subject and subject. It is impossible, therefore, that, to please Tories or Whigs, there could have been any real intention of placing as supreme judge in the Court of Chancery any nobleman, however respectable, who had, from the day of his leaving the university, devoted the whole of his time to fashionable amusement or political intrigue. I believe, upon the accession of William, it was resolved, as a permanent arrangement, instead of a single judge presiding in the chancery, to resort to the plan adopted during the commonwealth, of having several judges sitting there co-ordinately,-after the model of the common law Courts.* Recollecting the fantastical as well as arbitrary acts of which late Chancellors had occasionally been guilty," single-seated justice" was then in great disrepute; and very fallacious hopes were entertained, that the long-standing evils of the Court of Chancery might be cured by severing it from all connexion with politics, and appointing to the bench there, several deep lawyers, who should have nothing to distract them from their judicial duties.‡ Accordingly, on the 4th of March, SIR JOHN MAYNARD, Anthony Keck, Esq., and Mr. Serjeant Rawlinson, were named Lords Commissioners of the Great Seal. On the following day they were sworn in before the King in Council at Whitehall, and the last two received the honour of knighthood.§ Keck and Rawlinson are wholly uninteresting characters, and there could be no amusement or instruction in recording the dates of their * On examining the Books of the Privy Council, I find the following order made so early as the 18th February, 1688-89: "Present, "The King's most Excellent Majesty, &c. "It is this day ordered by his Majesty in Council, that Mr. Aaron Pingrey, one of the Clerks of the Petty Bag in Chancery, do cause copies forthwith to be made of all commissions that were granted by Oliver the Protector for custody of the Great Seal, and send them to Sir Robert Atkyns for his perusal." †The Benthamite term for a tribunal with a single judge. It has been said that the reason for putting the Great Seal into commission was to multiply offices; but Keck and Rawlinson were men without political claims or influence. "Present, "At the Court at Whitehall, the 5th of March, 1688-89. "The King's most Excellent Majesty. "The Right Honourable Sir John Maynard, Knight, having taken the oaths enjoined to be taken by the late act of parliament instead of the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, was this day, by His Majesty's command, sworn one of the Lords Commissioners for the custody of the Great Seal of England." A similar entry follows with respect to each of the other two, with the addition of the words," and at the same time received the honour of knighthood from his Majesty." Books of Privy Council. See also Crown Off. Min. Book, fol. 131. 2 Vernon's Rep. 95. birth, of their going to the university, of their being called to the bar, and of their death,--which would comprehend the whole of their known history, beyond their accidental appointment to their present office.* But the career of the first Lord Commissioner is very curious, were it for nothing else than that it lasted much longer than that of any other English lawyer or statesman, as he had been called to the bar and sat in the House of Commons in the year 1625, in the very beginning of the reign of Charles I., and he held a high office in the law, and was a member of the House of Commons, in the year 1690, in the second year of the reign of William and Mary. Having been engaged in the most important state trials during that period, having been a representative of the people in every intermediate parliament, whether held by Kings or Protectors,-having assisted in passing the "Bill of Rights" as well as the "Petition of Right,"-having seen the government carried on by prerogative for many years, without popular assemblies,-the constitution first reformed and then subverted by the Long Parliament,—the vicissitudes of the civil war,—the trial and execution of the King,—the establishment of military despotism,-the recall of the an-. cient dynasty, two turbulent reigns, in which the voice of the law and the lessons of experience were despised, he lived to see the Stuarts for ever banished from their native country, and the foundation laid of a constitutional monarchy which still flourishes, and has conferred upon Britons a greater degree of civil and religious freedom, and of public prosperity, than ever fell to the lot of any other nation. This remarkable man-reminding us of the patriarchal race, who could plant an acorn, and recline under the spreading boughs of the unwedgeable and gnarled oak which sprang from it was the eldest son of Alexander Maynard, Esq., a gentleman of good family in the county of Devon.† He was born at Tavistock in the year 1602. At the age of 16 he was entered of Exeter College, Oxford, where he took his degree of A. B. We have no account of his academical habits, but his eager and dogged love of application was innate, and must have early marked him for eminence. Being destined to the legal profes sion, he was removed to the Middle Temple, where luckily he found a set of hard reading men, including Noy, Selden, and Rolle. Now he acquired that taste for black letter law which stuck by him through life, and made him prefer the "YEAR BOOKS" to Shakspeare or Ben Jonson; insomuch that when he grew rich and kept his coach, he never took an airing in it without having a volume of these Reports as a companion, and he solaced his old age by publishing an edition of them. At the same time he was a diligent attender at "moots," and *«Their name, their years, spelt by the unletter'd Muse, † I do not find any relationship stated between the Devonshire Maynards and the Essex family of the same name ennobled by Charles I. and represented by the present Viscount Maynard. Roger North thus describes Maynard's well known passion for the Year Books. "He had such a relish of the old Year Books that he carried one in his |