tender with the assistance of France (which was a very seasonable service, and your Majesty has already shown yourself sensible of it,) they could bring very few if any of their party after them into the same honest measures; but on the contrary, as these leaders above mentioned appeared more zealous for your Majesty's house, so in proportion they visibly lost the affections of their party, and were themselves so sensible of it, that they were forced to bring in the Bill against Schism, only to regain the credit they had lost with their old friends.

It is an old scandal now almost worn out, thrown out by their adversaries on the Whigs, that they are against the prerogative of the Crown, which I should not have thought worth mentioning, but that 'tis generally believed to have made some impression on King William in the beginning of his reign to the irrecoverable detriment of his affairs; but he afterwards found that the Tories, not liking the hand which held the prerogative, were more inclined to straighten it, and the Whigs for the contrary reason to support it. And this false suggestion will certainly have the less weight with your Majesty, when you shall be informed, as the truth is, that the only ground for it was, the Whigs being so zealous for setting aside the Popish line in favour of the Protestant, which the Tories thought a high violation of the rights of Monarchy, and of what they erroneously called the prerogative of the Crown, the descent of which they held to be unalterable by any power on earth, and thence took the liberty of branding all of a contrary opinion as Anti-monarchical, or enemies to the prerogative. But in all other respects the Whigs are as zealous to support the prerogative as the Tories can be, and rather more that they are under a government founded on the Revolution.

Having thus stated to your Majesty the practices and dispositions of the parties, I shall only add, that 'tis not to be doubted but your Majesty's known goodness and experienced wisdom will necessarily incline you to such moderate counsels as will render you King of all your divided people. But I humbly conceive it not possible so to distribute your royal favours, but that one or other of the parties will appear to have a superior degree of trust reposed in them: and if such a perfect equality was possible to be observed, perhaps it would follow that an equal degree of power, tending at the same time different ways, would render the operations of the Government slow and heavy, if not altogether impracticable. It remains, therefore, in my humble opinion, for your Majesty to determine which of these shall have the chief share in your Majesty's confidence, as most likely to support your title to the Crown with the greatest zeal and most untainted affection to it. For as to their power to do it, give me leave to assure your Majesty, on repeated experience, that the parties are so near an equality, and the generality of the world so much in love with the advantages a King of Great Britain has to bestow, without the least exceeding the bounds of law, that 'tis wholly in your Majesty's power, by showing your favour in due time (before the elections) to one or other of them, to give which of them you' please a clear majority in all succeeding parliaments.

It is needless to suggest to your Majesty, but, for method's sake, it ought just to be touched upon, that whichsoever party shall have the lower degree of your Majesty's trust, it ought nevertheless to be used by those in power with very great tenderness and affection while obedient to your Majesty and the laws, and as a father would a child whom he dearly loves, though he does not totally approve, and, to be more particular, should, in my humble opinion, be admitted to a fair share of such places and employments of trust, according to their several qualifications, as are during the pleasure of the Crown, and not attended with the chief dependencies.

This would be very far from the usage which the last ministry of her late Majesty bestowed on those who had served the Queen so faithfully and successfully during the war, by turning them out of all places, even the lowest civil and military, very few excepted; by maintaining libellers, and often writing libels themselves against them; by using their power and majority in parliament to garble their predecessors' conduct, and, for want of better matter, to misrepresent and reflect on parts of it, which were unblameable if not commendable; by proscribing, as far as they were able, to the contempt and hatred of the people, all

that did not come into their measures, and among these the majority of the House of Lords (not reckoning those which that ministry plainly brought in for their own support,) in calling them the faction, and even prevailing with the Queen to brand them plainly enough with the same name, both in several answers to addresses and speeches from the throne, and that for no other reason but their endeavouring, in a legal parliamentary method, to oblige the ministry to make something a better peace than they were about to make, to hinder the separation of the confederate army, to rescue the trade and manufactures of Great Britain from the French treaty of commerce, and to make it evident, as they did at length, that the trade of Spain was become impracticable by the Spanish treaty of com

merce.

I have but one thing more humbly to represent to your Majesty, as the only and, if I mistake not, a sure means to extinguish the being and the very name of party amongst us, that your Majesty would be pleased to use the utmost caution not to prefer any of those ecclesiastics whose known principles lead them to scruple the validity of a limitation of the right to the Crown by act of parliament. There is a sufficient number of the clergy of the Church of England, of the most learned and best livers, out of whom your Majesty may choose for all preferments that shall fall vacant, who are not the least tainted with those notions which, while they continue, will ever find matter for discontents and divisions in your Majesty's kingdoms. But when once it is discerned that, by a steady and uninterrupted administration, no man who is known to hold opinions inconsistent with the very foundation of your Majesty's Government can get into any of the Crown preferments in the Church, they who find themselves troubled with these inconvenient scruples will soon apply their thoughts and studies in good earnest to satisfy themselves, and then others, of the weakness of those errors, which will afterwards, in a little time, be confined to a few melancholy Nonjurors, who are the less dangerous for being known; and when the clergy are brought to be of one mind as to your Majesty's title, all differences in opinion among the laity on that head will soon vanish. But that part of the clergy who have always violently contended against excluding the next successor, though a Papist, will never own themselves to have been in the wrong while they find they have a fair chance for the best of the Church preferments without disavowing those errors, otherwise than by taking the oaths in form.

!

I have nothing further to importune your Majesty with, nor that good Providence which so visibly has placed you on the throne with any thing so earnestly as my hearty prayers that your reign may be long and glorious, and that your posterity to the end of time may rule over a happy and dutiful, and if it is not too much to ask, a unanimous people."

CHAPTER CXVIII.

LIFE OF LORD CHANCELLOR HARCOURT FROM HIS BIRTH TILL HE RECEIVED THE GREAT SEAL.

I now enter upon the Life of a Chancellor who was not only a very zealous Tory, but a Jacobite; and it gives me sincere pleasure to think that I shall be able, almost uniformly, to speak of him with respect and with kindness. He was a tolerably good lawyer, an accomplished orator, and an ardent lover of polite learning. His mind was early imbued with the doctrines of high prerogative; but he may fairly be said in very difficult times to have preserved his consistency and

his character. I do not consider his efforts to restore the exiled Stuarts morally inconsistent with the engagements into which he had entered to the existing Government; and although there were loud complaints against him for at last sending in his adhesion to the House of Hanover, it should be recollected that the cause of the Stuarts had then become desperate, and that, instead of betraying, he did every thing in his power to screen his old associates.

Upon Lord Cowper's first resignation of the Great Seal,-after it had been a short time in the custody of the Lords Com[APRIL 7, 1713.] missioners, Trevor, Tracy, and Scrope, it was delivered, with the title of Lord Keeper, to Sir SIMON HARCOURT. This individual, who had qualities to raise himself from the humblest origin, was descended from a very ancient and distinguished family.* His ancestor is said to have been a younger brother of a Saxon king, and second in command to Rollo, when the band of northern adventurers, in the year 876, invaded France, and got possession of the province to which they gave the name of Normandy. For the services of this chief there was assigned to him the signory of Harcourt, on the banks of the Seine, from which his family took their name. Here they were seated in the middle of the eleventh century--when a younger son of the then chief accompanied Duke William in his memorable expedition to claim the crown of England, fought with him at Hastings, and, having many manors granted to him for his bravery, became the founder of the English Harcourts. Robert, his great-grandson, by marriage with Isabel de Canvile, obtained the estate of Stanton, in the county of Oxford, which thenceforth received the name of Stanton-Harcourt, and has for a period of above seven hundred years remained the property of his descendants. The elder branch flourished in Normandy, as a great ducal house, down to the time of the French revolution, producing many distinguished warriors and statesmen. The cadets in England

Coll. Peer, iv. 428; Noble, ii. 14.

†This Robert was sheriff of Leicester and Warwickshire in the years 1199, 1201, 1202, and the manor of Stanton-Harcourt was confirmed to him and Isabel, and their heirs, by King Stephen and King Henry II. It was held of the Crown by the following service; namely, "That the Lord of Stanton-Harcourt should find four browsers in Woodstock Parke in winter time, when the snow shall happen to fall, and tarrye, lie, and abide, be the space of two days; and so to find the said browsers, there browsing, so long as the snow doth lye; every browser to have to his lodging every night one billet of wood, the length of his ax helve, and that to carry to his lodgings upon the edge of his ax. And the King's bailiff of the demesnes, or of the hundred of Wootton, coming to give warning for the said browsers, shall blow his horn at the gate of the mannor of Stanton-Harcourt aforesaid, and then the said bailiff to have a cast of bread, a gallon of ale, and a piece of beef, of the said Lord of Stanton-Harcourt aforesaid: and the said Lord, or other for the time being, to have of custom yearly out of the said parke, one buck in summer; and one doe in winter. And also the Lord of Stanton-Harcourt must fell, make rear, and carry all the grass growing in one meadow within the parke of Woodstock, called Stanton and Southly mead; and the fellers and the makers thereof have used to have of custom, of the King's Majesty's charge, six pence in money, and two gallons of ale."—Account of Stanton-Harcourt, by George Simon Earl Harcourt, 1808.

maintained the reputation of the race for gallantry and loyalty. In the war of the Roses they sided with the House of York, as the true heirs to the throne; and one of them particularly signalizing himself under the banner of Edward IV. was by him created a Knight of the Garter. When the troubles began in the reign of Charles I., they were all devoted royalists. Sir Simon, the then Lord of Stanton-Harcourt, and grandfather of the Chancellor, fell in the first conflict which took place with the troops of the Parliament in Ireland. Sir Philip, the Chancellor's father, having married the daughter of Sir William Waller, the parliamentarian general, is said to have embraced the Presbyterian religion; but he abhorred the Independents, who had gained a decided superiority, and he refused to submit to Cromwell, even after resistance had ceased to offer any prospect of success. In consequence, a great part of his property was seized and confiscated. When the monarchy was at last re-established, like many other loyal men, he was doomed to the disappointment of all hopes of preferment and even of indemnity, and to struggle with penury during the rest of his days.

His son Simon, the subject of this memoir, was born the very year of the Restoration, and was obliged to submit to some early hardships, which perhaps invigorated his character and sharpened his intellect. I have not been able to ascertain any thing of his early education, and it is probable that till he was fit for the university he remained under private tuition at home-imbibing a proper hatred of Roundheads and Puritans, and hearing the praises of the Blessed Martyr-intermixed with some grumblings at the ingratitude of the restored monarch.*

When fifteen years of age, he was sent to Pembroke College, Oxford, where he was strengthened in his faith in the divine right of kings, and the wickedness of all resistance to their authority. At the same time he occupied himself diligently in classical studies, and he acquired a taste for poetry and polite literature, which stuck by him through life.†

Having resided three or four years at Oxford, he was removed to the Inner Temple, and began the study of the law.‡ Aware that it was with great difficulty his family could defray the expense of maintaining him at the university and the inns of court, and that any patrimony to which he could look forward was exceedingly slender, he applied himself assiduously to "Finch," "The Doctor and Student," and other institutional books then fashionable; and though he was never famous for Black Letter, he made himself pretty fairly master of his profes

* I have since seen a statement that he was at a private school, kept by a Presbyterian minister, at Shelton, Oxfordshire; having for his schoolfellows, Harley, afterwards Earl of Oxford, and Trevor, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas.Townsend's Hist. of the House of Commons, i. 88. 3d ed.

† The Registers of Oxford have been in vain searched for any entry of his Bachelor's or Master's degree, and there seems reason to think that, for some reason not explained, he left the university without graduating. In 1702, when made Solicitor General, attending the Queen and her consort on a visit to Oxford, he being then readmitted of Christ Church, was created LL. D., and in the entry of this he is merely described as "nuper Coll. Pembrok.”

He had been admitted, May 17, 1676.

sion. He at least learned where the law upon different subjects was to be found, so that, as the occasion required, he could get up an argument well on any question pro re natâ, and appear more learned than others who had laid in a larger stock of law over which they had less command. From his family connexions he had access to the best society, and he kept up an intimate acquaintance with poets and dramatists. His person was handsome, and his manners were prepossessing.

He was called to the bar in Michaelmas 1683, when Jeffreys was Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and Guilford was Lord Keeper. There had been great anticipations of his success, and these were not disappointed. He was scarce sooner admitted to plead than admired for his pleading."* Few men ever rose more speedily into general business. He had occasional fits of dissipation, and he very rapidly spent all the fees he received; but he was generally very attentive to the affairs of his clients, and at the age of thirty he was rising rapidly to the top of his profession. He now obtained his first professional dignity, which he probably valued at the time more highly than he ever did any that followed it; he was elected Recorder of Abingdon, and had to act the Judge in the presence of the villagers among whom he gambolled when a boy.

Not blind to the errors of the reign of James II., he had viewed with great aversion what he long continued to designate" the usurpation of the Dutch Stadtholder,"-but, seeing the irresistible combination of churchmen and dissenters to expel the Popish king, he perceived that all opposition to the national will must then be vain and mischievous, and he therefore resolved to "bide his time."

He would have nothing to do with the Convention Parliament, al[A. D. 1688, 1689.] though he might have had a seat in it if he had pleased; but seeing the reaction so speedily begin, -when a new parliament was summoned he got himself returned for Abingdon, in the hope of doing something for King James, and at all events, resolved to embarrass the new Government. He took the oaths of allegiance to William and Mary upon the maxim which guided the conduct of "downright Shippen," and many other adherents of the Stuarts who were considered "honourable men," that such oaths were not binding, and that the sin of taking or breaking them lay upon those who imposed them.

He made his maiden speech on the 9th of April, 1690, in the debate on the bill for recognising the new Sovereign, and con[A. D. 1690.] firming the acts of the Convention Parliament, which had sat without any royal summons. He could not directly oppose the bill, but he tried to disparage it, from the manner in which it was framed, and he boldly said, "I have ever thought the monarchy hereditary; and by this, what becomes of your entail?"-(meaning the settlement of the crown.) "I am not satisfied that the acts of the Convention of

* Gent. Mag. vol. lxv.