Lord Chancellor King's career, most honourable if not very brilliant, was now drawing to a close. His fall was not by a revolution in the state, by the death of a Sovereign, or by a ministerial crisis. With health and fitness for his office, he might have continued to hold it for many years. But, after a long and arduous struggle, he thought it would be decent and becoming that he should voluntarily resign. He had materially injured his constitution by the intense application to which he began to submit for the purpose of qualifying himself as an Equity Judge, soon after he received the Great Seal; and his supervening illnesses were aggravated by the anxiety and mortification to which he was exposed from perceiving that he did not enjoy the confidence of the Bar, as he had done when he was a Common Law Judge. As early as November, 1727, he enters in his Journal his refusal to a pressing request from the Duke of Newcastle to come to town, from Ockham, to attend a cabinet: "To this I returned answer, that my constant and continued application to the business of the Court of Chancery had brought upon me rheumatical and sciatical pains; and if I had any regard to myself or family, I must, for remedy, stay three or four days in the country." He had a very able and experienced Master of the Rolls, but Sir Joseph (piqued, probably, that a common lawyer should have been put over his head,) instead of cordially assisting him, kept aloof as much as he could, and sometimes actually thwarted him in the framing of orders respecting the practice of the Court.* He made extraordinary exertions to clear off arrears, often sitting in court to a late hour; but even for these exertions he was censured. The author of a pamphlet, then published, "Upon the Abuses of the Court of Chancery," bitterly exclaimed, "It was not lawful for the PRÆtor URBANUS to hear causes after sunset; but ours we see post on till midnight, to master and put down the business of his Court." This complaint of late sittings appears very sulky and capricious, but I am afraid it might be excused by what was to be spied in the Court of Chancery in the latter days of Lord Chancellor King. The celebrated Jeremy Bentham, in a letter to Cooksey, the author of the "Lives of Lord Somers and Lord Hardwicke," has given, from the relation of his father, an eminent solicitor, a very lively picture of the manner in which Equity business was then disposed of: . "Lord King became so far advanced in years when he held the Seals as Chancellor, that he often dozed over his causes when upon the bench; a circumstance which I myself well remember was the case; but it was no prejudice to the suitors; for Sir Philip Yorke and Mr. been pointed out by that great Judge, Lord Raymond." The jury very properly brought in a verdict of not guilty, the evidence, to those who understood it, being decisive to prove that the prisoner had murdered his wife. * Diary, p. 19. "His secretary delivered me a letter from him, whereby he declares that he will prevent as much as he can the usher submitting to any such bills." † History of Chancery, &c., 1726, 12mo. Talbot were both men of such good principles and strict integrity, and had always so good an understanding with one another, that, although they were frequently, and almost always, concerned for opposite parties in the same cause, yet the merits of the cause were no sooner fully stated to the Court, but they were sensible on which side the right lay; and, accordingly, the one or the other of these two great men took occasion to state the matter briefly to his Lordship, and instruct the Register in what manner to minute the heads of the decree."* At last, when Lord King had been Chancellor eight years-from the exertions he made beyond his strength, he was struck by a paralytic affection, which happily left him conscious of the propriety of his retirement. He yielded to the necessity with decency and firmness, and intimated, first to the Minister, and then to his Majesty, his determination to resign. Not being in a state of health to go to St. James's to surrender the Great Seal with his own hand, at his request George II., on the 19th of November, 1733, sent the Secretary of State to his house to receive it, and to bear warm acknowledgments of his long and faithful services. Having delivered up the bauble with little regret, the ex-Chancellor felt that he was now completely disabled for public life, and that the time that might be spared to him was to be devoted to contemplation. He immediately hastened to his favourite retreat at Ockham, and, having a mind early tinctured with literature and devotion, he was not sorry to exchange the distractions of business for the resumption of his theological studies and the settlement of that great account which he was about to render of his thoughts and of his actions in this mortal state. He seemed to rally from repose and the pure air of the country, but on the 22d of July in the following summer, about [A. D. 1734.] noon, he had a fresh and much more severe attack of his disorder, and, at eight o'clock in the evening of the same day, he expired, in the sixty-sixth year of his age. His body was interred in the parish church at Ockham, where there was erected a most splendid and tasteful monument to his memory by Roubiliac-with these words engraved on an urn:— "DEPOSITUM PETRI DOMINI KING, And the following inscription on a tablet underneath: * Cooksey's "Somers," p. 60. When business is divided in a court between two great leaders without competitors, justice may thus be substantially administered, although not always to the satisfaction of the losing party, who expects his counsel to make the best fight he can in return for his fee. The late Chief Justice Gibbs told me that when he led the Western Circuit against Sergeant Lens, they kept a weak Judge right. "Thus," said he, "I once, knowing I had no case, opened a nonsuit before my brother Graham. He was for deciding in my favour; but I insisted on being nonsuited, and saved my client the expense of having a verdict in his favour set aside." "He was born in the City of Exeter, of worthy and substantial parents, but with a genius superior to his birth. By his industry, prudence, learning, and virtue, He applied himself to his studies in the Middle Temple, And to an exact and complete knowledge in all parts and history of the Law, added the most extensive learning, Theological and Civil. He was chosen a Member of the House of Commons in the year 1699; Made Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in 1714, on the accession of King George I.; Created LORD KING, BARON OF OCKHAM, and raised to the post and dignity of Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, 1725; under the laborious fatigues of which weighty place, sinking into a paralytic disease, he resigned it Nov. 19, 1733, And died July 22, 1734, aged 65, A Friend to true Religion and Liberty." This panegyric is modest and well deserved. The voice of posterity re-echoes “A friend to true religion and liberty!" He was not celebrated for his eloquence; he has not enriched our literature with any very attractive compositions; and he did not, in his highest elevation, equal the expectation that had been formed of him; but he was a most learned, enlightened, and upright magistrate, ever devoted to the conscientious. discharge of the duties of his station. He rose from obscurity to high distinction by native energy and self-reliance,-without courting the favour of any patron or of the multitude, and without ever incurring the suspicion of a dishonourable or mean action. If he did not dazzle by brilliant qualities, he gained universal good-will by such as were estimable and amiable. He himself unostentatiously ascribed all his success in life to his love of labour, and he took for his motto, "Labor ipse voluptas,"-upon which I find in the Biographia Britannica the following paraphrase by one of his admirers: "'Tis not the splendour of the place, Duty and taste in you unite * When Lord King was about to be raised to the peerage, a gentleman of the name of Whatley sent him a long dissertation on "MOTTOES," warning him against a punning or "canting" one, as "A Rege pro Rege," and submitting three for his choice: "Est Modus in Rebus," "Discite Justitiam," and "Vincit Ratio." This is preserved among the "Somers' Tracts," edited by Sir Walter Scott. I have not been able to discover much of him in private society, but he seems, notwithstanding his addiction to divinity and law, to have had no inconsiderable share of humour, and he must have been a most determined punster if we may judge from the following epitaph, which he wrote, when Chancellor, upon an old carpenter of the name of Spong, and which is still to be read on a square granite grave-stone covering this "plane" man's remains in Ockham church-yard: "Who many a sturdy oak had laid along Fell'd by DEATH's surer hatchet, here lies SPONG. Whose pales and gates were for eternity. So here he rests from all life's toils and follies, O spare awhile, kind Heaven, his fellow-labourer, Hollis."* Lord King, as I have before stated, was married early in life, and he continued to live with the object of his affections to the day of his death in perfect harmony and happiness. By her he left four sons, three of whom successively inherited his honourable title and ample estate. Though all well-behaved, none of them appear in any way to have gained much renown. The eldest, for dabbling in poetry, is grouped in the DUNCIAD with other dull sons of distinguished sires: "Great C**, H**, P**, R**, K** Why all your toils? your sons have learned to sing; How quick ambition hastes to ridicule! The sire is made a peer, the son a fool." But in another generation the talent of the founder of the family again broke out with fresh lustre. The late Lord King, so eminent for wit, eloquence, and every great and amiable quality, was the grandson of the youngest of the four brothers. The Chancellor The Chancellor is now represented in the direct male line by the Earl of Lovelace, whom I rejoice to see deservedly raised in the peerage, but whom, from my regard for the memory of old Sir Peter, I should have been still better pleased to have hailed as " EARL KING."t * Hollis was bricklayer to the family, as Spong had been carpenter.-Gent. Mag. vol. lxx. p. 113. The present Earl of Lovelace denies that his ancestor was the author of those lines on Spong's tombstone: it is stated that he died Nov. 17, 1736, which is two years and four months after Lord Chancellor King; so that if his Lordship wrote the jeu d'esprit, it must have been to amuse the old carpenter in his life-time. + Grandeur of the Law, p. 114. CHAPTER CXXVII. LIFE OF LORD CHANCELLOR TALBOT FROM HIS BIRTH TILL HE RECEIVED THE GREAT SEAL. E We have now bid a final adieu to the stirring times of William III. and of Anne, in which the last six preceding Chancellors played a distinguished part. Those who were to follow did not enter public life till the House of Hanover was securely on the throne; and, without being engaged in revolutionary intrigues, they rose to high office merely by professional eminence. The Georgian period of English history, to which we are to be confined, was comparatively tranquil; but it presents us with great men at the head of the law, who would have been capable of guiding the destinies of the nation under any circumstances, however arduous. The first of these was praised in a more vehement and less qualified manner than almost any one who ever held the office of Lord Chancellor. Historians and poets were equally eager to celebrate his good qualities. But this arose in part from the sympathy excited by his fate, for he was only shown as a Judge to excite the admiration of mankind when he was snatched away to an early tomb. CHARLES TALBOT sprang from a very ancient and illustrious family, which has produced a great number of distinguished warriors and statesmen, having for his ancestor the companion of Henry V., who, after the death of that monarch, so heroically sustained the interest and glory of the English name in France. He was of a younger branch of the Talbots-settled first at Grafton, and then at Salwarp, in Worcestershire.* His father, a younger brother, went into the Church, and, displaying learning and liberality of sentiment, was successively Dean of Worcester, and Bishop of Oxford, of Salisbury, and of Durham. The Earl of Shrewsbury, the early friend of Lord Somers,-head of the house at the close of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century, who took a leading part in two revolutions,-in bringing in King William, and bringing in King George,-no doubt assisted the merits of his kinsman in procuring these promotions. Bishop Talbot was, as might be supposed, a zealous Whig. From him was inherited the eloquence in debate which distinguished his son. He seems to have had considerable weight in the House of Lords. Burnet particularly celebrates his speech in favour of the Union with Scotland, and his speech against Dr. Sacheverell. On this last occasion he boldly denied that the Church condemned resistance in cases of extreme tyranny, and he relied upon the instance of the Jews who, under the brave family of the Maccabees, revolted against Antiochus, and * This branch was descended from Sir Gilbert Talbot, third son of John second Earl of Shrewsbury. |