English; that great delays would arise in the administration of justice; that a wide door would be opened to fraud; that prosecutions for crimes would be rendered more difficult and expensive; that the recovery of small debts would become almost impossible, and that the supposed reform would multiply law-suits instead of bringing ease to the people." Lord Raymond, the Chief Justice of the King's Bench, speaking, I presume, the sentiments of all his brother Judges, strongly opposed the measure-availing himself of the weapons of ridicule as well as of reason, and saying, "that, if the bill passed, the law might likewise be translated into Welsh, since many in Wales understood not English." The Duke of Argyll, after a general defence of the bill, said he was glad that nothing could be brought forward against it by the Chief Justice of the King's Bench, as wise and learned a lord as ever sat in that House-beyond a joke.-Amidst heavy forebodings of future mischief the bill passed, and mankind are now astonished that so obvious a reform should have been so long deferred." 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 per y 4 Geo. 2, c. 26; and see 6 Geo. 2, c. 14, allowing technical expressions, such as nisi prius, quare impedit, &c., still to be used. Blackstone laments the loss of the old law Latin (Com. iii. 322); and I have heard the late Lord Ellenborough from the bench regret the change, on the ground that it has had the tendency to make attorneys illiterate. Serjeant Heywood, the vindicator of Fox, seriously acted upon Lord Raymond's jest, As I have been told by the counsel who were present, while he was sitting as Chief Justice of the Caermarthen Circuit on a trial for murder, it appeared that neither the prisoner nor the jury understood one word of English, and it was proposed that the evidence and the charge should be translated into Welsh; but his Lordship said that" this would be repealing the act of parliament which requires that all proceedings in courts of justice shall be in the English tongue, and that the case of a trial in Wales, the prisoner and the jury not understanding English, was a case not provided for, although it had 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. A.D. 1733. HIS DECLINING HEALTH. 121 ceiving 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." a 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. 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 oc z 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." a History of Chancery, &c., 1726, 12mo. casion to state the matter briefly to his Lordship, and instruct the Register in what manner to minute the heads of the decree." b At last, when Lord King had been Chancellor eight yearsfrom 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. A.D. 1734. Having delivered up the bauble with little regret, the exChancellor 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 22nd of July in the following summer, about 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 A.D. 1734. HIS DEATH AND CHARACTER. And the following inscription on a tablet underneath : "He was born in the City of Exeter, of worthy and substantial parents, 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, He was chosen a Member of the House of Commons in the year 1699; Recorder of the City of London in the year 1708; 123 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 Novr. 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, The gilded coach, the purse, the mace, Duty and taste in you unite To make the heavy burden light; 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 is said, when Chancellor, to have written 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 churchyard: "Who many a sturdy oak had laid along, Fell'd by DEATH's surer hatchet, here lies SPONG. So here he rests from all life's toils and follies, O spare awhile, kind Heaven, his fellow-labourer, Hollis." d 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 to have in any way gained much renown. The eldest, for dabbling in poetry, is grouped in the DUNCIAD with other dull sons of distinguished sires:— |