CHAPTER XVIII. CHANCELLORS AND KEEPERS OF THE GREAT SEAL DURING THE XVIII. Sept. 30. 1399. JOHN JOHN SEARLE, who had nominally been Chancellor to CHAP. Richard II., and presided on the woolsack as a tool of Archbishop Arundel, was for a short time continued in the office by the new Sovereign. Little is known respecting his origin or prior history. He SEARLE, is supposed to have been a mere clerk in the Chancery nominally brought forward for a temporary purpose to play the part of Chancellor. Having strutted and fretted his hour upon the stage, he was heard of no more. It proved convenient for the Staffords, the Beauforts, and the Arundels, that he should be thus suddenly elevated and depressed. Chancellor. ment. Henry began his reign by summoning a parliament to A parliameet at Westminster on the 21st of January, 1401. On that day the knights and burgesses were called into the Court of Chancery in Westminster Hall before the Chancellor, and by the King's authority he put off the meeting of the parliament till the morrow.* The Lords and Commons then met the Chancellor King in the Painted Chamber, but on account of incapacity to address for public speaking the Chancellor was silent, and the speech the two explaining the causes of calling parliament, was, by the King's command, delivered by Sir William Thyrning, Chief Justice of the King's Bench. not allowed Houses. On the 9th of March following Lord Chancellor Searle sur- Resigns. rendered the Great Seal to the King in full parliament, and his Majesty immediately delivered it to Edmund Stafford, Bishop of Exeter, who had held it towards the end of the preceding reign, and had been a special favourite of Richard, but had joined in the vote for deposing him. * 1 Parl. Hist. 285. CHAP. XVIII. His ob. scurity. Edmund Stafford restored. Issues of in Court of Chancery to be tried law. We are left entirely ignorant as to the fate of Ex-chancellor Searle. Had he been a prelate we should have traced him in the chronicles of his diocese, but we have no means of discovering the retreat of a layman unconnected with any considerable family, and of no personal eminence. He was probably fed in the buttery of some of the great barons whom he had served, hardly distinguished while he lived or when he died from their other idle retainers. He may enjoy the celebrity of being the most inconsiderable man who ever held the office of Chancellor in England. Edmund Stafford, restored to the office of Chancellor, now found his situation very irksome, and very different from what it had been under the feeble Richard. Henry was his own minister, looked with jealousy and distrust on those who had helped him to the crown, and confined all whom he employed strictly to their official duties. The Chancellor's disgust was increased by an attack which the Commons now made on the jurisdiction of his Court. They complained by petition to the King of the new writ of subpoena, and prayed "that people might be only treated according to the right laws of the land anciently used;" but the King's answer tended to confirm the jurisdiction complained of: "Such writs ought not to issue except in necessary cases, and then by the discretion of the Chancellor or King's council for the time being." A considerable improvement, however, was effected in the fact arising mode of proceeding when issues were joined upon controverted facts in the Court of Chancery. The custom seems in a Court to have been for the Chancellor himself to try them, calling of common in common law judges to his assistance; but the Commons now prayed "that because great mischiefs happen in the Court of Chancery by the discussion of all pleas in matters traversed in the said Court, and by the judges of the two benches being taken out of their Courts to assist in the discussion of such matters, to the great delay of the law and to the damage of the people, the King would ordain that traverses in the Court of Chancery be sent and returned either into the King's Bench or Common Pleas, and there discussed XVIII. cellor re signs. and determined according to law." The King's answer was, CHAP. "The Chancellor, by virtue of his office, may grant the same, and let it be, as it has been before these times, at the discretion of the Chancellor for the time being."* Ever since, when an issue of fact is joined on the common-law side of the Court, the Chancellor hands it over to be tried in the Court of King's Bench, and controverted facts in equity proceedings he directs to be tried by a jury in any of the common-law Courts at his discretion. Stafford held the Great Seal only till the end of February, The Chan1403. The office stript of its power had lost its attraction for him, and he, who differed very little from the warlike baron his elder brother, had no inclination to sit day by day as a judge in the Court of Chancery, for which he felt himself so unfit,-under the vigilant superintendence of the unmannerly Commons. He therefore willingly resigned the Great Seal into the King's hands, and retired to his diocese to exercise baronial hospitality, and to enjoy hunting and the other sports of the field, in the vain hope that some revolution in politics would again enable him to mix in the factious strife which still more delighted him. But he con- His retreat tinued to languish in tranquillity, and before the war of the Roses began, which would so much have suited his taste, he was gathered to his fathers. and death. Feb. 1403. 1403. Upon this vacancy the Great Seal was given to the King's half-brother, HENRY BEAUFORT†, who was four times Lord Chancellor, who was created a Cardinal, and who made a dis- CARDINAL tinguished figure as a statesman during three reigns. He was the second son of John of Gaunt, by his mistress Catherine Swinford, afterwards his wife, and with the other issue of this connection, he had been legitimated by act of parliament in the 20th of Richard II., under the condition of not being entitled to succeed to the Crown. He studied both at Oxford, at Cambridge, and at Aix la Chapelle. Taking orders, he rose rapidly in the church, and while still a young man, he was, in 1397, made Bishop of Lincoln by his royal BEAUFORT, His origin and early career. Rot. Par. 2 Hen. 4. † Privy Seal Bills, 4 Hen. 4. CHAP. XVIII. His conduct as Chancellor. Attempt of House of Commons to seize church property. cousin. He gained great celebrity by assisting at the Council of Constance, and by making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. When he first obtained the Great Seal he still remained Bishop of Lincoln. The following year he was translated to Winchester, where he succeeded the famous William of Wickham, and he continued till his death to hold this see, then considered the best in England to accumulate wealth,-which was through life his ruling passion, great as was his love of power. During this reign, the King was his own minister, and neither the present nor any of his other Chancellors had much influence in the affairs of government. They were in the habit of delivering a speech at the opening of every parliament; but it was rather considered the speech of the King, which could not be censured without disloyalty. Three parliaments met in Henry Beaufort's first Chancellorship, at which nothing very memorable was effected; but at the last of them an attempt was made by the Commons (probably at the instigation of the King), which, if it had succeeded, would have greatly altered both the ecclesiastical and civil history of the country. All who are friendly to a wellendowed church ought to exclaim, "Thank God we have had a House of Lords." The Chancellor, in a speech from the text, "Rex vocavit seniores terræ," having pressed most urgently for supplies, the Commons came in a body, and the King being on the throne proposed, "That without burthening his people, he might supply his occasions by seizing on the revenues of the clergy; that the clergy possessed a third part of the riches of the realm, which evidently made them negligent in their duty; and that the lessening of their excessive incomes would be a double advantage both to the church and the state." Archbishop Arundel, being now free from the trammels of office, said to the King, who seems to have been addressed as the president of the assembly, "That though the ecclesiastics served him not in person, it could not be inferred that they were unserviceable; that the stripping the clergy of their estates would put a stop to their prayers night and day for the welfare of the state; and there was no expecting God's pro XVIII. tection of the kingdom if the prayers of the church were so CHAP. little valued." The Speaker of the Commons standing at the bar, smiled, and said openly, "that he thought the prayers of the church a very slender supply." To which the Archbishop answered, with some emotion, "that if the prayers of the church were so slighted, it would be found difficult to deprive them of their estates without exposing the kingdom to great danger; and so long as he were Archbishop of Canterbury, he would oppose the injustice to the utmost in his power." Then suddenly falling on his knees before the King, "he strongly pressed him in point of conscience, and endeavoured to make him sensible that of all the crimes a Prince could commit, none was so heinous as an invasion of the church's patrimony." The King, seeing the impression made upon the Peers, declared "that he had made a firm resolution to support the church with all his power, and hoped by God's assistance to leave her in a better state than he found her." The Archbishop, construing this as a peremptory veto on the proposal of the Commons, turned to them and made them a most insulting speech, telling them their demand was built wholly on irreligion and avarice; "and verily," added he, "I will sooner have my head cut off than that the church should be deprived of the least right pertaining to it." Such a scene is very inconsistent with our notions of parliamentary decorum. The Commons not convinced, -on their return to their own chamber passed a bill to carry their scheme into effect; but the solicitations of the Archbishop and the other Prelates were so powerful with the Lords that they threw it out.* parlia The recklessness of the Commons may have arisen from "Lacktheir not having had a single lawyer in their assembly. Lord learning Chancellor Beaufort, in framing the writs of summons, illegally ment." inserted in them a prohibition, "that no apprentice or other man of the law should be elected,"-grounded on a most unconstitutional ordinance of the Lords in the 46th of Edward III., to which the Commons had never assented, and which 1 Parl. Hist. 294. |