ད Is sillier than a sottish chouse, Who, when a thief has robb'd his house, CHAPTER XCIV. LIFE OF LORD KEEPER GUILFORD FROM HIS BIRTH TILL HE WAS We now come to one of the most odious men who ever held the Great Seal of England. He had not courage to commit great crimes; but selfish, cunning, sneaking, and unprincipled, his only restraint was a regard to his own personal safety, and throughout his whole life he sought and obtained advancement by the meanest arts. Nottingham was succeeded by FRANCIS NORTH, known by the title of "Lord Keeper GUILFORD." Our hero, although he himself ascribed his success to his poverty, was of noble birth. The founder of his family was Edward North, a Serjeant at law, Chancellor of the Augmentations, and created a Baron by writ in the reign of Henry VIII. Dudley, the third baron, " having consumed the greatest part of his estate in the gallantries of King James's court, or rather his son Prince Henry's," retired and spent the rest of his days at his seat in Cambridgeshire. When the civil war broke out, he sided with the parliament, and on rare occasions coming to London he is said to have sat on the trial of Laud, and to have voted for his death. Having reached extreme old age, he died in the year 1666. Dudley, his heir, who, at the age of sixty-three, stood on the steps of the throne in the House of Lords as "the eldest son of a Peer," was a great traveller in his youth, and served with distinction in the Low Countries under Sir Francis Vere. Yet he never would put on his hat, nor sit down in the presence of his father, unless by the old Peer's express commands. Being returned to the Long Parliament for the county of Cambridge, he strenuously opposed the Court, and signed the solemn League and Covenant; but, adhering to the Presbyterian party, he was turned out by Pride's purge,§ and lived in retirement till the Restoration. He married Anne, one of the daughters and coheirs of Sir Charles * Hudibras, part iii. cant. 2. † April 5, 1554. Montagu, brother of the Earl of Manchester, by whom he had a very numerous family. The subject of this memoir was their second son, and was born on the 22d of October, 1637.* Though he turned out such a furious royalist and high churchman, it is curious to think that his early training began among republicans and fanatics. As soon as he left the nursery, he was sent to a preparatory school at Isleworth, the master of which was a rigid Presbyterian. His wife was a furious Independent, and she ruled the household. "She used to instruct her babes in the gift of praying by the Spirit, and all the scholars were made to kneel by a bedside and pray; but this petit spark was too small for that posture, and was set upon the bed to kneel, with his face to a pillow. She then led off their devotions, as one specially inspired; but all that North could distinctly recollect of them was, that he prayed for his distressed brethren in Ireland."+ His family becoming disgusted with the extravagance of the ruling powers, and beginning to look to royalty as the only cure [A. D. 1650.] for the evils the nation was suffering, he was removed from Isleworth, and put to a grammar school at Bury St. Edmunds, under a cavalier master. Here principles of loyalty were secretly instilled into him; and as a proof of his proficiency in the Latin tongue, he made out a list of all the verbs neuter, which was printed in an appendix to Lilly's Grammar. In 1653 he was admitted a fellow-commoner at St. John's College, Cambridge. He is said to have remained there two or three years, applying diligently to the studies of the place; but he seems to have devoted much of his time to the bass-viol, and he left the University without a degree. He was then transferred to the Middle Temple. When he was entered, the treasurer was Chaloner Chute, the eminent counsel, famous for having been the Speaker of one of Crom[A.D. 1655.] well's parliaments, and more famous among lawyers for his habit when he wished to pass a few months in pleasure after his own humour, of saying to his clerk,-"Tell the people I will not practise this term," being able, when he pleased, to resume his business, which was nothing shrunk by the discontinuance. The Treasurer, who was nearly connected by marriage with the North family, having the power of fixing the admission fee, which was seldom less than five pounds, asked Sir Dudley, the father, what he was willing to give; and he answering "three pounds ten," and the money being laid down, the Treasurer swept it all into the hat of young Frank, marking the admission nil, and saying," Let this be a beginning of your getting money here." * Roger North, his biographer, does not mention the time of his birth, and it has been generally laid in the year 1640; but I have clearly ascertained this date by an inscription on his tombstone in the parish church of Wroxton, near Banbury, in Oxfordshire. North's Life of Guilford, i. 11. It appears by the books of the Middle Temple, that he was admitted Nov. 27, 1655. His father bought him a very small set of chambers, in which he shut himself up, and dedicated himself to the study of the law. He early learned and often repeated this saying of the citizens to their apprentices," Keep your shop, and your shop will keep you." He did not frequent riding-schools, or dancing-schools, or playhouses, or gaminghouses, so dangerous to youth at the Inns of Court. Though he could “make one at gammon, gleek, piquet, or even the merry-main, he had ever a notable regard to his purse to keep that from oversetting, like a vessel at sea that hath too much sail and too little ballast."+ While a student, he paid frequent and long visits to his grandfather, who seems to have become a most singularly tyrannical and capricious old man. Frank exerted himself to the utmost to comply with all his humours, being allowed by him 201. a-year; but lost his favour and his pension by conveying to him, at the request of Sir Dudley, the father, some caution about the appointment of a steward. He had at last a qualified pardon in a letter concluding with these words-" In consilium ne accesseris antequam voceris—do not offer your advice before it is asked." He was always industrious, and during these visits, though he could not altogether avoid bowling, fishing, hunting, visiting, and billiards, he spent the greater part of his time in reading and common. placing the law-books brought down to him by the carrier. While in town, he always dined in the hall,-twelve at noon being the hour of dinner, and supped there again at six ;-—after which " caseputting" began in the cloister walks, and he acquired the character of a great "put-case." He kept a common-place book, which seems to have been almost as massive as "Brooke's Abridgment of the Law." He made himself well acquainted with the Year Books, although not altogether so passionately attached to them as Serjeant Maynard, who, when he was taking an airing in his coach, always carried a volume of them along with him, which, he said, amused him more than a comedy. He attended all famous legal arguments, particularly those of Sir Heneage Finch, and taking notes in the morning in law French, he employed himself most usefully at night in making out in English a report of the cases he had heard. By way of relaxation he would go to music meetings, or to hear Hugh Peters preach. Nothing places him in such an amiable point of view as the delight he is said to have taken, on rare occasions, in “a petit supper and a bottle,”—when there really seems to have been a short oblivion of anxiety about his rise in the world; but, to show his constitutional caution, his brother Roger assures us that, "whenever he was a little overtaken, it was a warning to him to take better care afterwards." We are told that while he was a student he "underpulled" or managed suits for his grandfather, father, and other friends-an occupation which rather puzzles us-for it was not merely superintending a solicitor who conducted them-but he himself made out to his clients a * Life, i. 17. bill of fees and disbursements, in which his grandfather violently suspected that he was guilty of great frauds. Yet a solicitor was employed, who likewise made out a bill, on which he offered North a percentage, saying that "it was their way, and they were allowed at the offices somewhat for encouragement to them that brought business."* There are many things to show that the administration of justice between party and party, as well as between the crown and the subject, is much purer now than in former times. Long before he was called to the bar, "he undertook the practice of court-keeping;" that is, he was appointed the steward of a great many manors by his grandfather and other friends, and he did all the work in person, writing all his court-rolls, and making out his copies with his own hand. I am afraid he now began his violation of the rights and liberties of his fellow-subjects by practising some petty extortions upon the bumpkins who came before him. "His grandfather," says Roger, with inimitable simplicity," had a venerable old steward, careful by nature and faithful to his Lord, employing all his thoughts and time to manage for supply of his house and upholding his rents,-in short, one of a race of human kind heretofore frequent, but now utterly extinct,―affectionate as well as faithful, and diligent rather for love than self-interest. This old gentleman, with his boot-hose and beard, used to accompany his young master to his court-keeping, and OBSERVING HIM REASON THE COUNTRY PEOPLE OUT OF THEIR PENCE FOR ES SOINES, &c., he commended him, saying, 'If you will be contented, Master Frank, to be a great while getting a little, you will be a little while getting a great deal;' wherein he was no false prophet.”† Having been the requisite time on the books of the society of the Middle Temple, and performed all his moots (upon which he bestowed great labour), Francis was called [JUNE 28, 1661.] to the bar, ex debito justitiæ. He might have been called earlier, ex gratia; but he wisely remembered Lord Coke's warning against præpropera praxis, as well as præpostera lectio, and he acted upon the maxim which still holds true, that "he who is not a good lawyer before he comes to the bar, will never be a good one after it." The allowance of sixty pounds a year which he had hitherto received from his father was now reduced to fifty, in respect of the pence he collected by court-keeping and the expected profits of his practice. He highly disapproved of this reduction, and wrote many letters to his father to remonstrate against it. At last he received an answer which he hoped was favourable, but which contained only these words :— "Frank, I suppose by this time, having vented all your discontent, you are satisfied with what I have done." The reduced allowance, however, was continued to him as long as his father lived, who said "he would not discourage industry by rewarding it when successful with loss." The young barrister was now hard put to it. He took " a practising chamber" on a first floor in Elm Court, "a dismal hole-dark next the Court, and on the other side a high building of the Inner Temple standing within five or six yards of the windows." He was able to fill his shelves with all useful books of the law from the produce of certain legacies and gifts collected for him by his mother, and he seems still to have had a small pecuniary help from his grandfather. For some time he had great difficulty in keeping free from debt; but he often declared that "if he had been sure of a hundred pounds a-year to live upon, he had never been a lawyer." He is much praised by his brother, because it is said "he did not (as seems to have been common), for the sake of pushing himself, begin by bustling about town and obtruding himself upon attorneys or bargaining for business, but was contented if chance or a friend brought him a motion as he was standing at the bar taking notes." These, however, came so rarely that he fell into a very dejected and hypochondriacal state. Thinking himself dying, he carried a list of his ailments to a celebrated physician, Dr. Beckenham of Bury, who laughed at him and sent him away, prescribing fresh air and amusement. He was in danger of utterly sinking in the slough of despond, when he was suddenly taken by the hand by the great lawyer, Sir Jeffrey Palmer, who was made Attorney-General on the restoration of Charles II., and who if he had lived must have been Lord Chancellor. His son, Edward, a very promising young man lately called to the bar, died about this time in the arms of Francis North, who had been at college with him, and had shown him great attention during his illness. All the business destined for young Palmer now somehow found its way to his surviving friend. Patronage, recommendation, and canvassing to push a young lawyer into business, were not in those days deemed irregular. We are told, without any suspicion of impropriety, that North was now supported 66 through the whole relation and dependence of Sir Jeffrey," and that "his wheel of good fortune turned upon the favour of Mr. Attorney Palmer." This powerful protector rapidly brought him forward by employing him in government prosecutions, and even when he himself was confined by illness, by giving him his briefs in smaller matters to hold for him in Court. North, we may be sure, was most devotedly assiduous in making a suitable return for this kindness, and in flattering his patron. Instead of the sentiments he had imbibed from his family in his early days, he now loudly expressed those of an ultra-prerogative lawyer, exalting the power of the King both over the church and the parlia ment. Being considered a rising man, his private friends and near relations came to consult him. He was once asked if he took fees from 1 *At that time not more than fifty volumes were required. Now, unfortunately, a law library is "multorum camelorum onus." + 6 St. Tr. 520, 540, 880. |