Mortified

done King, Lords, and Commons."

This may

seem strange to such as see not the behaviour of judges, and do not consider the propensity of almost all to appear wiser than those that went before them. Therefore it is the most impartial character of a judge to defer to eldership, or antiquity. But to proceed: this man's morals were very indifferent; for his beginnings were debauched, and his study and first practice in the gaol. For, having been one of the fiercest town rakes, and spent more than he had of his own, his case forced him upon that expedient for a lodging and there he made so good use of his leisure, and busied himself with the cases of his fellow collegiates, whom he informed and advised so skilfully, that he was reputed the most notable fellow within those walls; and, at length, he came out a sharper at the law. After that, he proceeded to study and practice, till he was eminent, and made a serjeant. After he was chief justice of the King's Bench, he proved, as I said, a great ruler, and nothing must stand in the way of his authority. I find a few things noted of him by his lordship.

"Case of Lady Ivye, where advised that there an attorney" was subornation, for which Johnson was ruined, "and heart broke.*"

to death.

* See 10 State Trials, 627.

The lady prosecuted Johnson for this subornation, by information in the King's Bench, and the cause was tried before Pemberton. It appeared that Johnson had no concern, or words, but by way of advice to his client; but he was borne down and convict; at which the fellow took despair, and died. It was thought his measure was very hard and cruel; and that some mighty point of interest, in her ladyship's law-suits, depended upon this man's suffering.

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in a fraudu

'Doyly's settlement a cheat, for want of words Concerned "usual. Q. by whose contrivance. But he ad- lent convey"vised."

ance for Sir

William

This fraudulent conveyance was managed be- Doyly. tween Sir Robert Baldock and Pemberton. It is certain it was passed by Pemberton, who was the counsel chiefly relied on; but not so certain it was his contrivance; for Baldock had wit and will enough to do it. The device was to make two jointures, as of the manors of A and B, complete, and without words of reference of the one to the

other, as in part, &c. or together with-- -in full, whereby the one called upon the other. The use made of this trick was mortgaging both these estates as free, but, in truth, incumbered with the jointure and settlement. For, upon the proffer of A to be mortgaged, and the counsel demanding a sight of the marriage settlement, that of B was showed. Then, upon the proffer of B. the settle

Removed

before the

ment of A was showed; and so the cheat passed of both.

This chief justice sat in the King's Bench till judgment near the time that the great cause of the quo war

againstLon

don ranto against the city of London was to be brought

ranto.

upon

the quo war- to judgment in that court; and then his majesty thought fit to remove him. And the truth is, it was not thought any way reasonable to trust that cause, on which the peace of the government so much depended, in a court where the chief never showed so much regard to the law as to his will, and notorious as he was for little honesty, boldness, cunning, and incontrollable opinion of himself. After this removal, he returned to his practice, and by that (as it seems the rule is) he lost his style of lordship, and became bare Mr. Serjeant again. His business lay chiefly in the Common Pleas, where his lordship presided: and however some of his brethren were apt to insult him, his lordship was always careful to repress such indecencies; and not only protected, but used him with much humanity. For nothing is so sure a sign of a bad breed as insulting over the depressed.*

Sir Francis Pemberton was appointed one of the justices of the King's Bench in Easter term, 1679, (2 Shower's Rep. 94, 33.) In Hilary term he "received his quietus, and afterwards practised again in all the courts in Westminster-hall, but without the bar as a serjeant (2 Shower's Rep. 94.) In

The Lord Chief Justice Saunders succeeded in The Lord His character, and his tice Saun

Chief Jus

derful be

the room of Pemberton. beginning, were equally strange. He was at first ders of wonno better than a poor beggar boy, if not a parish ginning, and foundling, without known parents, or relations. character.

Easter term, the following year, he was made chief justice of the King's Bench in the place of Scroggs, who had been displaced, (2 Shower's Rep. 155,) and in the vacation after Michaelmas term, 1682, he was removed to the chief justiceship of the Common Pleas, (2 Shower's Rep. 252.) While in the latter seat, he presided at the trial of Lord Russel, and his conduct upon that occasion is said to have been so displeasing to the court, as to have led to his removal, which took place in the long vacation of the same year, (1683) when, as stated in the text, he was succeeded by Sir Edmund Saunders, and "having lost his style of lordship, became bare Mr. Serjeant again."

Burnet has given the following character of Pemberton. "His rise was so particular, that it is worth the being remembered. In his youth he mixed with such lewd company, that he quickly spent all he had, and ran so deep in debt that he was cast into a jail, where he lay many years: but he followed his studies so close in the jail that he became one of the ablest men in his profession. He was not wholly for the court; he had been a judge before, and was turned out by Scroggs' means, and now was raised again, and was afterwards made chief justice of the other bench, but not being compliant enough, he was turned out a second time, when the court would be served by none but by men of a thorough-paced obsequiousness." (Burnet's Hist. vol. ii. p. 870. See also 9 State Trials, 580.) According to Evelyn, Pemberton "was held to be the most learned of the judges, and an honest man.” (Memoirs, vol. i. p. 527.) .

extravagant

He had found a way to live by obsequiousness (in Clement's-Inn, as I remember) and courting the attorneys' clerks for scraps. The extraordinary observance and diligence of the boy, made the society willing to do him good. He appeared very ambitious to learn to write; and one of the attornies got a board knocked up at a window on the top of a staircase; and that was his desk, where he sat and wrote after copies of court and other hands the clerks gave him. He made himself so expert a writer that he took in business, and earned some pence by hackney-writing. And thus, by degrees, he pushed his faculties, and fell to forms, and, by books that were lent him, became an exquisite entering clerk; and, by the same course of improvement of himself, an able counsel, first in special pleading, then at large. And, after he was called to the bar, had practice, in the King's Bench court, equal with any there. As to his person, he was very corpulent and beastly; a mere lump of morbid flesh. He used by his troggs," (such a humorous way of talking he affected) none could say he wanted issue of his body, for he had nine in his back." He was a fetid mass, that offended his neighbours at the bar in the sharpest degree. Those, whose ill fortune it was to stand near him, were confessors, and, in summer-time, almost martyrs. This hateful decay of his carcase came upon him by

to say,

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