"I am decidedly opposed to. this motion. I think it a matter of the utmost necessity that you should fill up your numbers; and entertaining that opinion, I cannot but be astonished both at the proposition itself and still more at the reason given in its favour. What do we want with the presence of the Ministers on election petitions? What do we want with Ministers? We can do as well (I speak with all possible respect of any future Ministry)—we can do as well without them as with them. I have nothing to do with them, except in the respect I bear them, and except as a member of this House. I state this for the information of those whom it may concern." When he came next morning among his brother barristers in the robing room, he declared that "he should take no office whatever, and that when he was returned for Yorkshire he made his election between power and the service of the people." CHAP. IV. A.D. 1830. Conjecture as to the manner in I do not certainly know the exact turn which the negotiation then took, but I have heard, and I believe, that the Whig leaders still expressing a strong desire that Brougham which he should join them on his own terms, he caused a verbal inti- Great Seal. mation to be given to them that he expected an offer of the Great Seal. Lord Grey, although well stricken in years, was supposed at this time to be platonically under the fascination of the beautiful Lady Lyndhurst, and to have had a strong desire to retain her husband as his Chancellor. It is said that he expressed considerable doubts whether Brougham, whose stock of Common Law was slender, and who knew nothing about Equity whatever, was well qualified to preside in the Court of Chancery. The general feeling of those present at the conference, however, was that Brougham's adhesion was indispensably necessary to the formation of the Government, and that he must have a carte blanche. Whether this be fact or fiction, certain it is that on Saturday, the 20th of November, it was announced from authority that Brougham was to be Chancellor, and coming into the Court of King's Bench on that day he accepted the congratulations of his friends on his elevation. He had no misgivings as to his sufficiency for the office, and I believe that he was more delighted than he had been a few months before, when girt CHAP. with a sword, and wearing long spurs, he rode round the castle of York as knight of the shire. I ventured to give him A.D. 1830. some good advice, which he repaid twenty years after, when I was myself made a judge; and all that was said to him seriously or jocularly he took in good part. It was expected that he would have made a flaming oration in taking leave of us, in the King's Bench, and a great crowd had assembled to hear it, but, as the Court was rising, he contented himself with making a silent bow to the bench and another to the bar. CHAPTER V. LORD CHANCELLOR. NOVEMBER, 1830-NOVEMBER, 1834. CHAP. A.D. 1830. seat on the woolsack. ON Monday, the 22nd of November, 1830, the Great Seal was delivered to him by the King, at St. James's Palace, and he took his place on the woolsack; but being still a commoner, and plain Henry Brougham, he acted only as Speaker of the He takes his House of Lords. His patent of nobility was in preparation, but had not been completed. I believe that, although he saw an immense crowd below the bar, on the steps of the throne, and in the galleries, who had come to see him inaugurated, he regretted, for a time at least, the elevation he had reached; for an animated discussion immediately arose in the House respecting the formation of the new ministry and parliamentary reform, in which he was pointedly alluded to; and, as yet having no right to open his mouth in the assembly, unless to put the question, he was condemned to silence, and by the impatience he manifested he seemed. to signify that he could have vindicated himself and his colleagues much better than Lord Grey or Lord Lansdowne had done. Next morning, without yet having been sworn in or installed in the Court of Chancery, he took his place on the woolsack to hear a Scotch appeal. The counsel were surprised to find that, according to a form which had been long disused, they were compelled by the Yeoman Usher of the Black Rod to make three congées as they were marched up to the bar, when the Chancellor, who had been covered, took off his cocked hat with much solemnity, and signalled to them to begin. Notwithstanding the contempt which he expressed for the "trappings of his office," he was by no means without a taste for CHAP. A.D. 1830. He becomes and Vaux. scenic representation, when he had to play the principal character. The appeal heard was Grieve v. Wilson, respecting the right of hypothec of Scotch landlords on the produce of the located land. He laughed a good deal at this law, and said that it must immediately be altered, as the doctrines "ventilated" in the appeal would, if known, excite great alarm in Mark Lane. He was very pleasant and jocose, but his humour was more agreeable to the bystanders than to the objects of it—the Lord Ordinary and the Lord Justice Clerk Boyle, the latter of whom was said to have made a grave remonstrance against the ridicule cast upon him. But the same day there was much laughing at the expense Brougham of the Lord Chancellor himself, when it was announced that his patent of nobility was completed, and that he was now a Baron, by the title of " Lord Brougham AND VAUX." To some private friends he had formerly stated in confidence that he was entitled to a Barony of Vaux by descent through the female line, but no one imagined that he would do so unusual a thing as to add this word to a new created peerage; for all the instances (such as Hamilton and Brandon, Buccleuch and Queensberry, Leven and Melville, Say and Sele, or Dudley and Ward) of the copulative being so used are where two titles of the same grade, having been separately created, are united by descent in one individual. Among the innumerable jokes against this new title, the most cutting, if not the best, was that "Henry Brougham had destroyed himself, and was now Vaux et præterea nihil." To meet these jokes, and to show how little he cared about titles, he has always, with real or affected humility, refused to sign his name as peers usually do, but signs H. Brougham, or more commonly H. B.* Tuesday, 23rd Nov. The following is the entry in the journals of his taking his seat as a peer : *In former times English peers used always to sign their christian name as well as name of dignity, merely substituting this for their surname; but if Brougham was aware of the old fashion, I believe that he had no thought of reviving it, and was only desirous of doing something out of the common course. "The Duke of Gloucester informed their Lordships that his Majesty had been pleased to elevate Henry Brougham, Esq., Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, to the dignity of a peer of the realm by the title of Baron BROUGHAM AND VAUX. The Lord Chancellor, on hearing this intimation, quitted the Woolsack, and left the House to robe. He speedily returned, and was introduced as a Baron by the Marquess Wellesley and Lord Durham. His Lordship took the oaths, resumed his seat on the woolsack, and received the congratulations of his friends.” * CHAP. V. A.D. 1830. He is made a peer. a female The same day he laid on the table, in a very strange and His claim of irregular manner, a copy of a petition he had presented to barony. the Crown, claiming a right to be summoned to Parliament as representative of an ancient barony of Vaux, which he alleged had descended upon him through the female line. The House had no jurisdiction to take cognizance of such a claim, except on a reference by the Crown, and such a reference is only made upon the report of the Attorney General that a primâ facie case is made out by the claimant. Brougham never ventured to take any step to substantiate his claim, and it must be considered a mere dream or fiction. He uttered nothing on this occasion, and, to the astonishment of all present, the House rose without the sound of his voice being heard, except in putting the question, "That this House do now adjourn." Attack upon him in the On this very day on which he took his seat as a peer, a motion being made in the House of Commons for the issuing of a writ to elect a new member in his stead, he was Commons. violently assailed by Mr. Croker, who, recapitulating the protestations he had made there and elsewhere against accepting any place in the new Government, and his repeated vows never to exchange the representation of Yorkshire for any honours which the Crown could confer, called for— an explanation of his having suddenly vacated his seat in that House by becoming Lord High Chancellor and Baron Brougham and Vaux; which either showed a successful grasping at office * On inspecting the Journal I find :-" Friday, 19th November, Ds. Lyndhurst, Cancellarius; Monday, 22nd November, Henricus Brougham, Cancellarius; Tuesday, 23rd November, Ds. Brougham and Vaux, Cancellarius. |