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.

Doyly's settlement a cheat, for want of words usual. Q. By whose contrivance. But he advised. -This fraudulent conveyance was managed between 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 if 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, encumbered 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 settlement of A was showed, and so the cheat passed of both.

This Chief Justice sat in the King's Bench till near the time that the great cause of the quo warranto against the city of London was to be brought 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 incontroulable opinion of himself. After this removal, he returned to his practice, and by that (as it seems the rule is) he lost the style of Lordship, and became bare Mr. Serjeant again. His business lay chiefly in the Common Pleas, where his lordship (Lord Keeper Guilford) presided; and however some of his brethren were apt to insult him, his lordship was always careful to repress such indecencies; and not only pro tected, but used him with humanity. For nothing is so sure a sign of a bad breed as insulting over the depressed.

Lord Chief Justice Saunders.

The Lord Chief Justice Saunders succeeded in the room of Pemberton. His character, and his beginning, were equally strange.. He was at first no better than a poor beggar boy, if not a parish foundling, without known parents, or relations. He had found a way to live by obsequiousness, (in Clement's Inn, as I remember,) and courting the attornies' clerk 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 hackneywriting; 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 to say, "by his troggs," (such an humourous 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 neighbour 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 continual sottishness; for, to say nothing of brandy, he was seldom without a pot of ale at his nose, or near him; that exercise was all he used; the

rest of his life was sitting at his desk, or piping at home: and that home was a taylor's house in Butcher-Row, called his lodging, and the man's wife was his nurse, or worse; but, by virtue of his money, of which he made little account, though he got a great deal, he soon became master of the family; and, being no changeling, he never removed, but was true to his friends, and they to him, to the last hour of his life.

So much for his person and education. As for his parts, none had them more lively than he wit and repartee, in an affected rusticity, were natural to him. He was ever ready, and never at a loss; and none came so near as he to be a match for Serjeant Mainard. His great dexterity was in the art of special pleading; and he would lay snares that often caught his superiors, who were not aware of his traps. And he was so fond of success for his clients, that, rather than fail, he would set the court hard with a trick, for which he met sometimes with a reprimand, which he would wittily ward off, so that no one was much offended with him. But Hales could not bear his irregularity of life; and for that, and suspicion of his tricks, used to bear hard upon him in the Court. But no ill-usage from the bench was too hard, for his hold of business being such, as scarce any could do but himself. With all this, he had a goodness of nature

and disposition in so great a degree, that lie may be deservedly styled a philanthrope. He was a very Silenus to the boys, as, in this place, I may term the students of the law, to make them merry whenever they had a mind to it. He had nothing of rigid or austere in him. If any near him at the bar grumbled at his stench, he ever converted the complaint into content and laughing with the abundance of his wit. As to his ordinary dealing, he was as honest as the driven snow was white; and why not, having no regard for money, or desire to be rich? and, for good-nature and condescension, there was not his fellow. I have seen him, for hours and halfhours together, before the court sat, stand at the bar, with an audience of students overagainst him, putting off cases, and debating so as suited their capacities, and encouraged their industry, And so, in the Temple, he seldom moved without a parcel of youths hangings about him, and he merry and jesting with them.

F

It will be readily conceived, that this man was never cut out to be a Presbyter, or any thing that is severe and crabbed. In no time did he lean to faction, but did his business without offence to any. He put off officious talk of government or politics with jests, and so made his wit a catholicón, or shield, to cover all his weak places and infirmities! When the Court fell