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1356) was Chancellor and Bishop of Winchester. He might have been Primate had he pleased, but told the king that though Canterbury had the higher rack, Winchester had the larger manger,' and his three successors in the mitre of Winchester (William of Wykeham, Cardinal Beaufort, and Wayneflete), were all likewise Chancellors. These four Chancellors held that manger for more than one hundred and fifty years!

Between Edyngton and Wykeham intervened the four years (1363-7) of Simon Langham, a monk, whose soft oily voice charmed every congregation, while his reputation for piety procured him much resort as a confessor, and who is one of the few instances of the regular clergy attaining to great eminence in England.' His penitents among the ladies pushed him on ; but Edward III. detected under that cowl an able statesman, and the monk renowned for prayer and penance emerged by and bye as the most elegant and fascinating of courtiers-Abbot of Westminster, Treasurer of England, Bishop of Ely-at last Lord Chancellor and Archbishop of Canterbury. But by that time his popularity, as an ecclesiastic at least, had waned-witness the contemporary pasquinade :

'Lætantur cœli quia Simon transit ab Ely;

Cujus in adventum flent in Kent millia centum.'

He became a Cardinal, and, having accumulated vast wealth, aspired to the popedom. He resigned the seal in order that he might reside for a time at Avignon and canvass his brethren of the purple, but was cut off by paralysis in the midst of his ambitious projects, bequeathing large estates to the abbey of Westminster, and remembered in his capacity of Chancellor only, or chiefly, as having greatly increased the fees of his court.

On the illustrious career of his immediate successor, we need not dwell at present. Lord Campbell has given us a very excellent chapter on William of Wykeham; but though we are not disposed to quarrel with an effusion of kindly personal feeling, we must say we think the noble and learned author produces rather an unfriendly effect by his closing note, to wit:

'The bull of Pope Urbanus VI. for founding Winchester school was granted 1st June, 1378. I have a great kindness for the memory of William of Wickham, when I think of his having produced such Wickhamists as my friends Baron Rolfe and Professor Empson.

"Hactenus ire libet, tu major laudibus istis

Suscipe conatus, Wicame Dive, meos."'-vol. i. p. 295. Mr. Baron Rolfe and Professor Empson are, as we all know, very accomplished persons; but to specify them as the marking

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glories of Winchester is surely somewhat premature. On the other hand, we think there is an unfair harshness and contemptuousness in Lord Campbell's language concerning the last Chancellor of Richard the Second:

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'John Searle, who had nominally been Chancellor to 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 is supposed to have been a mere clerk in the Chancery 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.

'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.'-vol. i. pp. 307, 308.

It is true that John Searle fills but a small space in the history of the office; but what is there known of him to his disadvantage except that he was a man without dignified connexions, promoted to the high rank of Chancellor for the purposes of a party, and dismissed from it as soon as a contemplated change of government had been effected? Might not every word of this grievous indictment be applied with equal propriety to John Campbell? Was it poor John Searle's fault that in his day there were neither peerages nor retiring pensions for Chancellors either of England or Ireland? For the rest, the Buttery Hatch' theory is a mere spurt of Lord Campbell's spleen.*

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With far different courtesy does Lord Campbell treat a Chancellor who, however respectable for learning, was undoubtedly a partaker in transactions still more questionable than those with which Searle's name is connected-the Chancellor who presided in parliament throughout all the stages of the usurpation of Richard III. It is true that after Richard was seated on the throne he endeavoured to conciliate popular favour by some excellent legislative measures; and it is probable that such measures, for such purpose desirable to the tyrant, were devised

*In the times of Chancellor Searle it appears incidentally that the House of Commons usually met for dispatch of business at seven in the morning-the House of Lords at nine.-Vol. i. P. 318.

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by the same accommodating Chancellor who had drawn the bill for bastardizing the children of Edward IV. But who does not smile to read

'I will fondly believe, though I can produce no direct evidence to prove the fact, that to "JOHN RUSSELL" the nation was indebted for the Act entitled "The Subjects of this Realm not to be charged with Benevolence," the object of which was to put down the practice introduced in some late reigns of levying taxes under the name of "benevolence," without the authority of parliament. The language employed would not be unworthy of that great statesman bearing the same name, who in our own time framed and introduced Bills "to abolish the Test Act," and "to reform the representation of the people in parliament."'—p. 404.

Who does not see that the whole charm is in the name ?—that the true object of Lord Campbell is to puff the author of the Reform Bill?-that with this view alone has Lord Campbell expended seven pages on a Chancellor of the 15th century, so 'inconsiderable' that, as the biographer states, he has not been mentioned by modern historians'-adding, 'I consider him as one of the Cancellarian Mummies 1 have dug up and exhibited to the public' (p. 407). And yet, after all, Lord Campbell is obliged to admit that there exists not only no evidence but no tradition for connecting this John Russell in any way whatever with the blood of the Bedfords. He says, he was most likely of the Bedford family, who, having held a respectable but not brilliant position in the west of England since the Conquest, were now rising into eminence' (p. 401), and suggests that Mr. Wiffen passes him sub silentio in his laborious History of the House of Russell 'perhaps from a shyness to acknowledge him on account of his connexion with Richard III.'-a suggestion the compliment of which we leave to be decided between Friend Wiffen and his as well as Lord Campbell's idol, Lord John.

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We must, we suspect, ascribe to the popularity-hunting craft of Richard and his JOHN RUSSELL, the fact that the first statute of this reign was the first statute drawn in the English tongue. Although as early as 1362 Chancellor Edyngton carried through parliament a bill, by which it was enacted that all pleadings and judgments in the Courts of Westminster should for the future be in English, whereas they had been in French ever since the Conquest; as also that all schoolmasters should thenceforth teach their pupils to construe in English, and not in French; the change in the legal department at least-was long and successfully resisted. The practitioners obstinately adhered to their old dialect in Reports, Treatises, and Abridgments. Under the Commonwealth

Commonwealth an act was passed for the use of the English language in all legal records' (iii. 90): but this seemed to many a more dangerous innovation than the abolition of the House of Lords or the Regal office; and Whitelock, who introduced the measure, would not have carried it in opposition to his brothers of the long robe, had he not enlisted on his side the more pious out of the profession, by showing that Moses drew up the laws of the Jews in their own vernacular Hebrew, and not either in the Chinese tongue or the Egyptian. The Restoration brought back French to our Reports, and Latin to our Law Records, which continued till the reign of George II.; and if we would find anything in the Digest of Chief Baron Comyn about Highways, or Tithes, or Husband and Wife, we must refer to the titles Chemin, Dismes, and Baron et Feme. Acts of Parliament, we have seen, continued to be framed in French until Richard III.-in whose time also they were first printed. But even to this day French is employed by the branches of the Legislature in their intercourse with each other:

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'Not only is the royal assent given to bills by the words "La Reyne le voet," but when either House passes a bill there is an indorsement written upon it, "Soit bailé aux Seigneurs," or aux Communes ;” and at the beginning of every Parliament the Lords make an entry in their Journals, in French, of the appointment of the Receivers and Triers of petitions, not only for England, but for Gascony. E. g. Extract from Lords' Journals, 24th August, 1841 :

"Les Recevours des Petitions de Gascoigne et des autres terres et pays de par la mer et des isles:-Le Baron Abinger, Chief Baron de l'Exchequer de la Reyne; Messire James Parke, Chevalier; Messire John Edmund Dowdeswell, Ecuyer. Et ceux qui veulent delivrer leur Petitions les baillent dedans six jours procheinment ensuivant.

"Les Triours des Petitions de Gascoigne et des autres terres et pays de par la mer et des isles :-Le Duc de Somerset ; le Marquis d'Anglesey; le Count de Tankerville; le Viscount Torrington; le Baron Campbell. Tout eux ensemble, ou quatre des seigneurs avant-ditz, appellant aux eux les Serjeants de la Reyne, quant sera besoigne, tiendront leur place en la chambre du Chambellan.'

"Recevours et Triours des Petitions de la Grande Bretagne et d'Ireland," were appointed the same day.'-vol. i. p. 253.

It is not to be supposed that after the period of Richard III. Lord Campbell finds any Cancellarian Mummies' to disinter; but he deals with the ampler materials of advancing light in a style on the whole very judicious, observing a happy medium between nakedness and profusion of detail as respects personal incidents, and as rarely as almost any author of the class trespassing beyond the proper limits of biography. We may instance his Life of Wolsey'

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as, though not long, by much the clearest and even the completest one we have had of that great man, who enjoyed more power than any of his predecessors or successors who have held the office of Chancellor in England.' We can afford but the exode of this capital chapter :

'I shall not attempt to draw any general character of this eminent man. His good and bad qualities may best be understood from the details of his actions, and are immortalised by the dialogue between Queen Catherine and Griffith her secretary, which is familiar to every reader.

'But the nature of this work requires that I should more deliberately consider him as a Judge; for although he held the Great Seal uninterruptedly for a period of fourteen years, and greatly extended its jurisdiction, and permanently influenced our juridical institutions, not only historians, but his own biographers, in describing the politician and the churchman, almost forget that he ever was Lord Chancellor.

From his conference with Justice Shelly respecting York Place, we know exactly his notions of the powers and duties of the Chancellor as an Equity Judge. When pressed by the legal opinion upon the question, he took the distinction between law and conscience, and said, "it is proper to have a respect to conscience before the rigour of the common law, for laus est facere quod decet non quod licet. The King ought of his royal dignity and prerogative to mitigate the rigour of the law where conscience hath the most force; therefore, in his royal place of equal justice he hath constituted a Chancellor, an officer to execute justice with clemency, where conscience is opposed to the rigour of the law. And therefore the Court of Chancery hath been heretofore commonly called the Court of Conscience, because it hath jurisdiction to command the high ministers of the Common Law to spare execution and judgment, where conscience hath most effect." With such notions he must have been considerably more arbitrary than a Turkish Kadi, who considers himself bound by a text of the Koran in point, and we are not to be surprised when we are told that he chose to exercise his equitable authority over everything which could be a matter of judicial inquiry.

In consequence, bills and petitions multiplied to an unprecedented degree, and notwithstanding his despatch there was a great arrear of business. To this grievance he applied a very vigorous remedy, without any application to parliament to appoint Vice-Chancellors ;-for of his own authority he at once established four new Courts of Equity by commission in the King's name. One of these was held at Whitehall before his own deputy; another before the King's almoner, Dr. Stoherby, afterwards Bishop of London; a third at the Treasury Chamber before certain members of the Council; and a fourth at the Rolls, before Cuthbert Tunstall, Master of the Rolls, who, in consequence of this appointment, used to hear causes there in the afternoon. The Master of the Rolls has continued ever since to sit separately for hearing causes in Chancery. The other three courts fell with their founder.

'Wolsey himself used still to attend pretty regularly in the Court of Chancery

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