represents his great traveller who had visited Utopia, and describes its institutions, as saying, "There happened to be at table an English lawyer, who took occasion to run out in high commendation of the severe execution of thieves in his country, where might be seen twenty at a time dangling from one gibbet. Nevertheless, he observed, it puzzled him to understand how, since so few escaped, there were yet so many thieves left who were still found robbing in all places. Upon this I said with boldness, there was no reason to wonder at the matter, since this way of punishing thieves was neither just in itself nor for the public good; for as the severity was too great, so the remedy was not effectual; simple theft was not so great a crime that it ought to cost a man his life; and no punishment would restrain men from robbing who could find no other way of livelihood. In this, not only you, but a great part of the world besides, imitate ignorant and cruel schoolmasters, who are readier to flog their pupils than to teach them. Instead of these dreadful punishments enacted against thieves, it would be much better to make provision for enabling those men to live by their industry whom you drive to theft, and then put to death for the crime you cause."

'He exposes the absurdity of the law of forfeiture in case of larceny, which I am ashamed to say, notwithstanding the efforts I have myself made in parliament to amend it, still disgraces our penal code, so that for an offence for which, as a full punishment, sentence is given of imprisonment for a month, the prisoner loses all his personal property, which is never thought of by the Court in pronouncing the sentence. It was otherwise among the Utopians. "Those that are found guilty of theft among them are bound to make restitution to the owner, and not to the prince. If that which was stolen is no more in being, then the goods of the thief are estimated, and restitution being made out of them, the remainder is given to his wife and children."

'I cannot refrain from giving another extract to prove that, before the Reformation, he was as warm a friend as Locke to the principles of religious toleration. He says, that the great legislator of Utopia made a law that every man might be of what religion he pleased, and might endeavour to draw others to it by the force of argument, and by amicable and modest ways, without bitterness against those of other opinions. "This law was made by Utopus not only for preserving the public peace, which he saw suffered much by daily contentions and irreconcilable heats, but because he thought it was required by a due regard to the interest of religion itself. He judged it not fit to decide rashly any matter of opinion, and he deemed it foolish and indecent to threaten and terrify another for the purpose of making him believe what did not

"Cœpit accurate laudare rigidam illam justitiam quæ tum illic exercebatur in fures, quos passim narrabat nonnunquam suspendi viginti in unâ cruce, atque eo vehementius dicebat se mirari cum tam pauci elaberentur supplicio, quo malo fato fieret (how the devil it happened) uti tam multi tamen ubique grassarentur." This lawyer reminds me exceedingly of the attorney-generals, judges, and secretaries of state, who in my early youth eulogised the bloody penal code which then disgraced England, and predicted that if it were softened, there would be no safety for life or property. They would not even, like their worthy predecessor here recorded, admit its inefficiency to check the commission of crime.'-vol. i. p. 584.

appear

appear to him to be true." His most wonderful anticipation may be thought that of Lord Ashley's factory measure-by "the Six Hours Bill" which regulated labour in Utopia. "Nec ab summo mane tamen ad multam usque noctem perpetuo labore, velut jumenta, fatigatus; nam ea plus quam servilis ærumna est; quæ tamen ubique fere opificum vita est-exceptis Utopiensibus, qui cum in horas viginti-quatuor æquales diem connumeratâ nocte dividant, sex duntaxat operi deputant, tres ante meridiem, a quibus prandium ineunt, atque a prandio duas pomeridianas horas; quum sex interquieverunt, tres deinde rursus labori datas cœnâ claudunt. Etenim quod sex duntaxat horas in opere sunt, fieri fortasse potest, ut inopiam aliquam putes necessariam rerum sequi. Quod tam longe abest ut accidat, ut id temporis ad omnium rerum copiam, quæ quidem ad vitæ vel necessitatem requirantur vel commoditatem, non sufficiat modo sed supersit etiam " (Utopia, vol. ii. p. 68.)'

This Life contains sundry pleasant little anecdotical scraps for which we wish we had room. Let one suffice. After telling the well-known story of the Chancellor's daily kneeling for his father the puisne Judge's blessing ere he opened Court, Lord Campbell

says

'I am old enough to remember that when the Chancellor left his Court, if the Court of King's Bench was sitting, a curtain was drawn and bows were exchanged between him and the Judges, so that I can easily picture to myself the "blessing scene" between the father and son.'-vol. i. p. 544, note.

In another note he corrects a very serious error:—

'More's recent biographers, by erroneously fixing his trial on the 7th of May, make an interval of two months instead of six days between that and his execution; but it is quite certain that although he was arraigned on the 7th of May, he was not tried till the 1st of July.'*

We do not quote with the same approbation Lord Campbell's defence of the illustrious More for his patronage of the miracles of the Maid of Kent' :

'We need not wonder at the credulity of the most eminent men of that age, when in our own day a nobleman, distinguished by his talents and his eloquence, as well as by his illustrious birth, has published a pamphlet to support two contemporaneous miraculous maids, the "Estatica" and the "Adolorata."-vol. i. p. 560, note.

Such little subserviences and flatteries obiter of contemporary partisans are very unworthy of this grave and deliberate work. Of the life of the next Chancellor we give the opening sen

'When Sir Thomas More resigned the Great Seal, it was delivered to Sir Thomas Audley, afterwards Lord Audley, with the title, first of Lord Keeper, and then of Lord Chancellor. There was a striking contrust in almost all respects, between these two individuals,-the successor

* 1 St. Tr. 385.

of

of the man so distinguished for genius, learning, patriotism, and integrity, having only common-place abilities, sufficient, with cunning and shrewdness, to raise their possessor in the world, having no acquired knowledge beyond what was professional and official, having first recommended himself to promotion by defending, in the House of Commons, the abuses of prerogative, and, for the sake of remaining in office, being ever willing to submit to any degradation, and to participate in the commission of any crime. He held the Great Seal for a period of about twelve years, during which, to please the humours of his capricious and tyrannical master, he sanctioned the divorce of three Queens, the execution of two of them on a scaffold,—the judicial murder of Sir Thomas More, Bishop Fisher, and many others, who, animated by their example, preferred death to infamy, the spoliation of the Church and a division of the plunder among those who planned the robbery, and reckless changes of the established religion, which left untouched all the errors of Popery, with the absurdity of the King being constituted Pope, and which involved in a common massacre those who denied transubstantiation and those who denied the King's spiritual supremacy.'-vol. i. p. 589.

Chancellor Audley himself was as rapacious in the matter of church plunder as the founder of the house of Bedford-and almost as successful. After extorting some four or five rich priories, he let out at last the grand object of his ambition-which was to get the site and lands of the great Abbey at Walden in Essex, and unquestionably he had the merit of urging this bold claim with force and naïveté.' He wrote thus to Vicar-General Cromwell: I have in this world sustayned greate damage and infamie in serving the Kynge's hieness, which this grant shall recompens.'

"This appeal was felt to be so well founded, that in consideration of the bad law laid down by him on the trials of Fisher, More, Anne Boleyn, Courtenay, and de la Pole, and of the measures he had carried through parliament to exalt the royal prerogative and to destroy the constitution, and of the execration heaped upon him by the whole English nation, as well as by way of retaining fee for future services of the like nature, and recompense for farther infamy,-he received a warrant to put the Great Seal to the desired grant.'

Lord Campbell adds, Here he constructed his tomb, and his grandson built the magnificent mansion of Audley End, now the seat of Lord Braybroke.' But Lord Braybroke's mansion, spacious and noble though it be, is but one wing of the palace of his Audley ancestors-that stately fabric of Audley End,' says Dugdale, not to be equalled, excepting Hampton Court, by any in this realm.'

6

This sordid slave,' first brought into notice, and then was succeeded by, Thomas Wriothesley, a man of no splendid origin (son of one of the Kings-at-Arms), who received from Henry

VIII. the possessions of the Abbey of Titchfield, and the title of Lord Wriothesley of Titchfield, and was one of those executors of Henry who commenced their administration by a fraudulent manœuvre to advance each of themselves in the peerage. When Hertford became Duke of Somerset this Chancellor became Earl of Southampton; and so on with the rest, all moreover bestowing on themselves suitable grants to support their new dignities.' Wriothesley, after being accomplice and tool of Somerset, joined the Protector's great enemy Dudley, suggested the measures which ended in Somerset's fall, and that business consummated, was contemptuously tossed aside by Dudley, and after languishing a year or two in obscurity, died of a broken heart,' that is, of disappointed ambition. He is remembered chiefly in our history as the judge who presided at the judicial murder of the gentle Surrey,' and who with his own hands tightened the rack at the torturing of the young and beautiful martyr, Anne Askew. Except that he was steady to his popery, it is impossible to discover any respectable circumstance in his career. But his line ended after three generations in an heiress-Rachel Wriothesley, the admirable wife of William Lord Russell; and, of course, Lord Campbell must needs contrive to wind up even this savage intriguer's history with a sentence that would fain be civil:

The present Bedford family thus represent Lord Chancellor Wriothesley, resembling him in sincerity and steadiness of purpose, but happily distinguished for mildness and liberality instead of sternness and bigotry.'-vol. i p. 652.

We are now advancing in the Grandeur of the Law.' The next Chancellor was William Paulet, heir of an ancient knightly family in Somersetshire, a favourite in the household of Henry VII., and then of Henry VIII., who made him Chancellor, Lord St. John of Basing, and a knight of the Garter-a favourite and partisan of Somerset's, who made him Earl of Wiltshire-then a partaker in Dudley's plans for the overthrow of Somerset, and the presiding judge at Somerset's trial, for which service Dudley made him Marquess of Winchester-then active in the cause of Lady Jane Grey, but the first to leave her party-forgiven accordingly, and made Lord High Treasurer by Queen Mary-during whose whole reign he held that office-and then the humble slave of Burleigh, continued as Treasurer by Elizabeth till his death in 1572. Sir James Mackintosh, when speaking of the versatile politicians who had the art and fortune to slide unhurt through all the shocks of forty years in a revolutionary age, says, the Marquess of Winchester, who had served Henry VII., and retained office under every intermediate government till he died in bis ninety-seventh year with the staff of Lord Treasurer in his

hands,

hands, is perhaps the most remarkable specimen of this species preserved in history.' He expired serenely, smilingly, congratulating himself that he had been a willow, not an oak,' and was consigned to a magnificent tomb, with the attendance of one hundred and three of his progeny. This Chancellor knew little enough of the law, but he had the true qualifications for worldly success. To change his religion four or five times-conduct the trials of Papists under a Protestant government, of Protestants under a Papist one, and so on toties quoties-to serve one sovereign against whom he had committed treason, and two whom he had bastardized—all these things were trifles to the patriarch of the Marquesses of Winchester and Dukes of Bolton. He was,' says Lord Campbell, with his usual terseness of summary, of a cheerful temper, pleasing manners, moderate abilities, and respectable acquirements. Exciting no envy or jealousy, he had every one's good word, and accommodating himself to the humours of all, all were disposed to befriend him.'-Sic itur ad astra.

The next was Richard Rich, son of a mercer in the city, remarkable in early life only as a dicer and gamester,' and never suspected of severe study or profound attainments of any sort, but an artful barrister, audacious flatterer, and convenient tool. He was Solicitor-General at the trials of More and Fisher, and his treachery and perjury then volunteered, procured him the wealthy sinecure of Chirographer to the Common Pleas. Then we have him Speaker of the House of Commons-then Paymaster of the Army-then Chancellor of the Court of Augmentations-which post enabled him to secure Church plunder sufficient for the endowment of two coronets-which plunder made him a good Protestant-and kept him one, except during Mary's short reign; - ultimately Lord Rich and Chancellor of England. His eldest son was created Earl of Warwick-his second, Earl of Holland. One of his descendants built Holland House, so famed as the scene of political intrigue in the days of Charles I., as the residence of Addison's wife, the Countess Dowager of Warwick, and since as the centre of intellectual and refined society under the family of Fox.' (vol. ii. p. 27.) The family of Rich is now extinct in all its branches.

We have now another series of clerical Chancellors-and first, Thomas Goodrick-seated on the woolsack by Dudley (December, 1551), because there was no lawyer in whom he could place entire confidence; and he had projects to which a lawyer with any remaining scruples must object.' Goodrick had been employed in revising the translation of the New Testament, and in compiling the Liturgy of Edward VI., and had been rewarded for these services by the mitre of Ely. His reputation as a

Protestant