Page images
PDF
EPUB

table with her and her husband, and composed his history of those times with their privity and assistance.'—vol. i. p. 144.

Queen Eleanor (down to this time the only Lady Keeper) was succeeded by Archdeacon Kilkenny who had acted under her as a sort of vice-chancellor. He is celebrated only for having been a remarkably handsome man, and for having drawn up Henry the Third's answers to a remonstrance from certain heads of the church respecting alleged encroachments by the Crown on their order. The royal response was in these words :—

"It is true I have been faulty in this particular: I obtruded you, my Lord of Canterbury, on your see: I was obliged to employ both entreaties and menaces, my Lord of Winchester, to have you elected. My proceedings, I confess, were very irregular, my Lords of Salisbury and Carlisle, when I raised you from the lowest stations to your present dignities. I am determined henceforth to correct these abuses; and it will also become you, in order to make a thorough reformation, to resign your present benefices, and try again to become successors of the Apostles in a more regular and canonical manner.”—vol. i. p. 145.

One of Edward the First's Chancellors, William de Grenefield or de Grenvill (a younger son of the family now represented by the Duke of Buckingham), was on the 4th of December, 1303, elected Archbishop of York: but the papal legate obstinately objecting to him, he resigned the seal and proceeded to Rome in person with a purse of 9500 marks, which smoothed all difficulties. The rapidity of his proceedings, attested in the clearest manner, may well astonish us. He delivered the great seal to the king at Westminster on the 29th of December, 1304, and was, on his return from Rome, consecrated at Lambeth on the 30th of the ensuing month of January. But a few years ago this would have been thought laudable speed in a Cabinet courier. We must conjecture that the ex-Chancellor took shipping at Marseilles for Cività Vecchia, and returning in the same way had the extraordinary luck of a propitious gale both times. But indeed we have not a few wonderful journeys on record in those slow ages. Perhaps the most wonderful of all is Longshanks's own ride across the Highlands from Elgin to Glasgow, recorded in his very curious Itinerary, lately published by the Maitland Club. It is perplexing to read after these things, that though Edward I. died near Carlisle on the 7th of July, 1307, the news of the royal demise did not reach the Chancellor (Baldock) in London until the 25th of that month. The new king must have had his reasons for deferring the official announcement of his accession. The great seal was received by him at Carlisle on the 2nd of August, and Baldock never was Chancellor again.

Among

Among the Conscience-keepers of Edward III. Lord Campbell dwells with peculiar fondness on the father of English Bibliomania, Lord Chancellor Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, and author of the once famous Philobiblon, which includes his autobiography. He had been tutor to Edward, and to him may be traced the love of literature and the arts which distinguished his pupil when on the throne.

'An extract from chapter viii., entitled "Of the numerous Opportunities of the Author for collecting Books from all Quarters," may bring some suspicion upon his judicial purity; but the open avowal of the manner in which his library was accumulated proves that he had done nothing that would not be sanctioned by the public opinion of the age :"While we performed the duties of Chancellor of the most invincible and ever magnificently triumphant King of England, Edward III., (whose days may the Most High long and tranquilly deign to preserve!) after first inquiring into the things that concerned his Court, and then the public affairs of his kingdom, an easy opening was afforded us, under the countenance of royal favour, for freely searching the hiding-places of books. For the flying fame of our love had already spread in all directions, and it was reported not only that we had a longing desire for books, and especially for old ones, but that any body could more easily obtain our favour by quartos than by money. Wherefore when, supported by the bounty of the aforesaid Prince of worthy memory, we were enabled to oppose or advance, to appoint or discharge; crazy quartos and tottering folios, precious however in our sight as well as in our affections, flowed in most rapidly from the great and the small, instead of new year's gifts and jewels. Then the cabinets of the most noble monasteries were opened; cases were unlocked; caskets unclasped; astonished volumes which had slumbered for long ages in their sepulchres were roused up, and those that lay hid in dark places were overwhelmed with the rays of a new light. Books heretofore most delicate, now become corrupted and nauseous, lay lifeless, covered indeed with the excrements of mice, and pierced through with the gnawing of worms; and those that were formerly clothed with purple and fine linen, were now seen reposing in dust and ashes, given over to oblivion, the abodes of moths. Amongst these nevertheless, as time served, we sat down more voluptuously than the delicate physician could do amidst his stores of aromatics; and where we found an object of love, we found also full enjoyment. Thus the sacred vessels of science came into our power-some being given, some sold, and not a few lent for a time.*

A modern deceased Lord Chancellor was said to have collected a very complete law library by borrowing books from the bar which he forgot to return. If so, he only acted on the maxims of his predecessor De Bury

"Quisquis theologus, quisquis legista peritus
Vis fieri; multos semper habeto libros.
Non in mente manet quicquid non vidimus ipsi;
Quisque sibi libros vindicet ergo-suos."-p. 151.

"In addition to this, we were charged with the frequent embassies of the said Prince, of everlasting memory, and, owing to the multiplicity of state affairs, were sent first to the Roman Chair, then to the Court of France, then to various other kingdoms of the world, on tedious embassies and in perilous times, carrying about with us, however, that fondness for books which many waters could not extinguish; for this, like a certain drug, sweetened the wormwood of peregrination; this, after the perplexing intricacies, scrupulous circumlocutions of debate, and almost inextricable labyrinths of public business, left an opening for a little while to breathe the temperature of a milder atmosphere. O blessed God of gods in Sion! what a rush of the flood of pleasure rejoiced our heart as often as we visited Paris, the paradise of the world! There we longed to remain, where, on account of the greatness of our love, the days ever appeared to us to be few. In that city are delightful libraries in cells redolent of aromatics; there flourishing green-houses of all sorts of volumes; there academic meads trembling with the earthquake of Athenian peripatetics pacing up and down; there the promontories of Parnassus, and the porticos of the Stoics. There, in very deed, with an open treasury and untied purse-strings, we scattered money with a light heart, and redeemed inestimable books from dirt and dust."

This Right Reverend enthusiast is nowhere more entertaining than in describing and reprobating the ill-usage to which the clasped books of his time were liable:

"You will perhaps see a stiff-necked youth lounging sluggishly in his study while the frost pinches him in winter time, oppressed with cold, his watery nose drops, nor does he take the trouble to wipe it with his handkerchief till it has moistened the book beneath with its vile dew. For such a one I would substitute a cobbler's apron in the place of his book. He distributes innumerable straws in various places, with the ends in sight, that he may recall by the mark what his memory cannot retain. These straws, which the stomach of the book never digests, and which nobody takes out, at first distend the book from its accustomed closure, and being carelessly left to oblivion, at last become putrid. He is not ashamed to eat fruit and cheese over an open book, and to transfer his empty cup from side to side upon it: and because he has not his alms-bag at hand, he leaves the rest of the fragments in his books. He never ceases to chatter with eternal garrulity to his companions; and while he adduces a multitude of reasons void of meaning, he waters the book, spread out upon his lap, with the sputtering of his saliva. What is worse, he next reclines with his elbows on the book, and by a short study invites a long uap; and by way of repairing the wrinkles, he twists back the margins of the leaves, to the no small detriment of the volume. He goes out in the rain, and returns, and now flowers make their appearance upon our soil. Then the scholar we are describing, the neglecter rather than the inspector of books, stuffs his volume with firstling violets, roses, and quadrifoils. He will next apply his wet hands, oozing with sweat, to turning over the volumes, then beat the white parchment all over with

his dusty gloves, or hunt over the page, line by line, with his forefinger covered with dirty leather. Then, as the flea bites, the holy book is thrown aside, which, however, is scarcely closed once in a month, and is so swelled with the dust that has fallen into it, that it will not yield to the efforts of the closer."

Like a Bishop and an Ex-chancellor, he properly concludes by supporting his doctrine with the highest authorities. "The most meek Moses instructs us about making cases for books in the neatest manner, wherein they may be safely preserved from all damage. Take this book, says he, and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God. O befitting place, made of imperishable Shittim wood, and covered all over, inside and out, with gold! But our Saviour also, by his own example, precludes all unseemly negligence in the treatment of books, as may be read in Luke iv. For when he had read over the scriptural prophecy written about himself, in a book delivered to him, he did not return it till he had first closed it with his most holy hands; by which act students are most clearly taught that they ought not, in the smallest degree whatever, to be negligent about the custody of books."* 'He died at Bishops Auckland on the 14th of April, 1345, full of years and of honours. Fourteen days after his death he was buried quodammodo honorifice, non tamen cum honore satis congruo," says Chambre, before the altar of the blessed Mary Magdelene, in his own cathedral. But the exalted situation he occupied in the opinion and esteem of Petrarch and other eminent literary men of the fourteenth century, shed brighter lustre on his memory than it could have derived from funeral processions, or from monuments and epitaphs.'-vol. i. pp. 225-227.

66

The clerical chancellors of those old times were, with some exceptions, men well skilled in the civil and canon law, who had commenced as advocates before the ecclesiastical courts, and generally had been employed under previous holders of the great seal. By the time of Edward III. the common lawyers, usually laymen, had become a body of some importance: but that king, who first committed the great seal to a layman, did not commence his grand innovation by a selection from the common law bar. The first lay Chancellor was Sir Robert Bourchier, one of the most eminent soldiers of a most warlike age, and when Edward resolved to put down the ascendancy of the ecclesiastics by inter alia depriving them of the marble chair, he appears to have considered nothing but the shrewdness and energy of this stout knight, who might be relied on for boldly confronting the opposition of the lords Spiritual, but who had been in nowise educated for judicial functions, had been armed' since boyhood, and accompanied the king in all his military expeditions. Bourchier accordingly signalised a brief chancellorship by some most illegal Luke iv. 20. And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and

sat down.'

proceedings,

proceedings, and becoming in consequence extremely unpopular, was very glad to resume his proper vocation at the commencement of the campaign of Cressy. He fought gallantly by the side of the Black Prince, and was rewarded by a peerage, which he transmitted to a line of illustrious heirs. His successor in the marble chair was the first regularly bred common lawyer who. became Chancellor of England-Sir Robert Parnynge, who had been for some time Chief Justice of the King's Bench with high reputation, and then Lord Treasurer, but who never rose to the peerage.

The equitable jurisdiction of chancery had gradually extended itself, and to the duties of his own Court the new Chancellor sedulously devoted himself. But he thought, as did Lord Eldon and the most celebrated of his successors, that the best qualification for an Equity Judge is not the mere drudgery of drawing bills and answers, but a scientific knowledge of the common law; and he further thought it essential that his knowledge of the common law should be steadily kept up by him when Chancellor. "This man," says Lord Coke, "knowing that he who knew not the common law could never well judge in Equity (which is a just correction of law in some cases), did usually sit in the Court of Common Pleas (which court is the lock and key of the Common Law) and heard matters in law there debated, and many times would argue himself, as in the Report, 17 Ed. 3, it appears."

There was only one parliament held while Parnynge was Chancellor, in which he presided with dignity, although the inconvenience was felt of the Speaker not being a member of the House of Peers. The commons, not from any dissatisfaction with him, but rather, I presume, with a view that he might be raised to the peerage, petitioned the King, "that the Chancellor may be a peer of the realm, and that no stranger be appointed thereunto, and that he attend not to any other office." Edward, much nettled, chose to consider this a wanton interference with his prerogative, and returned for answer, "Le Roi poet faire ses ministres come lui plaira, et come lui et ses ancestres ont fait en tut temps passez. On the 26th of August, 1343, he suddenly died while enjoying the full favour of his Prince and the entire confidence of his fellow-subjects.

[ocr errors]

'I cannot find any trace of his decisions while Chancellor; but we know that he is to be honoured as the first person who held the office with the requisite qualifications for the proper discharge of its important duties, and he must have laid the foundation-stone of that temple to justice, afterwards reared in such fair proportions by an Ellesmere, a Nottingham, and a Hardwicke.'-vol. i. p. 244.

Edward III., to gratify the Commons at a critical moment, elevated to the Marble Chair one other eminent layman and common lawyer-Sir Robert Thorpe; but in general during his long reign and for many reigns afterwards, the Chancellors were, according to the primitive fashion, churchmen. Edyngton (A.D.

« PreviousContinue »