Chapter VII: Front Matter (7)

Another curious instance, involving a bishop, occurred about this period. Wilson, the Bishop of Sodor and Man, in consequence of his refusal of the holy sacrament to the wife of the governor of the island, was thrown by him into prison, and fined. The bishop appealed to the Privy Council, by whom he was released, on the opinion of the Attorney and Solicitor Generals, and the fine was remitted. The Earl of Derby, the “sovereign” of the island, contended that it was a “free nation.” But he was not able to show that its freedom implied the power of controlling the spiritual functions of the bishop.

On this subject, however, it must be acknowledged that the right of refusing the sacrament to individuals who might be disapproved of by the clergy, was obviously dangerous, and, though retained in words, is justly abandoned in practice by the Establishment. Such a practice would imply that the clergyman could penetrate the secrets of the heart: it would also give a most offensive power of public insult, a strong temptation to private revenge, and might inflict an irreparable injury on personal character, without any public trial, or any means of personal defence. It is also observable, that no man _can_ ascertain how suddenly and effectually conversion may change the whole tenor of the mind; while the mere fact of coming to the communion-table naturally implies a returning sense of duty. Some of the half Popish disciplinarians of our day, who talk much more of the church than they think of Christianity, have attempted to renew this harsh and hazardous practice. But the man of sense will avoid the insult; and the Christian will acknowledge that, if rebuke is to be administered at all, it ought to be in the shape of private exhortation, and not in the arbitrary and exasperating form of public shame.

The most painful part in the office of Attorney General is the duty of prosecuting high criminals. The Earl of Macclesfield now put this duty to the test. A charge was laid against the Chancellor for corruption in the sale of masterships in Chancery, and the embezzlement of the suitors’ money in their hands. He was impeached by the Commons, and tried by the Lords, was found guilty, and fined £30,000. But on the questions being put that he should be rendered incapable of serving the king, or sitting in parliament, both were negatived; but, for the honour of parliament, the one only by forty-two to forty-two, the Speaker giving, of course, the vote in his favour; and the latter by forty-five to thirty-nine. The trial lasted twenty days, and naturally excited great attention. The ground of his escape from official ruin, (for nothing could save him from public shame,) was probably his favouritism at St James’s—a favouritism which, unluckily for the honour of the courtiers, seems to have remained undiminished.

The conduct of the Attorney General has been censured, as ungrateful to his early patron; but the censure is unfounded. He did all that he could: he refused to join in the prosecution, and avoided this duty with some difficulty. The Earl’s guilt was notorious; nothing could save him. It was no part of the Attorney General’s virtues to thwart public justice, nor was it in his power. He simply consulted the delicacy of old friendship, by refusing to urge its progress. It has been even asked, Why did he not _resign_? Such is the absurdity of querists. His resignation could not have saved the Chancellor, who, after all, escaped with the easy sacrifice of a comparatively small sum from a purse believed to be plethoric with the public money.

Yorke still continued to advance in reputation and office. The deaths of the Chancellor and the Chief Justice were followed by the appointment of Talbot to the woolsack, and of Yorke to the Chief Justiceship, with an increase of the salary from £2000 to £4000 a-year, and the peerage, by the title of Baron Hardwicke, from an estate which he had purchased in the county of Gloucester.

He was now on the verge of his highest promotion. The Chancellor Talbot died in February 1736, after five days’ illness, at the age of fifty-three.

An entry in Lord Hardwicke’s private journal gives a curious and characteristic account of his promotion. “On Monday the 14th of February, about five in the morning, died Charles Talbot, Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain. The _same forenoon_, being at the sittings in Westminster Hall, I received a letter from Sir Robert Walpole, desiring to speak with me on the event of that morning, and wishing that I would dine with him that day in private. I went accordingly, and after dinner he proposed the Great Seal to me in the king’s name. Thereupon I took occasion to state to him, that I was now in a quiet situation, which, by practice, was become easy to me; that I had no _ambition_ to go higher; and, though I had the most grateful sense of his majesty’s goodness, desired to be left where I was.”

Sir Robert perfectly understood this “nolo episcopari” style, and pressed the appointment. We are a little ashamed for the delicacy of the future Chancellor; for he now told the minister, that the Chief Clerkship of the King’s Bench being likely to fall soon into his gift, which he might grant for two lives for the benefit of his family, he must have an equivalent! After some bargaining, Yorke offered to take the reversion of the Tellership of the Exchequer for his eldest son. Walpole objected, that the king “disliked reversions.” And well he might; for the Tellership of the Exchequer was said to have amounted (in subsequent times) to £40,000 a-year! The bargain was at length struck—the Tellership was given, and Hardwicke was Chancellor. A note in Horace Walpole’s Memoirs adds point to the transaction: it says that “Walpole, finding it difficult to make Hardwicke give up the Chief Justiceship, told him that, if he refused, he would give the Seals to Fazakerly. ‘What!’ exclaimed Hardwicke, ‘Fazakerly! he is a Tory, perhaps a Jacobite.’ ‘All very true,’ replied Walpole; ‘but if by one o’clock you do not accept my offer, Fazakerly, _by two_, becomes Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, and one of _the stanchest Whigs in England_!’”

The Chancellor, as a scholar and a man of the world, was consulted by his friends on occasional rules of life; and, in answer to a request of the Marchioness of Annandale to give his opinion on the course of education proper for her son, Hardwicke, in giving a detail of the studies proper for a nobleman, as classics, mathematics, law, &c., alludes to foreign travel.

He observes “that, in former times, the people of Britain were observed to return home with their affections more strongly engaged towards the well-tempered constitution and liberty of their own country, from having observed the misery resulting from the military governments abroad. But, by an unlucky reverse, it (now) sometimes happens that, from being taught to like the fashions and manners of foreign countries, people are led to have no aversion to their political institutions, and their methods of exercising civil power.”

He then adverts to the still more serious evil which our own generation feel every day:

“The Protestant religion being established here, is one great security, not only of our religious, but also of our civil liberty. That ocular demonstration of the gross superstitions and absurdities of Popery which travelling furnishes, was formerly thought to fix the mind in a more firm attachment to the former, and abhorrence of the latter.” He then adverts to the culpable change frequently wrought by foreign life on this wise and salutary feeling. “I fear the case is now somewhat otherwise; with this further ill consequence, that many of our young men, by a long interruption of the exercise of their own religion, become absolutely indifferent to all.”

The truth of the case, however, is, that travelling is _not_ the source of the injury done to the habits and principles of the English: it is _residence_ abroad that does the irreparable mischief. Travelling enlarges the mind; residence abroad narrows, degrades, and vitiates it. No Englishman who has long resided in a foreign city, (except, perhaps, in a university, for the pursuit of learning,) is ever fit for any thing when he returns: he is a practical idler, and pitiful lounger round coffee-houses and gaming-tables. He discovers that his “feelings are too refined” for the roughness of English life—that his frame is “too delicate for anything but a southern climate”—boasts of his sensibilities, while he is leading a life of the most vulgar and gross vice—until, beggared by debauchery, or worn out with disease, he drops into the tomb, without leaving a regret or a manly recollection behind him. For all the higher purposes of life he had long been ruined—without country, without public spirit, without a sense of duty, he has lived only to eat and drink, to retail the gossip of the hour, and yawn through the day. He has abandoned _all religion_, and professes to think all creeds alike. His morals are of the same quality with his religion, and he creeps through society as worthless as the worm that shall soon feed on his better half—his body—in the grave.

Lord Hardwicke had now full opportunity for the display of all his talents; and their combination in one man was certainly an extraordinary evidence of the powers of discipline and nature. He was at once a first-rate lawyer, a first-rate statesman, and a first-rate public speaker. Any one of those high attainments might bring sufficient to make the business of a life—in him they were the easy attributes of a master-mind.

His oratory was not of the school which afterwards gave such eminence to Chatham. It had none of the brilliant impetuosity of that Demosthenes of English orators; but it had a captivation—the captivation of eloquence and grace—which gave interest even to the driest details of the tribunal. Lord Camden, himself a powerful public speaker, thus described Hardwicke on the bench:—

“In the Court of Chancery, multitudes would flock to hear the Lord Chancellor, as _to hear Garrick_. His clearness, arrangement, and comprehension of his subject, were masterly. But his _address_ in the turn which he gave to all, whether he was in the right, or was ‘to make the worse appear the better reason,’ was like _magic_.”

His high employments now brought opulence with them; and he purchased from Lord Oxford the fine estate of Wimpole, in Cambridgeshire, which had come into the Oxford family by marriage with the Duke of Newcastle’s heiress. In 1740, Philip Yorke, the Chancellor’s eldest son, married the daughter of Lord Breadalbane, and grand-daughter of the Duke of Kent. Horace Walpole, in his correspondence with Conway, thus smartly sums up the good fortune of this most prosperous family:

“Harry, what luck the Chancellor has! first, indeed, to be in himself so great a man. But then, in accidents. He is made Chief Justice and Peer, when Talbot is made Chancellor and Peer. Talbot dies in a twelvemonth, and leaves him the Seals, at an age when others are scarcely made solicitors. Then he marries his son into one of the first families of Britain, obtains a patent for a marquisate, and eight thousand pounds a-year, after the Duke of Kent’s death. The Duke _dies in a fortnight_, and leaves them all! People talk of fortune’s wheel that is always rolling; troth, my Lord Hardwicke has overtaken her wheel, and rolled along with it.”

The present attempt to give legislative power to the Jews, an attempt whose success would inevitably change the _Christian character_ of the legislature, gives a revived interest to the following decision of the great Chancellor. A legacy of £12,000 having been left by a Jew, “for establishing an assembly for reading and improving the Jewish law,” and the case having been brought into court, the Chancellor decided against the application of the legacy. The note of this judgment, recorded in his own note-book, is as follows:—

“I was of opinion, that this appeared to be a charitable bequest or fund for promoting and propagating the Jewish religion, and consequently _contrary to law_. For that the Christian religion _is part of the law of the land_, and involved in the _constitution of this kingdom_, according to my Lord Hale in Taylor’s case, 1 Ventr., and my Lord Raymond in Wolston’s case; and that it differed widely from the cases of charitable benefactions to the meeting-houses or congregations of Protestant dissenters, which are tolerated, and regulated by the Toleration Act. Therefore, I _refused_ to decree for this charity.”

In March 1745, died the celebrated Sir Robert Walpole: of all the ministers of George the Second the most trusted, and of all the ministers of England the most unpopular; of all the statesmen of his day the most successful, and certainly, of all the public men of England, regarded, in his own time, as the most unscrupulous. If it be doubted that he was personally more unprincipled than other ministers, to him unquestionably was due the _practice_ of corruption as an established principle of government. That any minister could have dared to adopt such a system in England, is to be accounted for only by the rapid changes of party since the beginning of the century, the changes of the Succession, the timidity of the press, yet but in its infancy, and the unsettled nature of the Brunswick throne.

In late years, Burke, inflamed with the love of splendid paradox, and delighting in the novelty of imagining personal virtue in the midst of public vice, amused his genius with throwing a factitious lustre over the memory of Walpole. But the voice of contemporary writers has been since amply echoed by the judgment of history. Walpole _was_ a corrupter; and, if the progress of his system had not been broken short by his fall, and by the hurried successions of ministers from each side of the House alternately, the government would perhaps have perished, or could have purified itself only by a revolution.

Walpole was a first-rate man of _craft_; his sagacity was vigilant; his industry was indefatigable; his speech plausible, and his management of the uncouth and suspicious King dexterous in a remarkable degree. But he lowered the whole tone of public life. No act of magnanimous policy ever originated with Walpole. He made no attempt, or but of the feeblest order, to add to the national intelligence. He encouraged none of the higher provinces of the arts, learning, or science; and, though he gave mitres to Butler, Gibson, and Sherlock, yet the religion of England languished scarcely less than its philosophy. It was what Burke himself subsequently termed its succeeding period, “burgomaster age,” and parliament was scarcely more than a Dutch council, until Chatham came and startled it again into life. Walpole obtains credit with posterity for the moderation of his wealth. But, beginning as the son of a country gentleman, he purchased a fine estate; he built a magnificent mansion, Houghton; he collected one of the finest private picture-galleries in Europe; and he always lived, so far as we can learn, in great affluence and expenditure.

But the country was suddenly to be tried by a new and most formidable hazard. News arrived in London that the Prince Charles Edward, the eldest son of the Pretender, had landed in Scotland, had raised the standard of the Stuarts, had been joined by some of the clans, and was determined on marching to the metropolis. This part of the Memoir is peculiarly interesting, from its giving the private impressions of individuals of rank and importance, on the everyday movements of the time.

On the 1st of August, Lady Hardwicke, who was, of course, acquainted with all the opinions of government, writes to her son Philip Yorke, who was then out of town:—“My heart is very heavy. Our folks are very busy at this time, by fresh alarms of the Pretender being in Scotland. But I believe the ship Captain Bret fought was the ship he was in. If it be so, he is not yet got there; which may give a little more time to prepare for him. The French disclaim sending him there; but that is nothing. They are to take Ostend; while Spain sends troops thence, to the other end of the kingdom, to distract our measures. This is my opinion, God grant I may be in the wrong. In the mean time, our king’s abroad, and our troops also. There comes out a proclamation this day, offering a reward for the Pretender, as I am informed.”

Lord Hardwicke had been appointed one of the Regency, on the King’s absence in Germany. And his views of the crisis were gloomy enough. In a letter to Lord Glenorchy (August 15) he says, “On Tuesday last we received advice from the Duke of Argyle and my Lord Justice Clerk, that the young Pretender was landed in the north-west parts of the Highlands. He is said to have come in a single ship of 16 or 18 guns, attended by about 70 persons, among whom are Lord Tullibardine and old Lochiel. When I look round me, and consider our whole situation, _our all appears to be at stake_.”

“The yachts sailed this morning for the King, who has declared he will set out from Hanover, as soon as he has heard they have arrived on the other side.”

This was desponding language from so eminent a person, but it was produced by deeper feelings than alarm at the landing of a few people in the north, though with a prince at their head. The plain truth, and no man was better aware of it than Hardwicke, was, that the conduct of the late Cabinet had utterly disgusted the nation. The contempt justly felt for Walpole had spread to higher objects; and the nation looked with an ominous quietude on the coming struggle between the young Chevalier and the possessor of the throne. As if the factions of parliament had been preparing for the success of the Stuarts, all their efforts for the last ten years had been directed to dismantle the country; all their harangues were turned to extinguishing the army, which they described as at once ruinous to the finances, and dangerous to the liberties of the country. Probably there was not a man of all those declaimers who believed a single syllable which he uttered; but “Reduction” was the party cry. With France in immense military power; with the Stuarts living under its protection; with the whole force of Popery intriguing throughout the country; and with a great number of weak people, who thought that their consciences called for the return of the exiled dynasty in the person of the Pretender, the reduction of the national defences by the ministry fell little short of treason. But when the intelligence of the prince’s arrival was brought to London, the kingdom seems to have been left almost without a soldier; every battalion being engaged in the lingering war in Germany. The King had not added to the strength of his government; his passion for going to Hanover had occasioned obvious public inconvenience, and his absence at the moment of public peril was felt with peculiar irritability. The Chancellor, on this subject, after alluding to his recovery from a slight illness, says, “Would to God, the state of our affairs were as much mended; but the clouds continue as black as ever; and how soon the storm may burst on us, we know not.”

On the first news of the Chevalier’s landing, a message had been sent to the King, to return with all haste, which he did, as is mentioned in a letter of the Chancellor to the Archbishop of York. After speaking of the difficulties of government, the letter closes with, “I had writ thus far, when a messenger from Margate brought the good news that the King landed there about half an hour after three this morning, and would be at Kensington within two hours. Accordingly, his Majesty arrived there about two o’clock, in perfect health. I really think I never saw him look better in my life. He appears also to be in very good humour, and to value himself upon the haste he has made to us, when there was any apprehension of danger affecting this country.”

In another letter, he sadly laments the absence of all public interest in the event of the Rebellion. “Can you tell what will make _double hearts_ true?... I have not slept these two nights; _but sweat and prayed_.... The Duke of Argyle is come to town, and done nothing; and Duke Athol is gone to a town in the Highlands, and does nothing neither. He has had Glengarrie with him, whose clan has joined the Pretender, and he is gone from him. In short, every thing is in a strange way, and nobody, hardly, is affected as they ought; at least as I am.... This is the real state of things, however they may be disguised, and I fear Sir J. Cope’s _not equal to his business_. God alone can save us, to whose merciful judgment we trust.”

The late Sydney Smith’s pleasantries on the novelty of invasion ideas in the brains of John Bull, and the difficulty of convincing him of the possibilities of such a thing, were fully exemplified in the cabinet, as well as in the people. The cabinet did little more than send for the King, and the King did little more than send an incompetent officer with a small detachment of troops to put down a rebellion which might have already enlisted the whole martial population of Scotland; even the Chancellor could not restrain himself from running down to one or other of his country houses, for two or three days at a time, while the government was actually trembling from hour to hour on the verge of the scaffold. This childish inability of self-control disparages the conduct of so distinguished a person. But with all his “sweating and praying,” he seems to have been totally incapable of denying himself this pitiful indulgence, when a week might see the Stuarts on the throne. At length troops were ordered from Germany, and six thousand arrived with General Ligonier. Some Dutch regiments followed; five men-of-war returned from the Mediterranean, and the British regiments were on their march through Holland. In the mean time came the startling announcement that the Pretender was in Edinburgh, that he was proclaimed there, and that he was royally lodged in Holyrood House. The Chancellor’s fears of Cope’s inefficiency were soon shown to have been prophetic. Cope had been sent to save Edinburgh,—the clans outmarched him, and Cope had no resource but to land at Dunbar. At Haddington he suddenly found the clans to the south of his force. They were about three thousand, half armed, to his two thousand two hundred disciplined troops; the Highlanders rushed upon him and routed him in a moment. The Chevalier returned to Edinburgh with a hundred pipers leading the march, and playing, “The king shall have his own again.”

The person who figures mainly at this period, and who appears to have shown alike good sense and courage, was Herring, Archbishop of York, an old friend of the Chancellor, who had recommended him to the government when but preacher at Lincoln’s Inn, obtained for him a bishopric, and pushed him forward into the Archbishopric of York. Herring was afterwards promoted to Canterbury, perhaps as a reward of his loyalty and manliness in this delicate and difficult time. Herring was evidently a sensible and high-minded man, and his letters to the Chancellor figure conspicuously among the mass of correspondence received by Hardwicke. On the battle of Prestonpans, this vigorous prelate thus wrote:—

“I conceal it, but I own I conceive terrible apprehensions from the affair at Prestonpans, where the conduct of our general, &c., was —— I won’t give it the right name, but that of the rebels excellent; and, from what I can collect, and the judgment which I form upon the opinion of the soldiers here, they are admirably disciplined, and, our soldiers have felt, well armed. They showed resolution and conduct in taking the little battery, and as they are vigorous and savage, their leaders well know how to point their strength properly and effectually. There is something, too, in their artful taciturnity that alarms one. They say it is a fact that from their setting out to this hour it is not easy to say who leads them, nor are they seen in a manner till they are felt, so silent and well conceived are their motions. I hope all this is known above much better than it is here, and that it is now seen that this rebellion is not to be quashed by small pelotons of an army, but must be attended to _totis viribus_. Who can say what will be the consequence of such an advantage gained in England?” In another letter Herring mentions that a meeting of the county was held at York, at which he presided.

London was of course full of rumours, and a letter from Lady Hardwicke gives them in grave yet ridiculous detail. After saying that the merchants had stopped the run upon the bank, she mentions a report that the Chancellor was turned out; that the Duke of Newcastle and his brother had run away, some said, to the Pretender; and others, that Lestock, the Admiral, had produced three letters from him forbidding him to fight; and these reports gained a universal run. People were told at the turnpikes as they passed through, that London was in an uproar and his Grace fled. Nay, the mobs gathered in crowds about his house, and saw some of the shutters unopened, whence they concluded he was gone; and when he went out they surrounded his chariot, and looked him in the face and said, “It is he! he is not gone. What is our condition, when such monstrous lies are spread to increase the terrors of honest minds?”

The Archbishop’s exertions gave great satisfaction to the King, whom he had so worthily and courageously served; and the Chancellor immediately wrote him an account of an interview which he had with his Majesty on the occasion. “I own,” said he, “I feel a particular pleasure in the great and noble part which your Grace has taken on this occasion, and in the gallant, wise, and becoming manner in which you have exerted yourself. I was so full of it, that I went immediately to Kensington, and gave the King an ample account of it in his closet. I found him apprised of it in the Lord Lieutenant’s letters, which he had received from the Duke of Newcastle; but he was so pleased with it that he was desirous of hearing it over again. I informed his Majesty of the substance of your letter, the sermon your Grace had preached last Sunday, and with such prodigious expedition printed and dispersed; and when I came to your speech, he desired me to show it him. His Majesty read it over from beginning to end, gave it the just praise it so highly deserves, and said it must be printed. I told him I believed it was printing at York, but it is determined to print it in the Gazette. When I had gone through this part, I said, your Majesty will give me leave to acquaint my Lord Archbishop that you approve his zeal and activity in your service—to which the King answered quick, My lord, that is not enough; you must also tell the Archbishop that I heartily thank him for it. His Majesty also highly applauded the affection, zeal, and unanimity which had appeared in the several lords and gentlemen on this occasion.”

The Chancellor also informs him that ten British regiments had arrived from Flanders, and that eight battalions more, and 1500 dragoons were ordered to embark. He then makes a natural and just remark on the faction that had clamoured against putting the country into a state of defence. “I know some friends of yours who had talked themselves hoarse in contending for this measure, and whose advice, if followed some time ago, might have prevented, in all human probability, this dismal scene. But the conduct of _some persons_ on this occasion has been infamous.” He then marks the true conduct to be adopted in all instances of civil war. “A great body of forces will forthwith be sent to the North. I contend every where, that they must be a _great body_, for the protection of the King’s crown and his people. The work of the Revolution, which has been building up these seven-and-fifty years, must not be risked upon an even chance.” Such is true policy. The defence of an empire must not be risked upon a chance; the benighted and dishonest theorists, who would enfeeble the defences of England in our day, for the sake of gaining the clamour of a mob, would be the first to fly in the hour of danger; and although the _certainty_ of a French war from the ambition of the monarchy, is at an end, and the Prince de Joinville is not likely to realise the suggestions of his detestable pamphlet, and have the honour of pouncing on our sea-coast villages; a Republic is a neighbour to which we have not been accustomed for a long while, and which, with the best intentions for the present, may very suddenly change its mind.

Another letter from Herring shows the gallant spirit which may exist under lawn sleeves. “I purposed,” said he, “to have set out for London on Wednesday; but I have had a sort of remembrance from the city here (York) that it will create some uneasiness. There is a great matter in opinion; and if my attendance at Bishopsthorpe serves to support a spirit, or to preserve a union, or that the people think so, I will not stir.... I have therefore put off my journey, but ordered my affairs so, that at the least intimation from your Lordship, I can _vasa conclamare_, and set out in an hour. To talk in the style military, (though my red coat is not made yet,) the first _column_ of my family went off a week ago, the second moves on Wednesday, and the third attends my motions. I purpose to leave my house in a condition to receive the Marshal, if he pleases to make use of it. And there is a sort of policy in my civility, too; for while he occupies it, it cannot be plundered. I know your Lordship has ever an anxiety for your friends. But, if I must fly, the General and his hussars have offered to cover my retreat. But enough of this; I had rather laugh when the battle is won, and could not help putting up an ejaculation at the pond-side to-night,—Heaven grant I may feed my swans in peace!”

The mention of the red coat was probably suggested by a report that the Archbishop had been seen in uniform. And the “hussars” were a troop of young gentlemen, whom General Oglethorpe had embodied at York.

The prelate was somewhat of a humorist; and he thus writes on his military reputation:—“I find I must go into regimentals, in my own defence, in a double sense; for an engraver has already given me a Saracen’s head, surrounded with a chevalier in chains, and all the instruments of war, and the hydra of rebellion at my feet. And I see another copperplate promised, where I am to be exhibited in the same martial attitude, with all my clergy with me. By my troth, as I judge from applications made to me every day, I believe I could raise a regiment of my own order. And I had a serious offer the other day from a Welch curate, from the bottom of Merionethshire, who is six feet and a half high, that, hearing that I had put on scarlet, he was ready to attend me at an hour’s warning, if the Bishop of Bangor did not call upon him for the same service.”

The disregard of all preparation had left the whole English border defenceless. Hull and Carlisle were the only towns which had any means of resistance. York had walls, but they were in a state of decay, and had not a single piece of artillery. Thus the invaders were enabled to pursue any road which they pleased. But their entrance into England should have taught them that their enterprise had become hopeless. The country people every where fled before them—the roads were filled with the carriages and waggons of the gentry hurrying to places of safety. No gentleman of rank joined them. One army was on their rear, and the main army, under the Duke of Cumberland, was between them and London.

In the metropolis, the spirit of the people, always slow, until the danger is visible, now awoke. The lawyers, in a procession of two hundred and fifty carriages, carried up an address to the King, assuring him of their loyalty. The trained bands were summoned. Troops were sent to the coast to watch the French, if they should attempt invasion; alarm-posts and signals were appointed in case of tumults in London, and the capital was at length in safety against a much superior force to that of the Chevalier. But in December the gratifying news came, that on the 5th the invaders had retired from Derby, and were rapidly returning to the North.

The disorder and exhaustion of those gallant but unfortunate men, must have left them an easy prey to the superior forces which were now on their track, when the pursuit was suddenly stopped by an alarm of French invasion. Twelve thousand men had suddenly been collected; the Duke of Richelieu, with the Pretender’s second son, had come to Dunkirk; transports were gathered along the coast; and the invasion would probably have been attempted, but for a storm which drove many of their ships ashore near Calais. The troops in London were but six thousand! The 16th of April, at Culloden, closed this most unhappy struggle, and gave an internal peace to England which has never been broken.

The remarks in the memoir on this daring enterprise seem to be imperfect. The first is, that if England was to have been invaded at all, the effort should have been made before the army could be brought from Flanders. The second is, that the retreat from Derby should have been exchanged for a march on London. But the former would have required a totally different plan of operations. The Prince should have landed in Kent, if his object was to take London by surprise. But, as his only troops must be the clans, he must look for them in the North; and it would have been impossible to march an army from the Highlands to the metropolis in less than a fortnight. On the second point, the retreat from Derby was obviously necessary. The clans were already diminishing—every step must be fought for—they were but half armed—and the King’s troops were increasing day by day.

In one remark we agree, that the Chevalier should never have attempted more than the possession of Scotland. He should have remained in Holyrood House. There he had a majority of the nation in his favour,—the heads of the clans, and the old romantic recollections of his ancestral kings, all tending to support his throne. A French force might have been easily summoned to his assistance, and for a while he might have maintained a separate sovereignty. It is, on the other hand, not improbable that the Scottish nation might have looked on the sovereignty of a son of James, the persecutor, with jealousy; Protestantism would have dreaded a French alliance; and the expulsion of the Chevalier would have been effected in Scotland on the model of the English expulsion of James. Still, the experiment was feasible for the claimant of a crown; and the success of the adventure might have continued long enough to produce great evil to both countries.

We have found these volumes highly interesting, not merely from the importance of their period, but from their containing events so curiously parallel to those of our own time. Among the rest was the appointment to the Archbishopric of Canterbury. A letter from Charles Yorke thus says:—“The Archbishop of Canterbury died suddenly on Saturday. The Bishop of London has declined the offer of succeeding. It is now offered to the Bishop of Salisbury, who has not yet returned an answer. If he refuses, which some say he will, the Archbishop of York will be the man.”

The reasons for these refusals were probably the reluctance to change, at the advanced age of these bishops,—Sherlock, of Salisbury, being seventy, and Gibson probably about the same age. The fees for possession are also immense, and we have heard them rated at little short of £20,000.

The Lord Chancellor announced the offer to the Archbishop of York, who returned the following remarkable answer:—“I am honoured with your Lordship’s of the 13th inst., which I embrace with all my heart, as a new instance of that friendship and affection for me which for so many years have been the support, and credit, and comfort of my life.

“I have considered the thing, my best friend and my most honoured Lord, with all deliberation and compass of thought that I am master of, and am come to a very firm and most resolved determination not to quit the See of York on any account or on any consideration.... I am really poor; I am not ambitious of being rich, but have too much pride, with, I hope, a small mixture of honesty, to bear being in debt. I am now out of it, and in possession of a clear independency of that sort. I must not go back, and begin the world again at fifty-five.

“The honour of Canterbury is a thing of glare and splendour, and the hopes of it a _proper incentive to schoolboys_ to industry. But I have considered all its inward parts, and examined all its duties, and if I should quit my present station to take it, I will not answer for it that in less than a twelvemonth I did not sink and die with regret and envy at the man who should succeed me here, and quit the place in my possession, as I ought to do, to one better and wiser than myself.”

This language might have been received with some suspicion in other instances; but Herring was a straightforward as well as a very able man, and there can be no doubt that he spoke what he thought. But he seems to have mistaken the position of the Primate as one of splendour, for we certainly have seen instances in which it displayed any thing but splendour, and in which the great body of the clergy knew no more of the halls of Lambeth, shared no more of its due hospitality, and enjoyed no more of the natural and becoming intercourse with their metropolitan, than if he had been a hermit. This grievous error, which has the necessary effect of repelling and ultimately offending and alienating the whole body of the inferior clergy, a body who constitute the active strength of the Establishment, we must hope to see henceforth totally changed. In the higher view of the case, an Archbishop of Canterbury possesses every advantage for giving an honourable and meritorious popularity to the Church. By his rank, entitled to associate with the highest personages of the empire, he may more powerfully influence them by the manliness and intelligence of his opinions: a peer of parliament, he should be a leader of council, the spokesman of the prelacy, the guide of the peers on all ecclesiastical questions, and the courageous protector of the Establishment committed to his charge. In his more private course, he ought to cultivate the association of the learned, the vigorous, and the active minds of the country. He ought especially to be kind to his clergy, not merely by opening his palace and his hospitalities to them all, but by personal intercourse, by visiting their churches, by preaching from time to time in their pulpits, by making himself known to them in the general civilities of private friendliness, and by the easy attentions which, more than all the formalities of official condescension, sink into the hearts of men. It is absurd and untrue to say that an archbishop has no time for all these things. These things are of the simplest facility to any man whose heart is in the right place; and if, instead of locking himself up with two or three dreary effigies of man, in the shape of chaplains, and freezing all the soul within him by a rigid and repulsive routine, he shall “do as he would be done unto” if he had remained a country curate, an Archbishop of Canterbury might be the most beloved, popular, and for all the best purposes, the most influential man in the kingdom.

Old age was now coming on Lord Hardwicke, and with it the painful accompaniment of the loss of his old and intimate associates through public and private life; his own public career, too, was come to its close. In 1756 the Newcastle ministry was succeeded by that of the celebrated William Pitt, (Lord Chatham,) and Lord Hardwicke resigned the Great Seal. The note in his private journal states, “19th November 1756, resigned the Great Seal voluntarily into his Majesty’s hands at St James’s, after I had held it nineteen years, eight months, and ten days.”

All authorities since his day appear to have agreed in giving the highest tribute to this distinguished man. His character in the _Annual Register_ says, “In judicature, his firmness and dignity were evidently derived from his consummate knowledge and talents; and the mildness and humanity which tempered it from the best heart.... His extraordinary despatch of the business of the court, increased as it was in his time beyond what had been known in any former, on account of his established reputation there, and the extension of the commerce and riches of the nation, was an advantage to the suitor, inferior only to that arising from the acknowledged equity, perspicuity, and precision of his decrees.... The manner in which he presided in the House of Lords added order and dignity to that assembly.” Lord Campbell, in his late “Lives of the Chancellors,” characterises Lord Hardwicke as “the man universally and deservedly considered the most consummate judge who _ever sat_ in the Court of Chancery.”

An instance of his grace of manner even in rebuke, amply deserves to be recorded. A cause was argued in Chancery, in which a grandson of Oliver Cromwell, and bearing the same name, was a party. The opposing counsel began to cast some reflections on the memory of his eminent ancestor; on which the Chancellor quietly said, “I observe Mr Cromwell standing outside the bar, inconveniently pressed by the crowd; make way for him, that he may _sit by me on the Bench_.” This had the effect of silencing the sarcasms of the advocate. Lord Hardwicke seems to have excited a professional deference for his legal conduct and abilities, which at this distance of time it is difficult even to imagine. But the highest names of the Bar seem to have exhausted language in his panegyric. Lord Mansfield thus spoke of him on being requested by a lawyer to give him materials for his biography. The answer is worth retaining for every reason.

“My success in life is not very remarkable. My father was a man of rank and fashion. Early in life I was introduced into the best company, and my circumstances enabled me to support the character of a man of fortune. To these advantages I chiefly owe _my_ success. And therefore my life cannot be very interesting. But if you wish to employ your abilities in writing the life of a truly _great_ and _wonderful_ man in our profession, take the life of Lord Hardwicke for your object. He was indeed a wonderful character. He became Chief Justice of England and Chancellor from his own abilities and virtues; for he was the son of a peasant!”

Not exactly so, as we have seen; for his father was a respectable man, who gave him a legal education. But the great Chancellor certainly owed but little to birth or fortune.

We have heard much of the elegance and polish of Mansfield’s style, but, from the imperfect reports of public speeches a hundred years ago, have had but few evidences of its charm. One precious relic, however, these volumes have preserved. On his taking leave of the society of Lincolns Inn, (on his being raised to the Bench,) the usual complimentary address was made by Mr Charles Yorke. The reply, of which we give but a sentence, was as follows:—

“If I have had in any measure success in my profession, it is owing to the great man who has presided in our highest courts of judicature the whole time I attended the bar. It was impossible to attend him, to sit under him every day, without catching some beams from his light. The disciples of Socrates, whom I will take the liberty to call the great lawyer of antiquity, since the first principles of all law are derived from his philosophy, owe their reputation to their having been the repeaters of the sayings of their great master. If _we_ can arrogate nothing to ourselves, we can boast of the school we were brought up in. The scholar may glory in his master, and we may challenge past ages to show us his equal.”

After brief allusions to the three great names of Bacon, Clarendon, and Somers, all of whom he regarded as inferior either in moral or natural distinctions, he said,—“It is the peculiar felicity of the great man of whom I am speaking, to have presided for nearly twenty years, and to have shone with a splendour that has risen superior to faction, and that has subdued envy.”

The melancholy case of Admiral Byng occurred in this year, (1757) and is well reasoned in this work. The writer thinks that the execution was just. A death by law is naturally distressing to the feelings of humanity, and the degradation or banishment of the unfortunate admiral might possibly have had all the effects of the final punishment, without giving so much pain to the public feelings. Still, the cabinet might justly complain of the clamour raised against their act, by the party who arraigned them for the death of Byng. In command of a great fleet on a most important occasion, he had totally failed, and failed in despite of the opinions of his own officers. He had been sent for the express purpose of relieving the British garrison of Minorca, and he was scared away by the chance of encountering the French fleet: the consequence was, the surrender of the island, and the capture of the garrison. On his return to England, he was tried and found guilty by a court-martial: he was found guilty by the general opinion of the legislature and the nation; and though the court-martial recommended him to mercy, on the ground that his offence was not poltroonery, but an “error in judgment;” yet his reluctance to fight the French had produced such ruinous consequences, and had involved the navy in such European disgrace, that the King determined on his death, and he died accordingly. An error in judgment which consists in _not_ fighting, naturally seems, to a brave people, a wholly different offence from the error which consists in grappling with the enemy. And, though Voltaire’s sarcasm, that Byng was shot _pour encourager les autres_, had all the pungency of the Frenchman’s wit, and though British admirals could require no stimulant to their courage from the fear of a similar fate, there can be but little doubt that this execution helped to make up the decisions of many a perplexed mind in after times. The man who fights needs have no fear of court-martials in England. This was a most important point gained. The greatest of living soldiers has said, that the only fault which he had to find with any of his generals, was their dread of responsibility. The court-martial of Byng taught the British captains, in the phrase of the immortal Nelson, that “the officer who grapples with his enemy, can never be wrong.”

On the 25th of October King George II. died. He had been in good health previously, had risen from bed, taken his chocolate, and talked of walking in the gardens of Kensington. The page had left the room, and hearing a noise of something falling, hurried back. He found the King on the floor, who only said, “Call Amelia,” and expired. He was seventy-seven years old, and had reigned thirty-four years.

The King left but few recollections, and those negative. He had not connected himself with the feelings of the country; he had not patronised the fine arts, nor protected literature. He was wholly devoted to continental politics, and had adhered to some continental habits, which increased his unpopularity with the graver portion of the people of England.

In 1763 Lord Hardwicke’s health began visibly to give way. He had lost his wife, and had lost his old friend the Duke of Newcastle. Death was every where among the circle of those distinguished persons who had been the companions of his active days. He had great comfort, however, in that highest of comforts to old age, the distinctions and talents of his sons, who had all risen into public rank. But the common fate of all mankind had now come upon him; and on the 6th of March he breathed his last. “Serene and composed, I saw him in his last moments, and he looked like an innocent child in its nurse’s arms,” is the note of his son. He was seventy-four. His remains were interred in the parish church of Wimpole.

The peerage and estates still continue in the family, and are now represented by the estimable and intelligent son of the late Admiral Sir Joseph Yorke. On the death of the Chancellor’s eldest son, who had succeeded to the title, the eldest son of Mr Charles Yorke became Lord Hardwicke. This nobleman, who was remarkable for scholarship and refinement of taste, had held the anxious office of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in the year of the Rebellion 1798. His son, Lord Royston, a very accomplished person, being lost by shipwreck in the seas, the son of the well-known admiral, who had been so unhappily killed by a flash of lightning in a boat off Portsmouth, became the heir.

It is in the history of men like Lord Hardwicke that England justly prides herself. Here is an instance of the prizes which lie before the vigour, talents, and principles of her great men. The son of a country solicitor rises to the highest rank of a subject, forces his way through all the obstacles of narrow means, professional prejudice, learned difficulty, and humble birth; takes his place among the first ranks of the aristocracy, guides the law, shares in the first influence of the state, is the pillar of government, and chief councillor of his king; accumulates a vast fortune, becomes master of magnificent estates, and founds a family holding in succession distinguished offices in church and state, and still forming a portion of the nobility of England. And all this was done by the talents of a single individual. Long may the constitution live which offers such triumphs to integrity and learning, and glory be to the country which has such men, and fixes her especial renown on their fame!

The biography is vigorous, intelligent, and remarkably interesting. No historian can in future write the “Reign of George II.” without it. It passes through times of singular importance: and while the volumes are essential to the student of legal history, they offer a high gratification to the general reader.

HOW WE GOT POSSESSION OF THE TUILLERIES.