After such a manifestation of the ways by which it is intended the king shall govern, I should have renounced any place of favour, into which the kindness and industry of my friends might have advanced me, when I found those that were better than I, were only fit to be destroyed.My thoughts as to king and state depending upon their actions, no man shall be a more faithful servant to him than I, if he make the good and prosperity of his people his glory; none more his enemy, if he doth the contrary

39

The fugitive patriot, with a heart secretly bleeding for the degradation of his own country, made himself a curious and acute spectator of the intrigues and contentions of foreign courts. His patrimony had been greatly reduced by an advance which he had made to his brotherin-law, Lord Strangford, and an unfortunate difference having taken place with his father, his pecuniary means were altogether of a very limited and uncertain kind. Yet he bore his hard fortune with a degree of equanimity and patience which his persecutors might have envied. The following passage, which occurs in one of his letters, shows what a noble and vigorous mind Sydney possessed, and how independent he truly was of aid from without:-"He that is naked, alone, and without help in the open sea, is less unhappy in the night when he may hope the land is near, than in the day when he sees it is not, and that there is no possibility of safety. Whilst I was at Rome, I wrote letters without much pain, since I had not so divided my time as to be very sensible of losing an hour or two; now, I am alone, time grows much more precious unto me, and I am very unwilling to lose any part of it." In 1663, he left Italy, and travelled through Switzerland, where he spent some weeks with his early friend Ludlow, and his companions in exile. He then proceeded to Brussels, where he occupied himself for a time with a plan for engaging in the service of Austria with a body of troops which he proposed to raise from among his old republican companions at home. The scheme was rejected by the English cabinet, and Sydney next urged the French government to invade England, for the purpose of restoring the commonwealth. This project also came to nothing, but Sydney was albwed to live quietly two years under the avowed protection of Louis XIV. An anecdote is related of him strikingly characteristic of his haughty and stubborn independence, at the time when he was enjoying an asylum, and perhaps experiencing the bounty of this self-willed monarch :-"The king of France having taken a fancy to a fine English horse, on which he had seen Sydney mounted at a chace, requested that he would part with it at his own price. On his declining the proposal, the king, determined to take no denial, gave orders to tender him money, or to seize the horse. Sydney, on hearing this, instantly took a pistol and shot it, saying, 'that his horse was born a free creature, had served a free man, and should not be mastered by a king of slaves.

"2

In 1677, by the interest of the earl, his father, he obtained permis. sion to visit England. His father died soon after his arrival, and a long and vexatious suit in chancery, with his elder brother, compelled him to convert what he had intended as a temporary into a permanent

Meadley, p. 151.

residence in England. Finding himself likely to remain a citizen of England, he made several attempts to get into parliament, in which he was strenuously supported by the celebrated quaker, William Penn; but court influence and intrigue prevailed against him, and frustrated the efforts of the liberal party to place such a valuable man in parliament. Sydney now knew himself to be both feared and hated by the government; he felt also its snares to be around him, but he quailed not at the imminent peril of his situation. With the scaffold and the axe almost before him, he pursued his undaunted career as the public opponent of whatever measures appeared to him pernicious to the national interests. When, in 1681, Charles dissolved the parliament at Oxford, and put forth a declaration, or appeal to the public, in vindication of his conduct, the opposition instantly met it with a counterdeclaration, the rough draught of which is said to have come from the pen of Sydney. He also made himself conspicuous by his opposition to Sir William Temple's scheme of an alliance between Eng'and, Holland, and Spain, against France. In the progress of this affair, he is accused of having accepted two sums of five hundred guineas from Barillon, a French minister at the court of London. On this point there is no express evidence; and the following just and candid observations of his biographer, Mr Meadley, deserve consideration :"It is no wonder that Barillon should avail himself of the opportunity of conciliating his favourable dispositions, as Rouvigny had attempted with Lord Russell in a preceding year: and it was no easy matter for Sydney to decline altogether the advances of a minister, whose country had af forded him an asylum in the time of need. The discovery, however, of their intercourse, as it appears in Barillon's correspondence with his sovereign, has been thought to cast a shade over his character, and belie the integrity of his mind. And yet, no evidence has been adduced to show, that he countenanced any one of that ambassador's projects, which was hostile to the interest of his own country, or avowed a single sentiment inconsistent with his former life, Barillon, indeed, explicitly declares, that, though exposed to suspicion from his connection with Lord Sunderland, Sydney's principles were still unchanged.

"It must, however, be conceded, that the receipt of two sums of money, with which Barillon has separately charged him, admits not of an easy defence; though much, no doubt, depends on the manner in which such sums were accepted, and the purposes to which they were applied. There is, in fact, an essential difference between the mercenary hireling who betrays his country, and the man who receives money, from a quarter otherwise objectionable, at a great national crisis, and solely on a public account. But, whilst the demerit of the action arises chiefly from the motives of the receiver, no explanatory documents have hitherto appeared: Barillon simply charging Sydney with the sums in question, as a part of his secret disbursements. The ambassador, indeed, insinuates, that, having hitherto given Sydney no more money than had been expressly ordered, he had by no satisfied his demands; but should find it easy to engage him altogether in his master's interest, by advancing a still larger sum.

means

“As, in estimating the credibility of any single witness, every thing turns on the character and situation of the party; without disputing the

general authenticity of Barillon's statements, his fidelity may be fairly questioned, in a case where he was doubly interested to deceive. He might at once be induced to enhance the importance of his own servi ces, by including such a man as Algernon Sydney amongst his adherents; and to charge, as the price of his engagement, sums which had been otherwise appropriated: a suspicion which derives additional weight from two passages in the Letters of Madame de Sevigné, where he is said to have grown rich in his employ.

"Or, if Sydney received money from this minister, it was doubtless for some public purpose, as he is understood to have made occasional disbursements among his own inferior partizans. Even on this less probable view of the subject, his character may be free from stain; unless it be received as an indisputable maxim, that, in resisting the oppression of an arbitrary government, it is immoral to accept of foreign aid. In the general conduct of nations, it has rarely happened, that the best purposes have been effected by the exertions of the pure and well-principled alone; and a man like Sydney should not be too harshly censured, if, in endeavouring to maintain his country's freedom, he occasionally sought for, or derived assistance from, less disinterested and ingenuous minds.—

"Of the arrogant pretensions of Barillon, Sydney had been long aware; and, in alluding to his mistaken views of his own influence, had spoken of him to Savile in the language of unfeigned contempt. 'You know,' said he, July 10, 1679, Monsieur de Barillon governs us, if he be not mistaken; but he seems not to be so much pleased with that, as to find his embonpoint increased, by the moistness of our air, by frequently clapping his hands upon his thighs, showing the delight he hath in the sharpness of the sound, that testifies the plumpness and hardness of his flesh; and certainly, if this climate did not nourish him better than any other, the hairs of his nose, and nails of his fingers, could not grow so fast, as to furnish enough of the one to pull out, and of the other to cut off, in all companies, which being done, he picks his ears with as good a grace as my Lord La.' It is probable, therefore, that Sydney merely tolerated the intercourse of this minister, without entering into any of his views of policy, as they regarded the interest of France alone."

We must now hasten over some lesser incidents in Sydney's life, to notice, in a few words, his arrest, trial, and execution, in 1683, on the pretence of his being concerned in the Rye-house plot, a scheme for the assassination of the king and the duke of York, on their return from Newmarket. He was brought to trial soon after sentence had been pronounced on Lord William Russell, and though no evidence appeared against him, the bloody Jefferies did not hesitate to convict him of a specific charge on the testimony of his unuttered and unpublished thoughts and opinions, as gathered from his manuscripts which were seized. Sydney defended himself with undaunted fortitude, and in the short interval between his trial and execution, drew up an appeal to posterity on the injustice of his fate. How well that appeal has been responded to let the oft-repeated popular sentiment bear witness" The cause for which Hampden bled in the field, and Russell and Sydney on the scaffold !"

On the morning of the 7th of December, he was led forth to the

place of execution on Tower-hill. He ascended the scaffold with a firm step and undaunted mien. Having made the necessary prepara tions, he kneeled down, and after a solemn pause of a few moments, calmly laid his head upon the block. Being asked by the executioner if he should rise again, he instantly replied, "Not till the general resurrection.-Strike on!" The executioner obeyed the mandate, and severed his head from his body at a blow.

Finch, Earl of Nottingham.

BORN A. D. 1621.-died a. d. 1682.

HENEAGE FINCH, one of the best lawyers on the side of the court during the contest with the parliament, was born on the 23d of December, 1621. His father was speaker of the house of commons in the first parliament of Charles I. Heneage was educated at Westminster and Christ church. He studied law in the Inner Temple, and soon acquired a very extensive practice as chamber-counsel; to which line he prudently confined himself during the domination of the commonwealth-men.

Immediately after the Restoration, he was named solicitor-general. In April, 1661, he was elected to serve in parliament for the university of Oxford. His career in the house was as unpopular as high church and royal prerogative principles could make it; but it served to secure for him the confidence of the king. On the 9th of November, 1673, he was made keeper of the great seal, upon the dismissal of Shaftesbury. On the 10th of the succeeding January, the title of Baron Finch of Daventry, in the county of Northampton, was conferred on him; and in December, 1675, he received the title of lord-highchancellor. On the 12th of May, 1681, he was raised to the dignity of earl of Nottingham. He died in the following year.

6

To the above bare chronological outline little can be added. Finch was a good lawyer, and a discreet man, but he neither possessed nor advanced pretensions to the character of a leader in the troublous times in which his lot was cast. Lord Orford says of him, and with justice, that he was a great temporiser.' Yet Burnet allows that he was a man of probity, and well versed in the laws.' The truth seems to be that where interest did not intervene, Finch, like most other men moving in the eyes of the public, acted circumspectly and with a due regard to the laws which he was appointed to administer; but we can discover no traces in his history and character of that intrepid virtue which distinguished so many of his political and professional contemporaries. His speech, on passing judgment on Lord Stafford, would alone suffice, if no other evidence of the fact was on record, to show that his mind was under some of the worst influences which a servant of the crown is exposed to. His speeches and discourses on the trials of the regicides might also be referred to in proof of the same remark.

Lord Guilford.

BORN A. D. 1640.-DIED A. D. 1685.

FRANCIS NORTH, afterwards Baron Guilford, and lord-keeper of the great seal, was the second son of Dudley, Lord North. His earliest education was received under a Presbyterian schoolmaster. He was then removed to Bury school under the superintendence of 'a cavalier master.' and in 1653 became a fellow-commoner of St John's college, Cambridge. Being destined for the bar, he was admitted of the Middle Temple in 1665. Here he studied with great diligence, and on being called to the bar was much noticed and encouraged by the attorney-general Sir Geoffrey Palmer, who often employed him to search authorities for him. He made his first public appearance in arguing the writ of error brought on the conviction of Hollis and the other five members. The talent which he displayed on this occasion procured for him the rank of king's counsel on the recommendation of the duke of York. His practice now rapidly increased; and, on the 23d of May, 1671, he was appointed solicitor-general on the elevation of Sir Edward Turner, and, according to custom, received the honour of knighthood. While he held this office he was returned to parliament as member for Lynn; and on the promotion of Sir Heneage Finch to the woolsack, Sir Francis succeeded him as attorney-general. Practice now "flowed upon him like an orage, enough to overset one that had not extraordinary readiness in business." Yet with all his professional engagements, he found time for more liberal studies, and acquired considerable knowledge of the modern languages.

On the death of Sir John Vaughan, chief-justice of the common pleas, Sir Francis North was promoted to the vacant dignity. He now applied himself to the reformation of the abuses which existed in the practice of that court, and had a principal hand in framing the famous statute of frauds and perjuries, of which Lord Nottingham is reported to have said that every line was worth a subsidy. "He was," says his admiring biographer and younger brother, Roger North, "very good at waylaying the craft of counsel, for he, as they say, had been in the oven himself, and knew where to look for the pasty." On the formation of the Whig administration under Sir William Temple, Sir Francis was constituted a member of the privy council. On the death of Lordkeeper Finch, Sir Francis, after some dallying with Rochester, received the seal from the hand of the king himself, with this warning, "Here, my lord, take it; you will find it heavy!" "The evening that we spent upon this errand to Whitehall," says Roger North, "some of us stayed in expectation of his coming home, which was not till near ten; little doubting the change that was to happen. At last he came with more splutter than ordinary, divers persons (for honour) waiting, and others attending to wish him joy, and a rabble of officers that belonged to the seal, completing the crowd which filled his little house. His lordship, by despatching these incumbrances, got himself clear as fast as he could, and then I alone staid with him. He took a turn or two in his dining-room and said nothing, by which I perceived his spirits were