his considerate kindness of heart appears in another anecdote. Lady Blencowe having suggested to him to pension off a hewer of stones who was so old that he spoiled the work he was employed on; he replied, "No, no, let him spoil on; he enjoys a pleasure in thinking that he earns his bread at four-score years and ten; but if you turn him off, he will die of grief."

His third son William was

He left a numerous family. taught the mystery of deciphering by his maternal grandfather Dr. Wallis, and was employed to give evidence of the letters written in cipher which were produced on the proceeding against Bishop Atterbury. He was the first person to whom a salary was granted as decipherer to the government, his allowance being 2007. a year. The judge's second daughter became the wife of Chief Baron Probyn. The estate of Marston St. Lawrence remains in the possession of Sir John's lineal descendant, to whom I am indebted for many of the foregoing particulars.'

BURY, THOMAS.

B. E. 1714. CH. B. E. 1716.

See under the Reigns of William III. and Anne.

THOMAS BURY was the youngest son of Sir William Bury, knight, of Linwood in Lincolnshire. He was born in 1655, and was brought up to the law, entering Gray's Inn in 1668, and called to the bar in 1676. After twenty-four years' practice he obtained the degree of serjeant in 1700, and on January 26 in the next year he was made a baron of the Exchequer on the removal of Sir Littleton Powys to the Court of King's Bench. Speaker Onslow in his notes to Burnet states that it was said that it appeared by Bury's "Book of Accounts" that Lord Keeper Wright had 1,0007.

1 Noble's Cont. of Granger, ii. 180; Nichols' Lit. Anecdotes, ix 273, VOL. VIII.

C

for raising him to the bench. This discreditable story however depends on very slight testimony. The new baron was of course knighted; and sat in that court during the remainder of his life; for fifteen years as a puisne baron, and for six as chief baron, to which he was advanced on June 10, 1716, to supply the vacancy occasioned by the death of Sir Samuel Dodd. In the famous Aylesbury case in the House of Lords he supported the opinion of Chief Justice Holt; when the judgment which he had opposed was reversed. So little further is recorded of Sir Thomas, either in praise or censure, that he may be presumed to have filled his judicial seat with undistinguishing credit.

He died on May 4, 1622, and was buried at Grantham, where there is a handsome monument to his memory. He left no issue, his estate descending to his great-nephew and heir William Bury.'

CARTER, LAWRENCE.

B. E. 1726.

See under the reign of George II.

COMYNS, JOHN.

B. E. 1726.

See under the reign of George II.

COWPER, WILLIAM, EARL COWPER.

LORD CHANCELLOR, 1714.

See under the Reign of Anne.

THAT branch of the pedigree of the Cowpers from which the lord chancellor descended held a respectable position among the county families of Sussex in the reign of Edward IV., and then resided at Strode in the parish of Slingfield.

1 Pat. 12 Will. iii. p. 5; Lord Raymond, 622; Burnet, v. 219 n.; Wotton's Baronet. iv. 99; Lord Campbell's Chief Just. ii. 160; Monumental Inscription.

His immediate ancestor became an alderman of London in Elizabeth's time, and had a son, Sir William, who was created a baronet by Charles I., and suffered imprisonment for his loyalty to that unfortunate king. His grandson the second baronet represented Hertford, in the castle of which he resided, in several parliaments of Charles II. and William III., adopting the Whig side in politics and taking a prominent part in the proceedings against James II. when Duke of York. By his wife Sarah, daughter of Sir Samuel Hoiled of London, he had two sons, William and Spencer, both of whom claim a place in these pages; one, the subject of the present sketch, as lord chancellor, and the other as a judge of the Common Pleas in the reign of George II.

William Cowper was born at Hertford Castle about four or five years after the Restoration. There is no other trace of his education than that he was some years at a school at St. Albans till he became a student at the Middle Temple on March 8, 1681-2. His years of probation were divided between his law-books and his pleasures, the latter it is reported claiming the greatest share, but the former evidently not neglected. Whatever were his excesses during that interval it may be presumed that before the end of it he terminated them by his marriage about 1686 with Judith, daughter of Sir Robert Booth, a merchant of London living in Walbrook. He was called to the bar on May 25, 1688, and in the next month he made his début in the court of King's Bench. Bred up in the principles of political liberty and with a deep hatred of popery, it is not to be wondered at that his youthful ardour prompted him a few months later to offer his personal aid in resisting the obtuse tyranny of James II. He and his brother Spencer, "with a band of thirty chosen men," joined the Prince of Orange in his march to London: but on the peaceful establishment of William and Mary on the throne he returned to the stage

of his profession; on which whether on the home circuit, or in the courts of Westminster, he soon became a favourite performer. Collins in his "Peerage" says that he was chosen recorder of Colchester, and his familiar letters leave no doubt that he got into considerable practice, both in common law and equity, within the first five years after his call. Before Easter 1694 he had been raised to the position of king's counsel; and by his assistance to the attorney and solicitor general in the prosecutions arising out of the assassination plot in 1696, he conspicuously demonstrated his superiority as an advocate. In the only other state trial in which he appears, that of Lord Mohun for the murder of Richard Coote, the peers recognised the powers which he was afterwards to display on their own benches, and paid him the compliment of naming him particularly to sum up the evidence instead of Sir John Hawles the solicitorgeneral, whom from his dullness and lowness of voice they could not understand. But as it was contrary to the etiquette of the bar, Sir John was allowed to proceed.'

In 1695 he was returned with his father to parliament for Hertford, and tradition reports that on the day of his entrance into the house he spoke three times, and with such effect as to establish his character as an orator and to foreshadow the position he was soon to acquire as the senatorial leader of his party. He represented the same constituency in the parliament of 1698, but in the following year the family interest in the borough was disturbed, and his own professional success materially endangered, by the unfounded charge brought against his brother Spencer of the murder of a young Quaker named Sarah Stout, the extraordinary circumstances attending which will be related in the memoir of the future judge. Notwithstanding the acquittal that followed,

1 Collins, iv. 166; Lord Raymond's List; State Trials, xii. 1446, xiii, 123, 1055.

the influence of the Cowpers in Hertford was so damaged that they did not venture to stand in the election of 1701; but William was too useful a member not to be immediately. provided with a seat in the house, and was accordingly returned for Beeralston in that and the last parliament of William III. and in the first of Queen Anne; at the end of which he ceased to be a commoner. High as was his reputation as an orator, the parliamentary history affords very few examples of his powers. It records only two important speeches delivered by him while in the House of Commons; one on the bill of attainder against Sir John Fenwick in 1696, and the other on the Aylesbury case in 1704. In defending the former, though he may shine as a rhetorician, he falls very far short of the argumentative power manifested by Sir Simon Harcourt in opposing it: but in the latter he has the advantage of his rival in his resistance of the unconstitutional claim of privilege advanced by the commons, and in his support of the right of the subject to seek redress at law against a returning officer for corruptly refusing to receive his legal vote. Other authorities inform us that he defended Lord Somers when impeached, and that in 1704 he was censured by the house for pleading for Lord Halifax.'

When the Tory ascendency which had distinguished the first years of the reign of Queen Anne began to be diminished, the removal of Lord Keeper Wright, the weakest and most inefficient man of the party, was determined on. Passing over the attorney and solicitor general, Cowper, at the urgent instigation of the Duchess of Marlborough, was selected from the Whig ranks to hold the Seal. It was delivered to him as lord keeper on October 11, 1705, with an assurance of a retiring pension of 2000l. a year. The commencement of his judicial career was illustrated by a noble reform.

It had been a custom of long standing for the

Parl. Hist. v. 1007, 1141; vi. 279; Burnet, iv. 480; Luttrell, v. 488.