Lincoln's Inn, in the form of a course of sermons, to prove the truth of revealed religion from the completion of the prophecies."

FURNIVAL'S INN.-A lease of this inn, which ever since the year 1547 had been in the possession of the Society of Lincoln's Inn, was granted by that body in 1819 to Henry Peto for ninety-nine years, at a ground-rent of 500l., and a payment in lieu of land-tax of 761.

THAVIE'S INN.-The Society of Lincoln's Inn, which had possessed this inn since 1549, sold it in 1771 to Thomas Middleton, Esq., from whom it afterwards passed to Thomas Jones, Esq., and was pulled down in 1790.

CLEMENT'S INN.-In the garden of this inn there is the figure of a negro, supporting a sun-dial. On it the following bitter lines were said to have been found:

"In vain, poor sable son of woe,

Thou seek'st the tender tear:

From thee in vain with pangs they flow,

For mercy dwells not here.

From cannibals thou fled'st in vain;

Lawyers less quarter give:

The first won't eat you till you're slain,
The last will do 't alive."

228

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES

OF

THE JUDGES UNDER THE REIGN OF GEORGE III.

ABBOTT, CHARLES, afterwards LORD TENTERden.

JUST. C. P. 1816. JUST. K. B. 1816. CH. K. B. 1818.
See under the Reigns of George IV. and William IV.

ADAMS, RICHARD.

B. E. 1760.

See under the Reign of George II.

RICHARD ADAMS was the son and heir of a gentleman of the same name residing at Shrewsbury. He was born in 1710, and having been admitted a member of the Inner Temple, was called to the bar in February 1735. He practised as a common pleader of the city of London, until he was elected its recorder on January 17, 1748. He obtained this honourable post after a severe contest, in which he was only successful by the casting vote of the lord mayor. During the time he held it he was knighted; and on February 3, 1753, he was promoted to the bench of the Exchequer.1 Miss Hawkins, in the second volume of her Memoirs, relates that he owed his elevation to the king's admiration of him in his character of recorder. The ministers not agreeing on the person who should fill the vacancy occasioned by the removal of Mr. Baron Clive to the court of Common Pleas,

Inner Temple Books; City List of Recorders.

George II. put an end to the discussion by calling out in his usual English, "I vill have none of dese; give me the man wid de dying speech," meaning the recorder, whose duty it was to make the report of the convicts under sentence of death.

After a judicial service of twenty years he died on March 15, 1773, at Bedford, while on the circuit, of the gaol distemper caught a fortnight before at the Old Bailey. In Lord Chief Justice Wilmot's Common-place Book his death is thus recorded:-" He was a very good lawyer and an excellent judge, having every quality necessary to dignify the character. I never saw him out of temper in my life, and I have known him intimately for forty years.'

ALVANLEY, LORD. See R. P. ARDEN.

APSLEY, LORD. See H. BATHURST.

ARDEN, RICHARD PEPPER, LORD ALVANLEY.
M. R. 1788. CH. C. P. 1801.

Or the family of Arden or Arderne, which is one of the oldest in Cheshire, an account has been already given of no less than four members, who held judicial positions: two in the reigns of Richard I. and John as justices itinerant; and two in the reigns of Henry VI. and Edward IV. as barons of the Exchequer, one of them being chief baron. The connection of Lord Alvanley with the latter has not been precisely traced. His great-grandfather was Sir John Arderne of Harden; his grandfather was John Ardern, buried at Stockport in 1703; and his father was John Arden of Arden; who by his marriage with Mary, daughter of Cuthbert Pepper, Esq., of Pepper Hall in Yorkshire, had two sons; the younger of whom is the subject of the present sketch.

Gent. Mag. xxiii. 53, 100; xl. 142; Life of Wilmot, 199.

Richard Pepper Arden was born at Bredbury in 1745. After receiving his first education at the grammar-school in Manchester, he was admitted a gentleman commoner of Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1763, having in the preceding year been entered at the Middle Temple. That he employed his time diligently while at the university, both in the studies which it principally encouraged and in the classics, is proved by his being named seventh wrangler in 1766, when he took his B.A. degree, and by his being elected in 1769 fellow of his college, when he proceeded M.A. His application did not prevent him from joining in society; and in the True Blue Club as well as in his college, his gaiety and good-humour gained him the favour of his fellow-students. By the heads of the house he was no less respected, and was entrusted by them with the revision of their statutes. Keeping his terms at the Middle Temple during this time, he was called to the bar in 1769, and after a short pupillage with an equity draftsman he took his seat in the back rows of the court of Chancery; and, according to the practice of the time, joined the Northern Circuit. At a very early period he was, by family interest, appointed recorder of Macclesfield, near his native place: and in 1776, when he had been scarcely seven years at the bar, he was constituted one of the judges on the South Wales Circuit, in conjunction with Daines Barrington. His chambers were in Stone Buildings, Lincoln's Inn, and it is said that those occupied by William Pitt were on the same staircase; but as he was fourteen years the senior of the great minister, the intimacy that existed between them must have commenced at a later period, and certainly could not have influenced his nomination to the Welsh judgeship, nor probably his advance to the honour of a silk gown, which he received in Michaelmas Term 1780, while Lord Thurlow was chancellor. This advance, especially considering that he was no favourite with

his lordship, shows that he had gained a considerable standing at the bar. What was the origin of their mutual dislike is not very clear, since they were equally free of tongue and careless of observation. The chancellor was fond of snubbing Mr. Arden, and one day the latter having in the excitement of his argument, in a cause in which the age of a woman was in dispute, said to the opposing counsel, " I'll lay you a bottle of wine she is more than forty-five,"―at once seeing the indecency, apologised to the chancellor, declaring that he forgot where he was. Thurlow growled forth, "I suppose you thought you were in your own court;" -alluding to the free and easy manner in which the proceedings in the Welsh courts were then conducted.

When Lord Shelburne became prime minister on the death of the Marquis of Rockingham in July 1782, Mr. Arden, no doubt by the instrumentality of his friend Mr. Pitt, then chancellor of the Exchequer, was, notwithstanding the disinclination of Lord Thurlow, appointed solicitor-general on November 7; and about the same time a seat in parliament was procured for him as the representative of Newton in the Isle of Wight. On the dissolution of that ministry in the following April he of course retired; but in nine months, the Coalition Ministry being in their turn discarded, and Mr. Pitt entrusted with the conduct of affairs, Mr. Arden was restored to his place in December 1783. He only held it for three months, when on March 31, 1784, he succeeded Lord Kenyon, both as attorney-general and chief justice of Chester. During this time he strenuously opposed Mr. Fox's East India Bill, and was an unflinching supporter of Mr. Pitt in his memorable contest with the coalesced opposition immediately after his appointment. For the new parliament of May 1784, which confirmed the ministerial power, Mr. Arden was returned member for Aldborough in Yorkshire; and in those of 1790 and 1796 he represented Hastings and