officers of the court and the members of the bar to present new-year's gifts to the chancellor or keeper; a practice, which if not actual bribery, he considered looked very like it. These he at once refused to receive; and the extent of the sacrifice may be estimated, if not by his wife's calculation that they amounted to nearly 3000l., by Burnet's more probable computation of 15007. With such a proof of his moderation and delicacy it is curious that he did not abolish the equally obnoxious custom of selling the offices in the chancellor's gift. By the evidence on the trial of the Earl of Macclesfield it appears that he received 5007. on the admission of a master in chancery. Although it is difficult to perceive the distinction between the two customs, it is clear that he did not consider them as coming under the same category; and that he did not anticipate the evil consequences to which the latter might lead. At the same time he forbad the clerks to demand any extra fee for the performance of their duties. On the death of his father in November 1706 the lord keeper succeeded to the baronetcy; and on the 9th of the same month he was ennobled with the title of Lord Cowper of Wingham.1

His first wife having died six months before his elevation, leaving no surviving issue, he married secondly Mary, daughter of John Clavering, Esq. of Chopwell in the bishoprick of Durham. This marriage was for some months kept secret from the world; having been solemnised in September 1706, and not acknowledged till the end of February 1707; when Luttrell in his Diary (vi. 143) states that "The lord keeper, who not long since was privately married to Mrs. Clavering of the bishoprick of Durham, brought her home this day." The reason for the concealment does not appear in the Diary of Lady Cowper which has

Lord Raymond, 1260; Evelyn, iii. 407; Burnet, v. 243; Lord Campbell's Chanc. iv. 299; Luttrell, vi. 111; State Trials, xvi. 1154.

been recently published, though the fact is stated; but it may not improbably be explained by the lord keeper's desire not to disturb the last days of his father, who might perhaps have been disappointed that the selection had not fallen on some other lady to whom he had wished his son to be united.

Lord Cowper was one of the commissioners for the Union with Scotland, and zealously assisted Lord Somers in the negotiations. Upon its being completed the queen invested him on May 4, 1707, with the title of lord high chancellor of Great Britain; and from that time the designation of lord keeper fell into desuetude, only one other possessor of the Great Seal having been so distinguished up to the present day. For the next three years the Whig party retained its influence; but at last by its own folly the popularity it had acquired was transferred to its political opponents. The suicidal error of the Whigs was the unwise and useless measure of the impeachment of Dr. Sacheverell for a sermon, which, if it had been unnoticed by the ministry, would probably have fallen dead from the press. The prosecution stirred up all the dormant feelings of the people, revived the cry of “The church in danger," and so strengthened the efforts of the Tory advisers of the queen that the Whig members of the government were soon after dismissed. The Duke of Marlborough had during the contest ambitiously demanded to be made captain-general for life: but Lord Cowper, though united with him in politics, represented to the queen that such an appointment would be highly unconstitutional; and by his advice the application was rejected. In the new arrangement Harley the Tory leader admiring Lord Cowper's honesty and talents, and conscious of his popularity, was desirous of retaining him in his post as lord chancellor; but his lordship, though strongly pressed by the queen to keep the Seal, was firm in his resolve to follow the

fate of his colleagues, and resigned on September 23, 1710.1 He then entered at once into an avowed and it must be acknowledged sometimes a factious opposition to the new ministry; and, according to the fashion then prevalent, occasionally supported his views and answered the attacks of his opponents in the periodical publications of the day. He remained unemployed for the four remaining years of Queen Anne's reign: but on her death he was found to be one of the lords justices nominated by the Elector of Hanover, who showed the tendency of his opinions by selecting them principally from the Whig party. The queen died on August 1, 1714, and King George arriving in England on September 18, immediately formed his ministry and reinstated Lord Cowper in the office of lord chancellor on the 21st.

trust.

On his appointment he presented to the king a long paper which he called "An Impartial History of Parties," but which is anything but what its title imports. In professing to describe the two parties, Whig and Tory, into which the people were divided, he artfully depreciates all the acts and principles of the latter, and represents the former as the only one which it would be expedient or safe for his majesty to The antipathy of one faction against the other was at its height; and was exhibited by the vindictive course which the new ministry pursued against the leaders of the party they had supplanted. Lord Cowper took too prominent a part in these proceedings, and it may not be improbable that the extremes to which their animosity was carried, hurried on the Rebellion of 1715. To his energetic representation to the king may perhaps be attributed the speedy suppression of that rebellion. His conduct on the trial of the rebel

'Lord Cowper commenced a Diary when he received the Great Seal in 1705, which was privately printed and presented in 1833 by Dr. Hawtrey to the Roxburgh Club. It contains little of general interest, and, with long intervals, terminates with his entering on his second chancellorship in 1714.

lords, when he acted as lord high steward, supported his previous reputation; and when he afterwards presided in the same character at the pretended trial of his old antagonist the Earl of Oxford, it is not unlikely that, his enmity having subsided after two years' reflection, he did not regret the resolution of the commons not to proceed.

During his second chancellorship the Riot Act, the Septennial Bill, and the Mutiny Bill, after violent opposition, became law, and to the passing of them he gave his powerful aid. But though a zealous partisan, a judicious and active statesman, and extremely popular both with the bar and with the public, and apparently with the king himself, intrigues were formed early for his removal. The Diary of Lady Cowper, who held a position in the household of the Princess of Wales, proves that they began as early as October 1715, and continued in the two succeeding years; till at last, though his party remained in power, and without any apparent or publicly acknowledged cause, he resigned the Seal on April 15, 1718; having been on the 18th of the preceding month honoured, as a special mark of the royal approbation, with the additional title of Viscount Fordwich and Earl Cowper. He lived more than four years afterwards, and continued to the last days of his life to take a prominent lead in the debates, and a deep and impartial interest in the various measures proposed on the one side or the other. He died after a few days' illness at his seat at Colne Green on October 10, 1723; and was buried in the parish church of Hertingfordbury. His wife followed him four months afterwards, literally dying of a broken heart.

Of Lord Cowper's character as a statesman there will always be two opinions. The course of his conduct that would excite Burnet's or Wharton's applause, would certainly be decried by Swift and the Tory writers. But all would allow that he was a firm adherent to the principles

he professed, and that those principles tended to civil and religious liberty, and that the motives which guided him were pure and straightforward, though occasionally tainted with a little too much of party prejudice. Of his extraordinary oratorical powers, of the singular gracefulness of his elocution, of the sweetness of his disposition, and of his integrity and impartiality as a judge, there has never been any question; and though the term "Cowper-law" has been sometimes applied to his decisions by those who were arguing against them, it was merely used in joke, in allusion to an indecent expression of the Earl of Wintoun, one of the rebel lords, on his trial before Lord Cowper as lord high steward,― hoping that the lords would do him justice, "and not make use of Cowper (Cupar)-law,—hang a man first, and then judge him."1 Of his urbanity and consideration for the feelings of others we have a striking instance in his repressing the harsh personal remarks made by a counsel against Richard Cromwell, in a cause to which he was a party, by immediately addressing the old protector, and kindly begging him to take a seat beside him on the bench.

The observations of other writers compel the acknowledgment that his moral character is not so clear. Setting aside the calumnies of Mrs. Manley as totally unworthy of attention, the nickname of Will Bigamy fixed on him by Swift, though not to be considered as proof of his guilt, must be received as an evidence that there were stories afloat that were detrimental to his fame. That they did not apply to his union with his two acknowledged wives is certain, as the first, Miss Booth, had been dead nearly eighteen months when he married Miss Clavering his second and last wife. Mr. Welsby states that he had two children by a Miss Culling of Hertingfordbury Park while very young; but he does not say whether before or after his first marriage.

1 State Trials, xv. 347.