CHAP. His Equity decisions. sition to return to the old notion of the Chancellor's equitable I will give one or two short specimens of his style as an Equity Judge. In Hobley v. Weedon a bill was filed against the devisee of an heir of the obligor, who had died after a verdict against him on the bond, but before final judgment. LORD CHANCELLOR. “Dismiss the bill. There is no colour of Equity in the case, unless you will have it that the defendant died maliciously, before the day in bank, on purpose to defeat the plaintiff of his debt.”† In Gale v. Lindo, A. on a treaty of marriage of his sister with B., let her have a sum of money, that her fortune might appear equal to what B. demanded, and took a bond from her to repay him; the executor of A. put the bond in suit against the executor of the sister, who survived her husband, and there being no defence at law, the bill was filed for relief. LORD CHANCELLOR. "You admit the husband might have been relieved on a bill brought by him and his wife; that which was once a fraud will be always so; and the accident of the woman's surviving the husband will not better the case. Decree the bond to be delivered up, and a perpetual injunction against it. ‡ In the case of Sir Basil Firebrass v. Brett, in which he granted an injunction against an action to recover money lost at play, he delivered a most edifying discourse against gaming; for, notwithstanding his own practices, he was always most furious in denouncing the vices of others. § In cases of great magnitude, he had the good sense to call in the assistance of the common-law Judges, and by the advice of Lord Chief Justice Beddingfield, and Lord Chief Baron Atkins, he decreed that he had jurisdiction to enforce a trust of lands in Ireland, the trustees residing in England || ; and by the advice of Lord Chief Justice Jones, and Lord * Earl of Rivers v. Earl of Derby, 2 Vern. 74. † 1 Vern. 400. § Ibid. 489. 585 CHAP. Chief Baron Montague, that a grant of lands by the Crown CII. might be set aside in Equity on the ground of fraud. * The oft-repeated compliment to bad Chancellors, that "none of his decrees were reversed," is bestowed upon Jeffreys. I find only one appeal brought against a decree of his, and this, notwithstanding suspicion and prejudice, terminated to his honour. When his son was about to be married to the heiress of the late Earl of Pembroke, a suit was instituted to determine whether a large sum of money belonged to her or to her father's creditors. The Chancellor decided in her favour, and the marriage was celebrated. Loud and deep reflections were made upon the Judge's honesty, and a ballad came out with these lines "Old Tyburn must groan For Jeffreys is known To have perjur'd his conscience to marry his son." But he had had the precaution to call in the assistance of the Master of the Rolls, Mr. Justice Lutwich, and Mr. Justice Powell, and though the appeal was heard after the Revolution, the decree was first affirmed by the Lords Commissioners of the Great Seal, and then by the House of Lords. † Sir Joseph Jekyl's testimony in his favour. North's him. The most weighty testimony in his favour is the Speaker Onslow, who, from the tradition of Sir Joseph Jekyl, said, "he had great parts, and made a great Chancellor in the business of that Court. In more private matters he was thought an able and upright judge." But this cannot outweigh the con- Roger temporary testimony against him— particularly that of an testimony eye-witness, who, after candidly saying, "When he was in against temper, and matters indifferent came before him, he became his seat of justice better than any other I ever saw in his place," adds, "he seemed to lay none of his business to heart, nor care what he did or left undone; and spent in the Chancery Court what time he thought fit to spare. Many times on days of causes at his house, the company have waited five hours in a morning, and after eleven he hath come out inflamed and staring as one distracted.” ‡ * Attorney-General v. Vernon, 1 Vern. 369. † 2 Vern. 51. 213. CHAP. His rudeness to the bar. Commit ment of an that he had made Jeffreys Lord Chancellor, He was excusably annoyed by the custom, which seems then to have prevailed, of having on the same side a great host of counsel, who necessarily repeated each other. "It was troublesome," he said," it was impertinent, — he could not bear it." His occasional rudeness to counsel appears incredible. Mr. Wallop, a gentlemen of eminence at the bar, who defended the famous Richard Baxter, arguing against the opinion expressed by the Court upon the construction of a writing, Jeffreys said, "Mr. Wallop, I observe you are in all these dirty causes; and were it not for you gentlemen of the long robe, who should have more wit and honesty than to support and hold up these factious knaves by the chin, we should not be at the pass we are at." Mr. Wallop. "My Lord, I humbly conceive that " Jeffreys. "You humbly conceive! and I humbly conceive! Swear him! Swear him!" Mr. Bradbury, a junior counsel, having ventured to make an observation which was received with courtesy, as it agreed with my Lord's view of the case, was by this encouraged to follow his leader in supporting a new objection thought by his Lordship not to be tenable. Jeffreys. "Lord, Sir, you must be cackling too. We told you your objection was very ingenious; that must not make you troublesome; you cannot lay an egg but you must be cackling over it.” * Attorneys fared much worse. When they did any thing to displease him, he gave them what he called "a lick with attorney for having said the rough side of his tongue;" and he "terrified them with his face and voice, as if the thunder of the day of judgment broke over their heads." He had to decide upon a Petition against a great City attorney with whom he used to get drunk, and who had given him a great many briefs at Guildhall when still obscure; and one of the affidavits swore, that when the attorney was threatened with being brought before my Lord Chancellor, he exclaimed, "My Lord Chancellor! I made him!" meaning that he had laid the foundation of his fortune by bringing him early into City business. Jeffreys. "Well! then will I lay my MAKER by the heels." He thereupon instantly ordered a commitment to be made out, and * 10 St. Tr. 626. sent off his old friend to the Fleet.* But "he would drink and be merry, kiss and slaver with these boon companions over night, and the next day fall upon them ranting and scolding with insufferable virulence."† I rather find an inclination to praise him as a civil lawyer, which I can only explain from the desire to assume an air of impartiality, and to make a contrast between his actual bad qualities and the good ones invented for him; but I believe, take him for all in all, that in civil cases, as well as in criminal, he was in the words of Mr. Justice Foster, "the very worst Judge that ever disgraced Westminster Hall." CHAP. CII. of the Judges. The manner in which Jeffreys, while Chancellor, attacked His attack the independence of the Judges, was most outrageous. The on the independence trial of the Seven Bishops coming on, he removed from the office of Chief Justice of the King's Bench Sir Edward Herbert, who might have been expected to be tolerably. subservient, to make room for his creature Sir Robert Wright, so notoriously incompetent for ignorance, stupidity, and immorality, that the courtly Lord Keeper Guilford had long withstood the wish of Charles II. to make him a puisne Baron of the Exchequer. When the question of the dispensing power arose upon issuing the last Declaration of Indulgence, Jeffreys showed a fixed purpose to obtain a unanimous opinion of the Judges in favour of it. He first summoned the reluctant ones to Chiffinch's lodgings at Whitehall, to talk over the subject with himself and the King, assisted by Sunderland, Rochester, and Godolphin. Baron Nevil tried to escape by saying that he would consider of it, but to a peremptory question declared against the prerogative. Jeffreys, by sending for him to his own house in Duke Street, still tried to bend him, and finding him inflexible forwarded to him his quietus. Sir Life of Guilford, ii. 118. "I was under the painful necessity of relating this anecdote in my argument in Stockdale v. Hansard to show that Judges might abuse their privileges as well as the House of Commons."—Lord Campbell's Speeches, 138. Very different from Lord Mansfield's vengeance on Dr. Brocklesby, the famous physician, who, having met him in society overnight, and being examined before him in Court next morning, chose to be offensively familiar. Lord Mansfield, summing up to the Jury — Gentlemen, the next witness is one Rocklesby or Brocklesby, Brocklesby or Rocklesby, and, first, he swears that he СНАР. CII. Jeffreys in favour of allowing prisoners of counsel. Thomas Street, a Judge of the Common Pleas, and that most able and upright man, Sir John Powell, a Judge of the King's Bench, being laboured in the same manner to as little purpose, shared the same fate,-Powell, on account of his high character, having a respite till the end of the term from Jeffreys, who went so far as to say "he was sorry so good a Judge should be turned out for so trifling a cause."* He was quite reckless as to the qualifications of their successors if they were obedient to his will, and it became necessary for William to make a sweeping change on the Bench as one of the first acts of the new government. † I have discovered one benevolent opinion of this cruel Chancellor, and, strange to say, it is at variance with that of the humane magistrates who have adorned Westminster Hall the benefit in the nineteenth century. "The Prisoners' Counsel Bill" was condemned and opposed by almost all the Judges in the reign of William IV., yet even Jefferys was struck with the injustice and inequality of the law, which, allowing the accused to defend himself by counsel "for a twopenny trespass," refuses that aid "where life, estate, honour, and all are concerned," and lamented its existence while he declared himself bound to adhere to it. ‡ The venerable sages who apprehended such multiplied evils from altering the practice must have been greatly relieved by finding that their objections have proved as unfounded as those which were urged against the abolition of "peine forte et dure;" and the alarming innovation, so long resisted, of allowing witnesses for the prisoner to be examined under the sanction of an oath. Jeffreys only sat in parliament for a few weeks, and all we know of his performances there is that he bullied his predecessor, Lord Keeper Guilford, and that he himself broke down when, by his indiscriminating arrogance, he had set all the Peers of England against him. He was almost the only Chancellor of the seventeenth century who was not an *These facts came out from an examination of the Judges before a committee of the House of Commons after the Revolution. It was then that Holt was made Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and John Powell being restored, the Courts were presided over by the best set or Judges that Westminster Hall has ever seen. 10 St. Tr. 267. |