Lord Chief Justice Billing enjoyed the felicitous fate accorded to very few persons of any distinction in those times—that he never was imprisoned, that he never was in exile, and that he died a natural death. In the spring of the year 1482, he was struck with apoplexy, and he expired in a few days—fulfilling his vow—for he remained to the last chief justice of the King’s Bench, after a tenure of office for seventeen years, in the midst of civil wars and revolutions.
He amassed immense wealth, but dying childless, it went to distant relations, for whom he could have felt no tenderness. Notwithstanding his worldly prosperity, few would envy him. He might have been feared and flattered, but he could not have been beloved or respected, by his contemporaries; and his name, contrasted with those of Fortescue and Markham, was long used as an impersonation of the most hollow, deceitful, and selfish qualities which can disgrace mankind.
CHAPTER IV.
JOHN FITZJAMES.
Of obscure birth, and not brilliant talents, Sir John Fitzjames made his fortune by his great good humor, and by being at college with Cardinal Wolsey. It is said that Fitzjames, who was a Somersetshire man, kept up an intimacy with Wolsey when the latter had become a village parson in that county; and that he was actually in the brawl at the fair when his reverence, having got drunk, was set in the stocks by Sir Amyas Paulet.
While Wolsey tried his luck in the church, with little hope of promotion, Fitzjames was keeping his terms in the inns of court; but he chiefly distinguished himself on gaudy days, by dancing before the judges, playing the part of “Abbot of Misrule,” and swearing strange oaths—especially by St. Gillian, his tutelary saint. His agreeable manners made him popular with the “readers” and “benchers;” and through their favor, although very deficient in “moots” and “bolts,” he was called to the outer bar. Clients, however, he had none, and he was in deep despair, when his former chum—having insinuated himself into the good graces of the stern and wary old man, Henry VII., and those of the gay and licentious youth, Henry VIII.—was rapidly advancing to greatness. Wolsey, while almoner, and holding subordinate offices about the court, took notice of Fitzjames, advised him to stick to the profession, and was able to throw some business in his way in the court of Wards and Liveries—
“Lofty and sour to them that lov’d him not:
But to those men that sought him, sweet as summer.”
Fitzjames was devotedly of this second class, and was even suspected to assist his patron in pursuits which drew upon him Queen Catharine’s censure:—