Atrocious Judges : Lives of Judges Infamous as Tools of Tyrants and Instruments of Oppression

by Baron John Campbell Campbell

To terminate the difference they were both set aside, and the office of solicitor general was given to Sir Edward Turner, speaker of the House of Commons, who held it for a twelvemonth, at the end of which he was made chief baron of the Exchequer, in the room of Sir Matthew Hale, promoted to be chief justice of the Common Pleas.

Buckingham’s influence had greatly declined, and North was made solicitor general without difficulty, Jones being solaced with a silk gown, and the promise of further promotion on the next vacancy.

The Cabal was now in its full ascendancy; and as the leaders did not take any inferior members of the government into their councils, and contrived to prevent the meeting of Parliament for nearly two years, the new solicitor had only to attend to his profession. Of course, he gave up the circuit, and he set the example, generally followed for one hundred and fifty years, of making the Court of Chancery his principal place of practice, on being promoted to be a law officer of the crown; henceforth going to other courts only in cases in which the crown was concerned, or which were of very great magnitude. To keep up his law, when he could be spared from the Court of Chancery, he stepped across the hall and seated himself in the Court of King’s Bench, “with his note book in his hand, reporting as the students about the court did, and during the whole time of his practice every Christmas he read over Littleton’s Tenures.” He had hitherto practised conveyancing to a considerable extent; but he now turned over this business to Siderfin the reporter, whom he appointed to serve him in the capacity of “devil,” as he himself had served Sir Jeffrey Palmer. He was on very decent terms with Sir Heneage Finch, who had much assisted his promotion; but he showed his characteristic cunning by an expedient he adopted to get the largest share of the patent business. Then, as now, all patents of dignity belong exclusively to the attorney general; but the warrants for all other patents might be carried either to the attorney or solicitor. North, with much dexterity, took into his employment a clerk of Sir Jeffrey Palmer, who was reputed to have a magazine of the best precedents, and who had great interest among the attorneys, whereby many patents came to his chambers which otherwise would have gone to the attorney general’s.

But if he was eager to get money, he spent it freely. He was now appointed “autumn reader” of the Middle Temple, and though the festivity was not honored with the presence of royalty, like Finch’s, in the Inner Temple, it was conducted sumptuously, and cost him above a thousand pounds. He took for his subject “The Statute of Fines,” which he treated very learnedly, and the arguers against him, the best lawyers of the society, did their part very stoutly. On the “Grand Day” all the king’s chief ministers attended, and the profusion of the best provisions and wine led to such debauchery, disorder, tumult, and waste, that this was the last public reading in the Inns of Court, the lectures being discontinued and the banqueting commuted for a fine.

I must not pass over his loves, although they were not very romantic or chivalrous. He was desirous of being married, among other reasons, because he was tired of dining in the hall and eating “a costelet and salad at Chastelin’s in the evening with a friend;” and he wished to enjoy the pleasures of domestic life. One would have thought that the younger son of a peer, of great reputation at the bar, solicitor general at thirty-one, and rising to the highest offices in the law, might have had no difficulty in matching to his mind; but he met with various rebuffs and disappointments. Above all, he required wealth, which it seems was not then easily to be obtained without the display of a long rent roll. He first addressed the daughter of an old usurer in Gray’s Inn, who speedily put an end to the suit by asking him “what estate his father intended to settle upon him for present maintenance, jointure, and provision for children.” He could not satisfy this requisition by an “abstract” of his “profitable rood of ground in Westminster Hall.” He then paid court to a coquettish young widow; but after showing him some favor, she jilted him for a jolly old knight of good estate. The next proposition was made by him to a city alderman, the father of many daughters, who, it was given out, were to have each a portion of six thousand pounds. North dined with the alderman, and liked one of them very much; but coming to treat, the fortune shrank to five thousand pounds. He immediately took his leave. The alderman ran after him, and offered him to boot five hundred pounds on the birth of the first child, but he would not bate a farthing of the six thousand.

At last his mother found him a match to his mind in the Lady Frances Pope, one of the three daughters and coheirs of the Earl of Down, who lived at Wroxton, in Oxfordshire, with fortunes of fourteen thousand pounds apiece. We are surprised to find that, with all his circuit and Westminster Hall earnings, he was obliged to borrow six hundred pounds from a friend before he could compass six thousand pounds to be settled upon her. He then ventured down with grand equipage and attendance, and in less than a fortnight obtained the young lady’s consent, and the writings being sealed, the lovers were happily married. The feasting and jollities in the country lasted three weeks, and Mr. Solicitor, heartily tired of them, was very impatient to get back to his briefs. However, he seems always to have treated his wife, while she lived, with all due tenderness. He took a house in Chancery Lane, near Serjeants’ Inn, and acquired huge glory by constructing a drain for the use of the neighborhood—a refinement never before heard of in that quarter. This was the happiest period of his life.

In the beginning of 1673, the meeting of Parliament could be deferred no longer, and it was considered necessary that the solicitor general should have a seat in the House of Commons.

He remained member for Lynn till he was made chief justice of the Common Pleas, in January, 1675; but I can hardly find any trace of his ever having spoken in the House of Commons.

Shaftesbury was at last turned out, the great seal was given to Sir Heneage Finch, and North became attorney general. He had for his colleague as solicitor his old rival, Sir William Jones, who seems to have been a considerable man, who afterwards had the virtue voluntarily to give up office that he might join the popular party, and who, if not cut off by an early death, would probably have acted the part of Lord Somers at the Revolution, and left a great name in history.

Parliament met in a few weeks after North’s promotion. We are told that “little or nothing of the king’s business in the House of Commons leaned upon him, because Mr. Secretary Coventry was there, who managed for the court.” North once or twice spoke a few words, “in resolving the fallacies of the country party,” but did not venture beyond an opinion upon a point of law which incidentally arose.