“He could not attend the house constantly, but took the liberty of pursuing his practice in Westminster Hall.”[87] There he was easily the first; and the quantity of business which he got through in Chancery (“his home”) and the other courts where he went special seems to have been enormous. His mode of preparation was (like Lord Erskine’s) to have a consultation in the evening before reading his brief, when “he was informed of the history of the cause, and where the pinch was”. Next morning at four he was called by a trusty boy, who never failed, winter or summer, to come into his chamber at that hour,[88] and by the sitting of the court he had gone through his brief, and was ready to do ample justice to his clients.
Fees now flowed in upon him so fast that he hardly knew how to dispose of them. He seems to have taken them from his clients with his own hand. At one time he had had a fancy, for his health, to wear a sort of skullcap. He now routed out three of these, which he placed on the table before him, and into these he distributed the cash as it was paid to him. “One had the gold, another the crowns and half crowns, and another the smaller money.” When these vessels were full, they were committed to his brother Roger, who told out the pieces and put them into bags, which he carried to Child’s, the goldsmith, at Temple Bar.[89]
But still Mr. Attorney was dissatisfied with his position. He could not but be mortified by his insignificance in the House of Commons. The country party there was rapidly gaining strength, and although it was not then usual for the crown to turn out its law officers on a change of ministers, he began to be very much frightened by threats of impeachment uttered against all who were instrumental in executing the measures of the government. Shaftesbury was in furious opposition. While only at the head of a small minority in the House of Lords, the House of Commons was more and more under his influence. North was exceedingly timid, always conjuring up imaginary dangers, and exaggerating such as he had to encounter. He now exceedingly longed to lay his head on “the cushion of the Common Pleas,” instead of running the risk of its being laid on the block on Tower Hill.
Vaughan, the chief justice of that court, died, and North’s wishes were accomplished, notwithstanding some intrigues to elevate Sir William Jones or Sir William Montagu. When it came to the pinch, North was rather shocked to think of the sacrifice of profit which he was making, “for the attorney’s place was (with his practice) near seven thousand pounds per annum, and the cushion of the Common Pleas not above four thousand. But accepting, he accounted himself enfranchised from the court brigues and attendances at the price of the difference.”
North held the office of chief justice of the Common Pleas nearly eight years, which may be divided into two periods—1st. From his appointment till the formation of the Council of Thirty, on the recommendation of Sir William Temple, in the year 1679; 2dly. From thence till he received the great seal, in the end of the year 1682. During the former he mixed little in politics, and devoting himself to his juridical duties, he discharged them creditably.
At this time, and for long after, the emoluments of the judges in Westminster Hall depended chiefly upon fees, and there was a great competition between the different courts for business. The King’s Bench, originally instituted for criminal proceedings, had, by a dexterous use of their writ of “latitat,” tricked the Common Pleas of almost all civil actions; and when the new chief justice took his seat, he found his court a desert. There was hardly sufficient business to countenance his coming every day in term to Westminster Hall, while the serjeants and officers were repining and starving. But he was soon up with the King’s Bench, by a new and more dexterous use of the “capias,” the ancient writ of that court—applying it to all personal actions.
At this time, a judge, when appointed, selected a circuit, to which he steadily adhered, till another, which he preferred, became vacant. Chief Justice North for several years “rode the western;” and in his charges to juries, as well as in his conversation with the country gentlemen, he strongly inculcated the most slavish church-and-king doctrines, insomuch that the Cavaliers called him “Deliciæ Occidentis,” or “The Darling of the West.”
The chief justice afterwards went the northern circuit, attended by his brother Roger, who gives a most entertaining account of his travels, and who seems to have thought the natives of Northumberland and Cumberland as distant, as little known, and as barbarous, as we should now think the Esquimaux or the aborigines of New Zealand.
Till the Popish plot broke out, Chief Justice North had no political trials before him; and the only cases which gave him much anxiety were charges of witchcraft. He does not appear, like Chief Justice Hale, to have been a believer in the black art; but, with his characteristic timidity, he was afraid to combat the popular prejudice, lest the countrymen should cry, “This judge hath no religion; he doth not believe witches.” Therefore he avoided trying witches himself as much as possible, and turned them over to his brother judge, Mr. Justice Raymond, whom he allowed to hang them. He was once forced to try a wizard; but the fraud of a young girl, whom the prisoner was supposed to have enchanted and made to spit pins, was so clearly exposed by the witnesses, that the chief justice had the boldness to direct an acquittal.
The Popish plot he treated as he did witchcraft. He disbelieved it from the beginning, but was afraid openly to express a doubt of its reality. He thought it might be exposed by the press, and he got a man to publish an anonymous pamphlet against it, to which he contributed; but sitting along with Chief Justice Scroggs, who presided at the trial of those charged with being implicated in it, he never attempted to restrain this “butcher’s son and butcher” from slaughtering the victims.