The lord keeper was a little but handsome man, and is said to have had “an ingenuous aspect.”
He left behind him Francis, his son and heir, the second Baron Guilford, father of Francis, the third Baron Guilford, on whom descended the barony of North, by failure of the elder branch of the family, and who, in 1752, was created Earl of Guilford, and was the father of Lord North, the prime minister, so celebrated for his polished oratory, his refined wit, and amiable manners.[109]
When we estimate what the lord keeper achieved, we should bear in mind that he died at forty-eight, an age considerably more advanced than that reached by his immediate successor; yet under that at which other lord chancellors and lord keepers began to look for promotion. He was in truth solicitor general at thirty-four, attorney general at thirty-seven, chief justice of the Common Pleas at thirty-eight, and lord keeper and a peer at forty-five. It is probably well for his memory that his career was not prolonged. He might have made a respectable judge when the constitution was settled; but he was wholly unfit for the times in which he lived.
I ought not to conclude this memoir without acknowledging my obligations to “Roger North’s Life of the Lord Keeper;” which, like “Boswell’s Life of Johnson,” interests us highly, without giving us a very exalted notion of the author. Notwithstanding its extravagant praise of the hero of the tale, its inaccuracies, and its want of method, it is a most valuable piece of biography, and with Roger’s lives of his brothers “Dudley and John,” and his “Examen,” ought to be studied by every one who wishes to understand the history and the manners of the reign of Charles II.
CHAPTER XIV.
EDMUND SAUNDERS.
There never was a more flagrant abuse of the prerogative of the crown than the appointment of a chief justice of the King’s Bench for the undisguised purpose of giving judgment for the destruction of the charters of the city of London, as a step to the establishment of despotism over the land. Sir Edmund Saunders accomplished this task effectually, and would, without scruple or remorse, have given any other illegal judgment required of him by a corrupt government. Yet I feel inclined to treat his failings with lenience, and those who become acquainted with his character are apt to have a lurking kindness for him. From the disadvantages of his birth and breeding, he had little moral discipline; and he not only showed wonderful talents, but very amiable social qualities. His rise was most extraordinary, and he may be considered as our legal Whittington.
“He was at first,” says Roger North, “no better than a poor beggar-boy, if not a parish foundling, without known parents or relations.” There can be no doubt that, when a boy, he was discovered wandering about the streets of London in the most destitute condition—penniless, friendless, without having learned any trade, without having received any education. But although his parentage was unknown to the contemporaries with whom he lived when he had advanced himself in the world, recent inquiries have ascertained that he was born in the parish of Barnwood, close by the city of Gloucester; and his father, who was above the lowest rank of life, died when he was an infant, and that his mother took for her second husband a man of the name of Gregory, to whom she bore several children. We know nothing more respecting him, with certainty, till he presented himself in the metropolis; and we are left to imagine that he might have been driven to roam abroad for subsistence, by reason of his mother’s cottage being levelled to the ground during the siege of Gloucester; or that, being hardly used by his step-father, he had run away, and had accompanied the broad-wheeled wagon to London, where he had heard that riches and plenty abounded.