Turner’s Wood, with the humorous cottage, garden, ponds, labyrinths, etc., became absorbed in the grounds of that domain.[207]
Notwithstanding the sneers of Malone, it is impossible, in tracing the career of Mr. Murray, not to agree with Boswell’s opinion of him, that he was ‘no mere lawyer.’ The life-long friend and companion of some of the greatest wits and writers of his time (and there were giants in those days) must have had more in him than good company to have deserved, and retained, their friendship, or to have felt sympathy in their society. There is more poetry in human nature than finds expression in verse; the courage, faith, and self-reliance—precious but easily packed possessions—that sat as lightly in the breast of the poor but well-born boy as he himself upon the rough Scotch pony on which he made his two months’ journey to the Metropolis, like the younger son in a fairy tale, with three good gifts for his portion, have in themselves the elements of poetry. He seems through life to have retained these gifts, and to have owed to a strong will, brave heart, and noble ambition, the achievement of eminence that has won him a historical name, independent of his father’s, and has made that of Mansfield little less memorable than that of Murray.
Roscoe tells us that his success was the legitimate and logical result of the means he sedulously employed to secure it. Remembering his want of wealth, the well-known predilections of his house for that of the Stuarts, and his consequent want of influence with those in power, it is pretty evident that in the early part of his professional life he had no honours thrust upon him that he had not hardly and justly earned. Ten years before the purchase of Ken Wood, in the ever historically memorable 1745, we find Mr. Murray, then Solicitor-General, called before the Privy Council and put to his purgation touching his suspected Jacobite tendencies, being accused (though a Westminster boy at the time) of having drunk the Pretender’s health upon his knees; and also that on the trial of the Scotch rebels, instead of applying to them the latter epithet, he had referred to them as ‘unfortunate gentlemen.’ Yet in the next year, when the heads of the Lords Lovat, Kilmarnock, and Balmerino had fallen on Tower Hill, the astute Scotch lawyer maintained his legal and social status; but when, eight years later, he was made Attorney-General (1754), it is said that he was so afraid of the accusation he had been called to answer before the Privy Council being brought against him in the House of Commons that he offered his Sovereign, George II., to resign his place, saying that ‘the person who served His Majesty in that high office should not be suspected of treason.’ ‘Sir,’ replied the King, ‘were I able to replace you with as able a man as yourself, I might perhaps permit you to give up your place.’
A year afterwards he became Chief Justice of the King’s Bench (1755), and entered the House as Baron Mansfield.
Recollecting his passionate admiration of the neighbourhood of Ken Wood (I call it so because he did), his purchase of it reads like the crowning chapter of a romance. It was Lord Mansfield who first declared that the air of England was too pure for a slave to breathe, and that every man who inspires it is free!—a decision pronounced in favour of a runaway negro, James Somerset.[208]
He decided against the barbarous custom of wrecking then, and till comparatively modern times, prevalent upon our coasts. He also favoured freedom of religious opinion, gave literary copyright to authors, and is said to have been the founder of the commercial law of this country. But his liberality only extended to a certain limit. He took the part of the Crown against the North Americans’ righteous resistance to taxation[209] without representation; and he would have restricted the liberty of the press. He had not sufficient magnanimity to forego monopoly of his highly-paid offices, for it was said of him that ‘next to the King he regarded the coinage,’ and had a keen appetite for emoluments.[210]
About the years 1767-68 he had become so thoroughly unpopular, that not only were the public prints filled with abuse of him, but the very potters emphasized this feeling by making him figure disagreeably on articles of pottery and porcelain. At a recent sale of ceramic ware, I remember to have met with a curious example on a Chelsea porcelain punch-bowl, which was painted with portraits of John Wilkes in a shield surmounted by the British lion, with Lords Camden and Temple as supporters, inscribed ‘Wilkes and Liberty!’ with the motto underneath, ‘Always ready in a good cause,’ and a pendent portrait of Lord Mansfield, surmounted by a serpent, with George III. and the devil as supporters, and underneath a motto, ‘Justice en pettee!’
But the silver-tongued Murray bore all this, and much more, with apparent equanimity, and exhibited even to his political enemies a heroic moderation. To his honour, he assisted in reversing the sentence of outlawry against Wilkes, who had returned from abroad in 1767, and had been chosen to represent Middlesex. On that occasion we find from his speech that he was suffering from a similar persecution to that complained of by the late Lord Chief Justice during a famous trial[211]: ‘Numerous crowds attending in and about the hall;’ ‘audacious addresses, dictating to us from those they call the people the judgments to be given;’ ‘reasons of policy being urged from danger to the kingdom by commotions and general confusion.’ ‘I pass over,’ said his lordship, ‘many anonymous letters I have received.... The threats go farther than the abuse; personal violence is denounced. I do not believe it. It is not the genius of the worst men of this country in the worst times. But I have set my mind at rest. The last end that can happen to any man never comes too soon if he falls in support of the law and liberty of his country ... for liberty is synonymous with law!’
Lord W. Mansfield.