[438] Wilkes subsequently published a very friendly letter, dated 26th March, 1763, addressed to him by Mr. Legge, inviting him to meet Dr. Hay at dinner. Indeed the intimacy of Wilkes was a reproach shared at that time with Dr. Hay by several of the most eminent persons in the kingdom. And it was not till after the publication of the forty-fifth number of the North Briton, on the 23rd of April, 1763, that their eyes were open to the enormity of his offences.—E.
[439] Arthur Onslow, Speaker in the reign of George the Second.
[440] Lord Howe was then only an Irish Peer. He had succeeded to his title on the death of his elder brother at Ticonderago in 1758. His great services raised him to the English Peerage in 1782, as Viscount Howe, and as Earl Howe in 1788. He died in 1799.—E.
[441] This debate is described in the author’s letters to Lord Hertford.—Correspondence, vol. iv. p. 373.—E.
[442] This statement is probably much exaggerated. There is no doubt that Pratt applied to the Court, according to the usual practice, to appoint a day for Hensey’s execution. Lord Mansfield desired him to name the day, and on Hensey’s solicitor asking that it might not be an early day, Pratt said he was ready to give as long a day as might be proper. At last the Court agreed that it might be a month.—Burr. Reports, vol. i. p. 651, R. v. Hensey. The sentimentality imputed to Pratt certainly formed no part of his character; and as the story is without question inaccurate, we may fairly doubt whether Norton was guilty of so curious a piece of brutality. Hensey was respited on the very morning that he was going to execution. On the 5th of Sept. 1759, he appeared in Court and pleaded a full pardon.—E.
[443] Hugh Smithson Percy, Earl of Northumberland. His eldest son married a daughter of Lord Bute. Both the Earl and Brecknock afterwards, finding their expectations not answered, turned against the Court. Brecknock was hanged twenty years after in Ireland, for being accessory to an atrocious murder perpetrated by Mr. Fitzgerald, who suffered with him.
[444] The compliment was not insincere, for the King probably entertained more enlarged views of constitutional liberty than Lord Marchmont. His Lordship clung to his Jacobite principles to the last, though he changed their object.—E.
[445] Lord Holland has justly observed, “that wherever that great magistrate (Lord Hardwicke) is concerned, Lord Orford’s resentments blind his judgment and disfigure his narrative.”—Mem. vol. i. p. 139, note. He certainly has in this instance drawn a caricature, of which there is no merit in the execution to compensate for the faults of the design. Lord Chesterfield, though also a political opponent, has done Lord Hardwicke more justice.—See Miscell. Works, vol. iv. p. 51. Admitting many of his eminent qualities, he elegantly says of his avarice, that though it was his ruling passion, he never was in the least suspected of any kind of corruption; a rare and meritorious instance of virtue and self-denial, under the influence of such a craving, insatiable, and increasing passion.—See also Lord Mahon’s Hist. vol. iii. p. 201. The Editor has only further to observe, that none but a lawyer who has practised in the Court where Lord Hardwicke so long presided, can correctly appreciate his discharge of the duties of that high office. His judgments maintain their authority to the present hour, and furnish the earliest and clearest exposition of the principles of the Equity Jurisdiction of this country. And whoever may have had the opportunity of examining his Lordship’s note-books, will see the patient attention and indefatigable research that distinguished every part of his judicial career.—E.
[446] John Perceval, second Earl of Egmont.
[447] In America.