In 1672, the seals were given to the Earl of Shaftesbury, on the resignation of the Lord Keeper, Sir Orlando Bridgeman; and he was invested with the office of Lord High Chancellor. In the judicial part of his duty, he appears to have merited the eulogium so elegantly expressed in the text. One of his biographers uses the following strong expressions: "With what prudence and candour, honour, and integrity, he acquitted himself in that great and weighty employment, the transactions of the Court of Chancery, during the time of his chancellorship, will best testify. Justice, then, ran in an equal channel; so that the cause of the rich was not suffered to swallow up the rights of the poor, nor was the strong or cunning oppressor permitted to devour the weak or unskilful opposer: but the abused found relief suitable to their distress; and those by whom they were abused, a severe reprehension, answerable to their crimes. The mischievous consequences, which commonly arise from the delays and other practices of that court, were, by his ingenious and judicious management, very much abated, and every thing weighed and determined with such an exact judgment and equity, that it almost exceeds all possibility of belief."[310] Yet even in this high situation, Shaftesbury could not help displaying something of a temper more lively and freakish than was consistent with the gravity of his place. His dress was an odd mixture of the courtier and lawyer; being an ash-coloured gown, silver-laced, with pantaloons garnished with ribbons; nothing being black about him, save, peradventure, his hat, which North, though he saw him, cannot positively affirm to have been so.[311] Besides, he occasioned much dismay and discomfiture upon the first day of the term, which succeeded his appointment, by obliging the judges, law officers, &c. who came, as usual, to attend the great seal to Westminster-hall, to make this solemn procession on horseback, according to ancient custom. As long as the cavalcade was in the open street, this did well enough; but when they came to strait passages and interruptions, "for want of gravity in the beasts, and too much in the riders, there happened some curvetting, which made no small disorder. Judge Twisden, to his great affright, and the consternation of his grave brethren, was laid all along in the dirt; but all at length arrived safe, without loss of life or limb in the service."[312] This whimsical fancy of setting grave judges on managed horses, with hazard both of damage and ridicule, to say nothing of bodily distress and terror, is a curious trait of the mercurial Earl of Shaftesbury.
And proves the king himself a Jebusite.—P. [223.]
As it was pretty well understood that Charles was friendly to the Catholic religion, which indeed he had secretly embraced, no pains were spared to point out this tendency to the people, who connected with the faith of Rome all the bugbear horrors of the plot, as well as the real reasons which they had to dread its influence. Dryden probably alludes to the language held by Colledge, which was that of his party. Smith deposed against him, that, while he was carrying him to dine with one Alderman Willcox, he told him, "He was a man as true as steel, and a man that would endeavour to root out Popery.'—Says I, 'That may be easily done, if you can but prevail with the king to pass the bill against the duke of York.'—'No, no, (said he) now you are mistaken, for Rowley is as great a papist as the duke of York is, (now he called the king, Rowley,) and every way as dangerous to the Protestant interest, as is too apparent by his arbitrary ruling."—State Trials, Vol. iii. p. 359.
And nobler is a limited command,
Given by the love of all your native land,
Than a successive title, long and dark,
Drawn from the mouldy rolls of Noah's ark.—P. [226.]
The legitimacy of the duke of Monmouth, though boldly and repeatedly asserted by his immediate partizans, did not receive general credit even in the popular faction. It was one of Shaftesbury's principal advantages, to have chosen, for the ostensible head of his party, a candidate, whose right, had he ever attained the crown, must have fluctuated betwixt an elective and hereditary title. The consciousness of how much he was to depend upon Shaftesbury's arts, for stating and supporting so dubious a claim, obliged the duke to remain at the devotion of that intriguing politician. It seems to have been shrewdly suspected by some of Monmouth's friends, that Shaftesbury had no real intention of serving his interest. A poem, written by one of Monmouth's followers, called "Judah Betrayed, or the Egyptian Plot turned on the Israelites," expresses their fears, and very plainly intimates this suspicion: and the reader may bear with some bad poetry, to be convinced how far this faction was from being firmly united together: