In 1695, when a student at Oxford, aged 23, Joseph Addison had dedicated 'to the Right Honourable Sir George Somers, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal,' a poem written in honour of King William III after his capture of Namur in sight of the whole French Army under Villeroi. This was Addison's first bid for success in Literature; and the twenty-seven lines in which he then asked Somers to 'receive the present of a Muse unknown,' were honourably meant to be what Dr. Johnson called 'a kind of rhyming introduction to Lord Somers.' If you, he said to Somers then —
'If you, well pleas'd, shall smile upon my lays,
Secure of fame, my voice I'll boldly raise,
For next to what you write, is what you praise.'
Somers did smile, and at once held out to Addison his helping hand. Mindful of this, and of substantial friendship during the last seventeen years, Addison joined Steele in dedicating to his earliest patron the first volume of the
Essays
which include his best security of fame.
At that time, John Somers, aged 61, and retired from political life, was weak in health and high in honours earned by desert only. He was the son of an attorney at Worcester, rich enough to give him a liberal education at his City Grammar School and at Trinity College, Oxford, where he was entered as a Gentleman Commoner. He left the University, without taking a degree, to practise law. Having a strong bent towards Literature as well as a keen, manly interest in the vital questions which concerned the liberties of England under Charles the Second, he distinguished himself by political tracts which maintained constitutional rights. He rose at the bar to honour and popularity, especially after his pleading as junior counsel for Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Six Bishops, Lloyd, Turner, Lake, Ken, White, and Trelawney, who signed the petition against the King's order for reading in all churches a Declaration for Liberty of Conscience, which they said 'was founded upon such a dispensing power as hath been often declared illegal in Parliament.' Somers earned the gratitude of a people openly and loudly triumphing in the acquittal of the Seven Bishops. He was active also in co-operation with those who were planning the expulsion of the Stuarts and the bringing over of the Prince of Orange. During the Interregnum he, and at the same time also Charles Montague, afterwards Lord Halifax, first entered Parliament. He was at the conference with the Lords upon the question of declaring the Throne vacant. As Chairman of the Committee appointed for the purpose, it was Somers who drew up the Declaration of Right, which, in placing the Prince and Princess of Orange on the throne, set forth the grounds of the Revolution and asserted against royal encroachment the ancient rights and liberties of England. For these services and for his rare ability as a constitutional lawyer, King William, in the first year of his reign, made Somers Solicitor-General. In 1692 he became Attorney-General as Sir John Somers, and soon afterwards, in March 1692-3, the Great Seal, which had been four years in Commission, was delivered to his keeping, with a patent entitling him to a pension of £2000 a year from the day he quitted office. He was then also sworn in as Privy Councillor. In April 1697 Somers as Lord Keeper delivered up the Great Seal, and received it back with the higher title of Lord Chancellor. He was at the same time created Baron Somers of Evesham; Crown property was also given to him to support his dignity. One use that he made of his influence was to procure young Addison a pension, that he might be forwarded in service of the State. Party spirit among his political opponents ran high against Somers. At the close of 1699 they had a majority in the Commons, and deprived him of office, but they failed before the Lords in an impeachment against him. In Queen Anne's reign, between 1708 and 1710, the constitutional statesman, long infirm of health, who had been in retirement serving Science as President of the Royal Society, was serving the State as President of the Council. But in 1712, when Addison addressed to him this Dedication of the first Volume of the first reprint of
the Spectator
, he had withdrawn from public life, and four years afterwards he died of a stroke of apoplexy.