Lord Cowper entered a protest in the Parliamentary Journal, that the charges brought against him in this matter were false, ‘upon his honour,’ the usual oath of a Peer. He manfully opposed the Bill for the banishment of Bishop Atterbury, who was voted guilty of high treason without a hearing. ‘The alleged culprit,’ he says, ‘stands at your bar, and has never attempted to fly from justice. If there be legal evidence against him, let him be legally convicted; without legal evidence he must be wrongly condemned.’
After much more in the same forcible strain, he continues, ‘I can guess at no other advantage that the Church can derive from this Bill, except that it will cause a vacancy in the Deanery of Westminster and the See of Rochester.’
Lord Campbell quotes a saying of Lord Bathurst on the same debate, which is worth recording. He ‘could not account for the inveterate malice which some people bore to the learned and ingenious Bishop, unless possessed of the infatuation of the wild Indians, who believe they will not only inherit the spoils but also the abilities of the enemy they kill.’ But, in spite of eloquence and sarcasm, Bishop Atterbury was banished. Cowper’s last public act was to vote against Sir Robert Walpole’s Bill for the imposition of a heavy tax on the estates of the Roman Catholics. This proposed injustice he strenuously opposed, one of his chief arguments being as follows: ‘I beg your Lordships to reflect if you are not yourselves injuring the Protestant cause, for Protestants might have severe hardships inflicted on them abroad, by reason of our persecution of Roman Catholics at home.’
The remainder of his life was passed between Cole Green and London. As we have before observed, he superintended the management of his estate, presided over the education of his children, and enjoyed the society of his friends; but his letters go to prove that the interest he still took in public affairs preponderated over that he felt in the pursuits of a country life. He was too often deprived of the consolation of his wife’s presence in his Hertfordshire home, in consequence of her close attendance on the Princess of Wales. He writes to her most affectionately, and gives her excellent advice, such as, ‘If you discern that any at your Court are sowing seeds that will raise strife, I hope you will do your best to root ‘em out; and when you have so done your duty, you will have more reason to be unconcerned at the event, if it should be unfortunate. Though, when you have done so well, I would not have you so much as hope that there are not some who will represent you as an intolerable mischief-maker. I thank you for your endearing and, I depend, very sincere expressions; but, considering all things, I think it is but reasonable that you should find something more satisfactory in a Court than you can in the home of a retired Minister—who, you know, is always a peevish creature—and so solitary a place. The Attorney-General puts me in mind of the choice by which they generally try idiots: it is to see if they will choose an apple before a piece of gold. It is cruel to tantalise a poor country man with the life of state and pleasure you describe. I could be content as I am if I did not hear of such fine doings.’
He thinks the best way, ‘since we neither beat nor fine our servants, is to make them so content that they will fear being turned away. John’s drunkenness seems a tertian, having one sober day between two drunken ones. On Friday it proved quotidian.’ He finds ‘the country pleasant,’ but it dulls him, and he takes an aversion to all but the little ones of the place. The last letter he ever wrote to his wife was dated from London, she being at Cole Green, one week before his death—the fine handwriting, much impaired. He complains to his dearest Mary, ‘that man and wife cannot correspond with innocent and proper freedom, without its being a diversion to a third person,’ and he signs himself, after promising to be with her soon, ‘yours with perfect affection.’ He returned home on the day appointed, but he had caught cold on his journey thither, and was seized with an alarming illness. Happily his wife was by his bedside to minister to his necessities, with all the tenderness of devoted affection; his children, too, whom he so much loved, were with him. When told that he had not long to live, Lord Cowper listened calmly, and his death was composed and peaceful. He was buried in the parish church of Hertingfordbury, but no tablet marks the last resting-place of William, Earl Cowper, first Lord Chancellor of Great Britain.
Lord Campbell, in the interesting Life from which we have so largely quoted, speaks of those who praised him and those who maligned him. Swift, who had no call to be severe in matters of morality, and his friend Mrs. Manley, had been very instrumental in promulgating the slander respecting a clandestine marriage between Cowper and the young lady of whom he was guardian,—a charge which was so often repeated that it gained credit among some of his political enemies, at least, who gave him the nickname of ‘Will Bigamy.’
The great Voltaire, in his Philosophical Dictionary, does not disdain to assure his readers that the English Lord Chancellor not only practised, but wrote a pamphlet in favour of, polygamy! ‘Il est public en Angleterre, et on voudroit le nier en vain, que le Chancellier Cowper, épousa deux femmes, qui vécurent ensemble dans sa maison, avec une concorde singulière, qui fit honneur à tous les trois.’ This was one of the observations made by the great French philosopher, when he was so obliging as to come over for the purpose of studying our manners and customs; but Lord Cowper was rich in panegyrists both in prose and verse—the latter effusions, to our taste, too stilted and artificial, for the most part, to be worthy of insertion; but a passage from a paper in the Spectator is a graceful and characteristic tribute to his many gifts:—
‘It is Lord Cowper’s good fortune ever to please and to be pleased; wherever he comes, to be admired, or is absent, to be lamented. His merit fares like the pictures of Raphael, which are seen with admiration, or at least no one dare own he has no taste for a composition which has received so universal an applause. It is below him to catch the sight by any care of dress; he is always the principal figure in the room. He first engages your sight, as if there were stronger light ‘upon him than on any other person. Nothing can equal the pleasure of hearing him speak but the satisfaction one receives in the civility and attention he pays to the discourse of others.’ So far the Spectator: his character, drawn in the Historical Register, speaks in the most glowing terms of his eminence as a lawyer, civilian, and statesman, and winds up with these words: ‘a manly and flowing eloquence, a clear, sonorous voice, a gracious aspect, and an easy address; in a word, all that is necessary to form a complete orator.’
The Duke Wharton, speaking of him in his official capacity, says, ‘He had scarcely presided in that high station for one year before the scales became even, with the universal approbation of both parties.’ Lord Chesterfield, although there was a little sting mixed with the praise, records ‘his purity of style, his charm of elocution, and gracefulness of action. The ears and eyes gave him up the hearts and understandings of his audience.’ We would merely add that if to any reader of these pages such praise should appear in any way exaggerated, we must remind them they were all written after there was no more to be hoped from the gratified vanity of Lord Cowper. His trust and humility as a Christian are testified by an entry in his Diary, on his appointment as Lord Keeper: ‘During these great honours done me, I often reflected on the uncertainty of them, and even of life itself. I searched my heart, and found no pride and self-conceit in it; and I begged God that He would preserve my mind from relying on the transient vanity of the world, and teach me to depend only on His providence, that I should not be lifted up by present success, or dejected when the reverse should happen. And verily, I believe, I was helped by His Holy Spirit.’
When the reverse did come, he added, ‘Glory be to God, who has sustained me in adversity, and carried me through the malice of my enemies, so that all designed for my hurt turned to my advantage.’ It is evident that Lord Cowper, although he loved the exercise of those public offices for which he was so well fitted, knew how to retire into private life with dignity and composure. One short anecdote, and we have done. It so happened that Richard Cromwell, in his old age, had to undergo an examination in Westminster Hall, at a moment when the name of the ex-Protector’s family was execrated through the kingdom. The Lord Chancellor treated the fallen dignitary with more than common respect, and courteously ordered a chair to be placed for him,—treatment which contrasted with that experienced by Richard when driven from the door of the House of Lords with insults as one of the common mob, exclaiming as he went, ‘The last time I was here I sat upon the throne!’