The civil wars had thrown into confusion some of the finest estates in the county; and the elder Mr. Somers, in his legal capacity, found ample employment in settling disputed rights, and revising dilapidated fortunes. Amongst other families, the Talbots, Earls of Shrewsbury, placed their estates and finances in his hands. The Earl of Shrewsbury, at that time young, gay, accomplished, the godson of Charles the Second, and the pupil of Father Petre, was a Roman Catholic; and had been, from his infancy, the object of the zealous care and attention of those active missionaries, the Jesuits. His spiritual guides and his other tutors had formed a brilliant, and perhaps what may be termed an amiable character, but had not produced a sound statesman, or an irreproachable moralist. From his infancy, the licentiousness of a court, and the darker passions that lurk in the shadows of that bright scene, had been familiar to this young nobleman.
Five years before his acquaintance with Somers commenced, Lord Shrewsbury had lost his father in a duel with the Duke of Buckingham, whose horse was held by the abandoned wife of the murdered nobleman, in the disguise of a page. Lord Shrewsbury had attractive and popular qualities, which rendered him afterwards the darling of a people in whose cause he proffered his fortune and influence, to compass the Revolution. At the period when his acquaintance with the Somers family began, he was disgusted with the unsatisfactory life of a courtier, notwithstanding the adulation paid to his rank and to his possessions, through the medium of personal flattery, and by the incense offered to his talents. Resolved, also, to rid himself of the numerous priests and other dependents who thronged around him, he retired to his estate in Worcestershire, where much of his property was situated; but his seat at Grafton not being in a fit state to receive him, the young nobleman made the house of his agent, at the White Ladies, his principal abode. And here a strange contrast must have been presented to the scenes, and the society which the young but satiated man of fashion had quitted. “Somers’-house,” as the old mansion was irreverently called by the vulgar, was large enough to contain many separate families; and numerous Blurtons, Foleys, and Cookseys, with whom the family of Somers had intermarried, had already taken up their abodes in the capacious edifice. These simple, and, as it happened, united and industrious relatives, lived in the most primitive manner that could be devised, somewhat after the fashion, but without the peculiarities, of a Moravian establishment. They spent the mornings in their respective occupations: some attended to the farm on the Somers property, and in cultivating teasels; others were engaged in the clothing trade, in manufacturing woad and madder; others superintended the labours of the cottagers, dependencies twenty in number, after the conventual fashion; and the making of bricks, tiles, and other building materials, which the dilapidated state of the city brought into great request. When the labours of the day were ended, all the relatives, their children and visitants, repaired to the great hall of the old nunnery, dined together at one common table, the products of their farm and their fish-ponds furnishing the viands, and passed the evening in conversation or merriment, or in discussions more engrossing, on politics and family interests. At Christmas, the board was spread after the ancient fashion; and the collar of brawn, and the huge saltcellar were displayed in the old conventual hall during the whole winter.
In this busy and happy scene, the friendship of Lord Shrewsbury with young Somers took root. Often occasional visiters swelled the number of the inmates; for the old dormitories of the nuns were used by the hospitable father of Lord Somers to supply the deficiency of inns and taverns. Nor is it of slight importance to trace those circumstances which mark the early portion of a great man’s life. In the motley society of the “White Ladies,” the future Chancellor of England probably learned to know himself and others. His prudence, his pliability in matters of little consequence, his firmness in matters of moment, may all have had exercise in the various emergencies and temptations to which a boy is exposed among a large assemblage of older persons, with whose affairs, and in whose family politics, he must necessarily, sometimes involuntarily, participate.
So ardent was the friendship contracted in these scenes between Lord Shrewsbury and Somers, that the latter, although intended for the bar, delayed his removal to the university until he was twenty-two years of age, in order that he might not sooner be separated from his friend, and from the society at the “White Ladies.” So strong was the attachment formed by Lord Somers to the old house where these social days were passed, that one of his first cares, in after times of prosperity, was to repair the venerable edifice, together with the Priory of St. Oswald adjoining.[[380]] Nor did the happy community of the “White Ladies” cease to welcome their favourite member, young Somers, at each college vacation, after his removal to Oxford. The Earl of Shrewsbury and his friend made, upon such occasions, that happy home their place of meeting. The foundation of Somers’s fortunes was laid by the introduction which his friend afforded him to Lord Shaftesbury, Sir William Temple, and other leaders of the opposition, to the court of Charles the Second: but a far greater benefit was achieved for Lord Shrewsbury himself, in his conversion to a pure faith.
The vacations of the “White Ladies” were not idly, though they might sometimes be unprofitably, spent. The celebrated Richard Baxter acted as the spiritual guide of several members of the Somers family, and at that time resided at Worcester. By the arguments of this pious divine, aided by the conversation of Mr. Somers, who was nine years older than his friend, Lord Shrewsbury was prepared for that conversion to the Protestant faith, which Tillotson afterwards confirmed and commemorated. It might have been well for public morals, if the pursuits of the two friends had not taken another direction. The famous “Tale of a Tub” is supposed to have had its origin in the leisure of the White Ladies. Shrewsbury and Somers are said to have sketched the characters, and composed the plan of the poem; Lord Shaftesbury, and Sir William Temple treasured up the imperfect outlines, and entrusted them to Swift; Swift manufactured the materials into their well-known form, and gave them to the world.[[381]]
Like all really popular works of fiction, life itself supplied the characters. Blurton, the uncle of Lord Somers, was portrayed in Martin, the good church-of-England man. The grandfather of Lord Somers was exhibited in Jack the Calvinist, the devoted disciple of the Presbyterian Baxter. Father Peter was drawn from the famous Father Petre. For the publication of this noted satire, Swift, as it is well known, lost the chance of a bishoprick, in consequence of Queen Anne’s scruples.
The introduction to Russell and Sidney, which Lord Shrewsbury afforded to his friend, confirmed those political principles which Somers in a degree inherited. During the reign of Charles the Second, he was employed in writing state papers, ascribed to Sidney, but certainly the productions of Somers’s pen. He wrote the celebrated answer to King Charles’s declaration on dissolving the last Parliament. The study of the classics varied the severer toils of law and politics. It was not, however, until he had entered his thirty-seventh year, that Somers drew upon his merits as a lawyer, and a statesman, the distinguished approbation which had hitherto been accorded to him by the learned few. In 1688 he became counsel for the bishops imprisoned by James the Second; and by the great display of ability on that memorable occasion, his future station in his profession, and in the state, was determined.
From that epoch in our country’s annals, Somers held on a consistent and a patriotic course, until his death. He rose, says his bitterest foe[[382]] to “be the head and oracle” of the Whig party. “He hath raised himself by the concurrence of many circumstances,” says the same writer, “to the greatest employments of the state, without the least support from birth or fortune; he hath constantly, and with great steadiness, cultivated those principles under which he grew.”[[383]] Although incorrupt in his high station, he was compared to Bacon, but only in the intellectual features of his noble character. As a statesman he was true to his principles, above the littleness of avarice, inflexible upon points of conscience, benevolent, energetic, just. During his long life he sought every adequate means of benefiting mankind, and he projected schemes to benefit posterity.
The public career of Somers was irreproachable, but not happy. Often deceived in those whom he thought his friends, or the friends of his principles, Lord Somers had suffered the indignity and injustice of an impeachment in the late reign. His glorious refutation of that factious charge achieved for him a reputation which an untried man could scarcely have attained.
It was these trials of fortitude that drew from the early friend of Somers the following observation.