Lord Brougham took a most active and prominent part in all the great measures promoted by Grey's government, and the passing of the Reform Bill was due in a great measure to the vigour with which he defended it. But success developed traits which had hitherto been kept in the background. His manner became dictatorial and he exhibited a restless eccentricity, and a passion for interfering with every department of state, which alarmed the king. By his insatiable activity he had contrived to monopolize the authority and popularity of the government, and notwithstanding the immense majority by which it was supported in the reformed parliament, a crisis was not long in arriving. Lord Grey resigned, but very much by Brougham's exertions the cabinet was reconstructed under Lord Melbourne, and he appeared to think that his own influence in it would be increased. But the irritability of his temper and the egotism of his character made it impossible for his colleagues to work with him, and the extreme mental excitement under which he laboured at this time culminated during a journey to Scotland in a behaviour so extravagant, that it gave the final stroke to the confidence of the king. At Lancaster he joined the bar-mess, and spent the night in an orgy. In a country house he lost the great seal, and found it again in a game of blindman's-buff. At Edinburgh, in spite of the coldness which had sprung up between himself and the Grey family, he was present at a banquet given to the late premier, and delivered a harangue on his own services and his public virtue. All this time he continued to correspond with the king in a strain which created the utmost irritation and amazement at Windsor.
Shortly after the meeting of parliament in November the king dismissed his ministers. The chancellor, who had dined at Holland House, called on Lord Melbourne on his way home, and learned the intelligence. Melbourne made him promise that he would keep it a secret until the morrow, but the moment he quitted the ex-premier he sent a paragraph to The Times relating the occurrence, and adding that "the queen had done it all." That statement, which was totally unfounded, was the last act of his official life. The Peel ministry, prematurely and rashly summoned to power, was of no long duration, and Brougham naturally took an active part in overthrowing it. Lord Melbourne was called upon in April 1835 to reconstruct the Whig government with his former colleagues. But, formidable as he might be as an opponent, the Whigs had learned by experience that Brougham was even more dangerous to them as an ally, and with one accord they resolved that he should not hold the great seal or any other office. The great seal was put in commission, to divert for a time his resentment, and leave him, if he chose, to entertain hopes of recovering it. These hopes, however, were soon dissipated; and although the late chancellor assumed an independent position in the House of Lords, and even affected to protect the government, his resentment against his "noble friends" soon broke out with uncontrolled vehemence. Throughout the session of 1835 his activity was undiminished. Bills for every imaginable purpose were thrown by him on the table of the House, and it stands recorded in Hansard that he made no less than 221 reported speeches in parliament in that year. But in the course of the vacation a heavier blow was struck: Lord Cottenham was made lord chancellor. Brougham's daring and arrogant spirit sank for a time under the shock, and during the year 1836 he never spoke in parliament. Among the numerous expedients resorted to in order to keep his name before the public, was a false report of his death by a carriage accident, sent up from Westmorland in 1839. He was accused, with great probability, of being himself the author of the report. Such credence did it obtain that all the newspapers of October 22, excepting The Times, had obituary notices. However, for more than thirty years after his fall he continued to take an active part in the judicial business of the House of Lords, and in its debates; but it would have been better for his reputation if he had died earlier. His reappearance in parliament on the accession of Queen Victoria was marked by sneers at the court, and violent attacks on the Whigs for their loyal and enthusiastic attachment to their young sovereign; and upon the outbreak of the insurrection in Canada, and the miscarriage of Lord Durham's mission, he overwhelmed his former colleagues, and especially Lord Glenelg, with a torrent of invective and sarcasm, equal in point of oratory to the greatest of his earlier speeches. Indeed, without avowedly relinquishing his political principles, Brougham estranged himself from the whole party by which those principles were defended; and his conduct in general during the years following his loss of office revealed his character in a very unfavourable light. He continued, however, to render judicial services in the privy council, and the House of Lords. The privy council, especially when hearing appeals from the colonies, India, and the courts maritime and ecclesiastical was his favourite tribunal; its vast range of
jurisdiction, varied by questions of foreign and international law, suited his discursive genius. He had remodelled the judicial committee in 1833, and it still remains one of the most useful of his creations.
In the year 1860 a second patent was conferred upon him by Queen Victoria, with a reversion of his peerage to his youngest brother, William Brougham (d. 1886). The preamble of this patent stated that this unusual mark of honour was conferred upon him by the crown as an acknowledgment of the great services he had rendered, more especially in promoting the abolition of slavery, and the emancipation of the negro race. The peerage was thus perpetuated in a junior branch of the family, Lord Brougham himself being without an heir. He had married in 1821 Mrs Spalding (d. 1865), daughter of Thomas Eden, and had two daughters, the survivor of whom died in 1839. Brougham's last days were passed at Cannes, in the south of France. An accident having attracted his attention to the spot about the year 1838, when it was little more than a fishing village on a picturesque coast, he bought there a tract of land and built on it. His choice and his example made it the sanatorium of Europe. He died there on the 7th of May 1868, in the ninetieth year of his age.
The verdict of the time has proved that there was nothing of permanence, and little of originality in the prodigious efforts of Brougham's genius. He filled the office of chancellor during times burning with excitement, and he himself embodied and expressed the fervour of the times. He affected at first to treat the business of the court of chancery as a light affair, though in truth he had to work hard to master the principles of equity, of which he had no experience. His manner in court was desultory and dictatorial. Sometimes he would crouch in his chair, muffled in his wig and robes, like a man asleep; at other times he would burst into restless activity, writing letters, working problems, interrupting counsel. But upon the whole Brougham was a just and able judge, though few of his decisions are cited as landmarks of the law.
As a parliamentary figure Brougham's personality excited for many years an immense amount of public interest, now somewhat hard to comprehend. His boundless command of language, his animal spirits and social powers, his audacity and well-stored memory enabled him to dominate the situation. His striking and almost grotesque personal appearance, added to the effect of his voice and manner—a tall disjointed frame, with strong bony limbs and hands, that seemed to interpret the power of his address; strange angular motions of the arms; the incessant jerk of his harsh but expressive features; the modulations of his voice, now thundering in the loudest tones of indignation, now subdued to a whisper—all contributed to give him the magical influence such as is excited by a great actor. But his eccentricity rose at times to the verge of insanity; and with all his powers he lacked the moral elevation which inspires confidence and wins respect.
The activity of Lord Brougham's pen was only second to the volubility of his tongue. He carried on a vast and incessant correspondence of incredible extent. For thirty years he contributed largely to the Edinburgh Review, and he continued to write in that journal even after he held the great seal. The best of his writings, entitled "Sketches of the Statesmen of the time of George III.", first appeared in the Review. These were followed by the "Lives of Men of Letters and Science," of the same period. Later in life he edited Paley's Natural Theology; and he published a work on political philosophy, besides innumerable pamphlets and letters to public men on the events of the day. He published an incorrect translation of Demosthenes' De Corona. A novel entitled Albert Lunel was attributed to him. A fragment of the History of England under the House of Lancaster employed his retirement. In 1838 was published an edition of his speeches in four volumes, elaborately corrected by himself. The last of his works was his posthumous Autobiography. Ambitious as he was of literary fame, and jealous of the success of other authors, he has failed to obtain any lasting place in English literature. His style was slovenly, involved and incorrect; and his composition bore marks of haste and carelessness, and nowhere shows any genuine originality of thought. The collected edition of his works and speeches carefully revised by himself (Edinburgh, 1857 and 1872) is the best. His Autobiography is of some value from the original letters with which it is interspersed. But Lord Brougham's memory was so much impaired when he began to write his recollections that no reliance can be placed on his statements, and the work abounds in manifest errors. Nor was his regard for truth at any time unimpeachable, and the accounts which he gave of more than one transaction in which he played a prominent part were found on investigation to be unfounded.
The best modern account of Brougham is J.B. Atlay's, in his Victorian Chancellors (1906); Lord Campbell's, in Lives of the Chancellors, is spiteful, and by an unfriendly though well-informed critic; the Rev. W. Hunt's judicious and careful biography in the D.N.B. is somewhat lacking in colour; Henry Reeve's article in the 9th ed. of the Ency. Brit., which is frequently drawn upon above, now requires a good many corrections in points of fact and perspective, but gives a brilliant picture by an appreciative critic, much "behind the scenes." See also references in the Greville Memoirs and Creevey Papers; S. Walpole, History of England (1890); J.A. Roebuck, History of the Whig Ministry (1852); Lord Holland, Memoirs of the Whig Party (1854); Brougham and his Early Friends: Letters to James Loch, 1798-1809 (3 vols., London, 1908, privately printed).
BROUGHTON, HUGH (1549-1612), English scholar and divine, was born at Owlbury, Bishop's Castle, Shropshire, in 1549. He was educated by Bernard Gilpin at Houghton-le-Spring and at Cambridge, where he became fellow of St John's and then of Christ's, and took orders. Here he laid the foundation of the Hebrew scholarship for which he was afterwards so distinguished. From Cambridge he went to London, where his eloquence gained him many and powerful friends. In 1588 he published his first work, "a little book of great pains," entitled A Concent of Scripture. This work, dealing with biblical chronology and textual criticism, was attacked at both universities, and the author was obliged to defend it in a series of lectures. In 1589 he went to Germany, where he frequently engaged in discussions both with Romanists and with the learned Jews whom he met at Frankfort and elsewhere. In 1591 he returned to England, but his Puritan leanings incurred the hostility of Whitgift. Accordingly in 1592 he once more went abroad, and cultivated the acquaintance of the principal scholars of Europe, including Scaligeri and Rabbi Elias. Such was the esteem in which he was held, even by his opponents, that he might have had a cardinal's hat if he had been willing to change his faith. In 1599 he published his "Explication" of the article "He descended into hell," in which he maintained that Hades means simply the abode of departed spirits, not the place of torment. On the accession of James he returned to England; but not being engaged to co-operate in the new translation of the Bible (though he had for some years planned a similar work), he retired to Middleburg in Holland, where he preached to the English congregation. In 1611 he returned to England, where he died on the 4th of August 1612.
Some of his works were collected and published in a large folio volume in 1662, with a sketch of his life by John Lightfoot, but many of his theological MSS. remain still unedited in the British Museum.