As a boy of eighteen he had attended the famous trial of John Frost and others whom his father ably defended on a charge of high treason at Monmouth. He used to relate with great gusto the objection to the proceedings taken on the ground that the list of witnesses had not been handed to the prisoners with the copy of the indictment as prescribed by the Act of Queen Anne. It was in that trial that a woman was closely cross-examined about the movements of her husband who had returned home very late and come straight up to bed. ‘As he was getting into bed,’ she said, ‘his words were⸺’ But here she was sharply interrupted by Counsel: ‘You must not tell us what he said, because that is not evidence; you can only tell us what he did.’

His grandfather, David Pollock, had come to London from Berwick and started a saddler and military contractor’s business at Charing Cross. David’s father was a bookseller at Berwick-on-Tweed, and his grandfather (George Pollock thought) was a cobbler at Perth in the seventeenth century. David died in 1815, and was embarrassed by the fact that Parliament did not allow enough money to cover the liabilities of the Duke of York, not to mention those of the Duke of Kent. He was sometimes in attendance on Royalty itself, when he had to present himself in Court dress. But David died solvent in 1815, and his business was carried on for two years afterwards by his widow and his son William. William died early at the age of thirty-five. Another son, David, who became before his death Lord Chief Justice of Bombay, was sixty-seven at the time of his death. He has been described as a singularly lovable man. Of the other sons George, my great-uncle’s godfather, was ultimately a Field-Marshal, and Frederick the Chief Baron of the Exchequer. It was quite usual for one of the sons to sleep under the counter if the house was more full than usual, and more than one slept there on the occasion of David’s funeral. The other son, John, was an adventurous solicitor. He was renowned for his prowess at racquets and generally as an athlete. In the same day he once walked from London to Windsor, won a foot race, and walked back again.

But the hero of George Pollock’s stories was usually his father, the Chief Baron, whose judgments bulk so large in the Common Law of England. Unlike his brother John, he thought taking exercise a bore unless it took the form of dancing or of leaping over tables and chairs, as a friend of mine who is still alive saw him doing at an hotel in Norwich after receiving a pair of white gloves, when he was about seventy-five years old. He drove up from Hatton every day in his family coach, though his sedentary habits never prevented his doing justice to his excellent brown sherry, a few bottles of which I once had the privilege of possessing in my own cellar. Though he kept very open house at Hatton, he had a frugal mind in less essential matters. Thus, on consulting Sir Harris Nicolas in regard to tracing the family coat of arms, he was told that it would cost £100 in London, but subsequently discovered that the same operation could be performed in Edinburgh for £20, which gave him great satisfaction. There is a romantic legend that the Pollocks were ruined by the Hanoverians in the Rebellion of 1715, and that the Pollock boar is to be found on a prison wall in Carlisle Castle, presumably carved by a Pollock in captivity. But the Chief Baron cared little for these things, and derived pleasure from recording that his father was a saddler and that he owed much to his mother’s co-operation in the family business and belief in himself when a boy. His career at Trinity College, Cambridge, was mainly due to her unsparing efforts.

He had a very human sympathy with prisoners. I have a volume of his notes of evidence, and in one of the murder trials he lays great stress to the jury on the fact that there was no Court of Criminal Appeal. There is a story of a certain burglar having been induced by the prison chaplain to atone for his crime by pleading guilty before the Chief Baron. But after an interval in the Court the burglar returned to the chaplain acquitted. ‘When I saw that good kind man sitting in Court,’ he explained, ‘I knew I should be acquitted and really could not bring myself to plead guilty.’

I have put together as much as I can have recorded of George Pollock’s reminiscences. Probably there is better material at the disposal of others, but perhaps this attempt to collect what I heard may stimulate a better qualified relation or friend to write something worthier of him. Such a collection would to some extent mitigate the loss of his winning personality. For a man to be missed as he now is after dying on the verge of his ninety-fourth birthday shows how little old age can extinguish a rare and singularly loving spirit. Up to the last he answered every letter by return of post, and his letters were as affectionate as on the other hand they were businesslike when the occasion demanded. We shall not see his like again. Even his type is gone. The combination of kindliness, geniality, and pawky humour that distinguished him is not to be found in our day.

‘Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus

Tam cari capitis?’

E. S. P. Haynes.

FOOTNOTES

[11] He chose the clock which now stands in the smoking-room of the Athenæum.