long resisted, of allowing witnesses for the prisoner to be examined under the sanction of an oath.

He has been so much abused, that I began my critical examination of his history in the hope and belief that I should find that his misdeeds had been exaggerated, and that I might be able to rescue his memory from some portion of the obloquy under which it labors; but I am sorry to say, that in my matured opinion, although he appears to have been a man of high talents, of singularly agreeable manners, and entirely free from hypocrisy, his cruelty and his political profligacy have not been sufficiently exposed or reprobated; and that he was not redeemed from his vices by one single solid virtue.

CHAPTER XVI.

ROBERT WRIGHT.

I NOW come to the last of the profligate chief justices of England; for since the Revolution they have all been men of decent character, and most of them have adorned the seat of justice by their talents and acquirements, as well as by their virtues. Sir Robert Wright, if excelled by some of his predecessors in bold crimes, yields to none in ignorance of his profession, and beats them all in the fraudulent and sordid vices.

He was the son of a respectable gentleman who lived near Thetford, in Suffolk, and was the representative of an ancient family, long seated at Kelverstone, in Norfolk; he enjoyed the opportunity of receiving a good education at Thetford Free Grammar School, and at the University of Cambridge; and he had the advantage of a very handsome person and agreeable manner. But he was by nature volatile, obtuse, intensely selfish, with hardly a particle of shame, and quite destitute of the faculty of distinguishing what was base from what was honorable. Without any maternal spoiling, or the contamination of bad company, he showed the worst faults of childhood, and these ripened, while he was still in early youth, into habits of gaming, drinking, and every sort of debauchery. There was a hope of his reformation when, being still under age, he captivated the affections of one of the daughters of Dr. Wren, Bishop of Ely, and was married to her. But he continued his licentious course of

life, and, having wasted her fortune, he treated her with cruelty.

He was supposed to study the law at an Inn of Court, but when he was called to the bar he had not imbibed even the first rudiments of his profession. Nevertheless, taking to the Norfolk Circuit, the extensive influence of his father-in-law, which was exercised unscrupulously in his favor, got him briefs, and for several years he had more business than North, (afterwards Lord Keeper Guilford,) a very industrious lawyer, who joined the circuit at the same time. "But withal," says Roger, the inimitable biographer, "he was so poor a lawyer that he could not give an opinion upon a written case, but used to bring such cases as came to him to his friend, Mr. North, and he wrote the opinion on a paper, and the lawyer copied it and signed under the case as if it had been his own. It run so low with him, that when North was at London, he sent up his cases to him, and had opinions returned by the post; and in the mean time he put off his clients upon pretence of taking more serious consideration."

At last the attorneys found him out so completely that they entirely deserted him, and he was obliged to give up practice. By family interest he obtained the lucrative sinecure of "treasurer to the chest at Chatham," but by his voluptuous and reckless course of life he got deeper and deeper in debt, and he mortgaged his estate to Mr. North for fifteen hundred pounds, the full amount of its value. From some inadvertence, the title deeds were allowed to remain in Wright's hands, and being immediately again in want, he applied to Sir Walter Plummer to lend him five hundred pounds on mortgage, offering the mortgaged estate as a security, and asserting that this would be the first charge upon it. The The wary Sir

Walter thought he would make himself doubly safe by requiring an affidavit that the estate was clear from all incumbrances. This affidavit Wright swore without any hesitation, and he then received the five hundred pounds. But the money being spent, and the fraud being detected, he was in the greatest danger of being sent to jail for debt, and also of being indicted for swindling and perjury.

Wright naturally supposed

He had only one resource, and this proved available. Being a clever mimic, he had been introduced into the circle of parasites and buffoons who surrounded Jeffreys, at this time chief justice of the King's Bench, and used to make sport for him and his companions in their drunken orgies by taking off the other judges, as well as the most eminent counsel. One day, being asked why he seemed to be melancholy, he took the opportunity of laying open his destitute condition to his patron, who said to him, "As you seem to be unfit for the bar, or any other honest calling, I see nothing for it but that you should become a judge yourself." that this was a piece of wicked pleasantry, and when Jeffreys had declared that he was never more serious in his life, asked how it could be brought about, for he not only felt himself incompetent for such an office, but he had no interest, and, still more, it so happened, unfortunately, that the Lord Keeper Guilford, who made the judges, was fully aware of the unaccountable lapse of memory into which he had fallen when he swore the affidavit for Sir Walter Plummer, that his estate was clear from all incumbrances, the lord keeper himself being the first mortgagee. Jeffreys, C. J.-"Never despair, my boy; leave all that to me."

We know nothing more of the intrigue with certainty, till the following dialogue took place in the royal closet. We can

only conjecture that in the meanwhile Jeffreys, who was then much cherished at court, and was impatient to supersede Guilford entirely, had urgently pressed the king that Wright might be elevated to the bench as a devoted friend of the prerogative, and that, as the lord keeper had a prejudice against him, his majesty ought to take the appointment into his own hands. But we certainly know that, a vacancy occurring in the Court of Exchequer, the lord keeper had an audience of his majesty to take his pleasure on the appointment of a new baron, and that he named a gentleman at the bar, in great practice and of good character, as the fittest person to be appointed, thinking that Charles would nod assent with his usual easy indifference, when, to his utter amazement, he was thus interrogated: "My lord, what think you of Mr. Wright? Why may not he be the man?" Lord Keeper. — Because, sir, I know him too well, and he is the most unfit person in England to be made a judge.” King. “Then it must not be." Upon this, the lord keeper withdrew, without having received any other notification of the king's pleasure; and the office remained vacant.

Again there is a chasm in the intrigue, and we are driven to guess that Jeffreys had renewed his solicitation, had treated the objections started to Wright as ridiculous, and had advised the cashiering of the lord keeper if he should prove obstinate. The next time that the lord keeper was in the royal presence, the king, opening the subject of his own accord, observed, "Good my lord, why may not Wright be a judge? He is strongly recommended to me; but I would have a due respect paid to you, and I would not make him without your concurIs it impossible, my lord?" Lord Keeper.—“ Sir, the making of a judge is your majesty's choice, and not my

rence.