sidering the importance of them, and they [tled his family in a small lodging in Lonwere to this effect.

In the first place he addressed his son, and told him with a sort of quiet steadfastness that carried conviction with it, that he never would pay a single shilling towards liquidating his debts of honor.

The young man's only remonstrance was uttered in these words, "Then, sir, neither I nor any of my family can ever show ourselves in society again."

don he fell sick, and very soon after his indignant wife thought he was ill enough to justify her sending for a doctor, he died.

This event, however, did not find him wholly unprepared. He had prayed very earnestly to be forgiven for the weakness which had occasioned so much mischief, and he had made his will.

Almost immediately after his death, Mr. Edward" took his proportion like the proTo which his father replied, "So much digal son," and set off, in the hope of inthe better, Edward. However, as far as creasing it, to the United States of America. the society of Rome is concerned it matters And now any one who may think it worth very little, one way or the other, for I do their while to ascertain the subsequent adnot purpose remaining here more than four-ventures of the ladies of the family, will be and-twenty hours longer. God forgive me sure to hear of them either at Cheltenham, for all the weakness I have shown! I will Brighton, or Leamington, as they constantly do the best I can now to remedy the mis-move about from one to the other of these chief. I have eaten into my little fortune gay resorts, amusing every one whom they to the amount of four thousand five hundred pounds; and that is not the worst of it. My late partner tells me in his last letter that my repeated drafts upon the capital left in the business, and for which they stipulated to give me four per cent. interest, have led them to think that it will be better to pay off the loan, so that for the future shall only get about three per cent. interest in the funds. My income therefore will be but a small one, but such as it is, it will for the future be spent in England."

Had Mr. Roberts said that he "hoped" it would be spent in England, or that he should" wish it might be spent in England," or had he used any phrase whatever which left an opening for an if, he would probably have failed in his purpose altogether, for he would have been assailed on all sides with such torrents of arguments to prove that he was wrong, as must in all probability have overwhelmed him; but his absolute style of pronouncing the words "it will," settled the business at once, and before eight-andforty hours had passed over their heads from the time that Miss Agatha undertook the affair, the Roberts family were packed into a Veterino carriage as snugly and as helplessly as so many cats in a basket, and pursuing the road to Civita Vecchia, from whence they immediately proceeded by water to Marseilles, and so on through France to England.

It was not without a strong exertion of firmness and resolution that poor Mr. Roberts achieved all this. His brandy-and water was given up, and all his former habits of deference for his clever wife entirely broken through, so that by the time he had set

can get to listen to them with the brilliant history of the delightful year they spent abroad. Their three little incomes joined together, enable them (to use their own phrase) "to keep up an appearance," but unfortunately neither of the young ladies seems likely to marry, and as the necessity of fine dresses, in all the various branches of the Roberts' family, increases with increasing years, they all find themselves occasionally obliged to take up a little principal money, and hitherto the great facility which attends the disposing of funded property in England has prevented their ever having been arrested for debt.

From the Quarterly Review. LORD CAMPBELL'S LIVES, ETC. The Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of England, from the Earliest Times till the Reign of George IV. The First Series, in three volumes. By John, Lord Campbell, A.M., F.R.S.E. 8vo. London, 1845.

We have before us only three volumes of Lord Campbell's work, and these bring us no lower than the Revolution of 1688. He announces his intention of continuing it down to the reign of George IV.; and under such circumstances we do not propose at present to enter on any serious discussion of his Lordship's views, as yet hinted rather than expressed, of the highest

judicial office in this country, either as it acters of some two or three among the has been or as it should be regulated. It Anglo-Norman churchmen who sat on the is sufficient for us to thank him for the Marble Chair over against the middle of the honest industry with which he has thus far Marble Table,' at the upper end of Westprosecuted his large task, the general can-minster Hall-which chair and table were dor and liberality with which he has an- still extant in the days of Dugdale. The alyzed the lives and characters of a long inferior clergymen of the chapel royal assuccession of influential magistrates and sisted the chief priest in all his various deministers, and the manly style of his nar- partments of duty, and it was with a view rative, often diversified with happy descrip- to the proper reward and advancement of tion and instructive reflection, and but these sub-chaplains, under-secretaries of rarely blemished by silliness of sentiment state, and masters in chancery, that the or finery of phrase. We well know that Conscience-keeper was originally intrusted the majority of our readers would be less with the ecclesiastical patronage which thankful to us for any disquisition, legal or still attaches to his office. He himself political, of our own, than for a selection was considered as entitled, when he had of specimens and anecdotes, sufficient to filled the marble chair for some space, to convey some notion at least of the variety be promoted to the mitre; in the majority and interest of the author's researches and of cases, however, he was already a Bishop, lucubrations; and we fairly confess, too, in not a few Archbishop, before he became that on closing the volumes we feel an ad- Chancellor; and the office of Papal Leditional motive to this course. We opened gate was frequently superadded to all these them with comparatively limited anticipa- weighty burdens. tions; and are willing to offer what seems The earliest recorded Chancellor, Augthe least ambiguous apology in our power. mendus, is supposed to have been one of It was reserved for the antiquarian ex- the Italian priests who accompanied Auplorers of our own time, and more espe- gustine on his mission to the court of Ethcially for the acutest and profoundest of elbert. The fourth after him, and the their number, Sir Francis Palgrave, to elu- earliest of whose personal history we have cidate with any approach to distinctness any precise information, was Swithin, orthe real origin of the Court of Chancery, dained priest in A. D. 8:30, and selected by and the position and functions of the Chan- King Egbert for chaplain to himself, and cellor in the Anglo-Saxon and early Anglo- tutor to his son Ethelwulf. In the reign Norman periods. Lord Campbell has not of the latter, he was at once Chancellor added to the aggregate of their deductions, and prime minister, and Bishop of Winbut he has arranged and classified them chester, and (highest of all his distinctions) with skill; and the unprofessional reader intrusted with the education of Alfred. will probably be obliged to this work for Swithin is said to have given Alfred his his first clear notion of that antique sys- taste for the poetry of the Scalds; and as tem of things under which the chief priest he accompanied the prince on his pilgrimof the royal chapel was ex officio the con- age to Rome, the seventeenth Bishop of fessor of the sovereign, 'the keeper of the Winchester may be supposed to have had king's conscience;' and also, and as nat- some pretensions also to classical learning. urally, his chief secretary, intrusted with About fifty years after his death he was the Great Seal, the clavis regni, by which canonized by the papal see, in grateful recommunications to foreign powers, or or- membrance, no doubt, of his having estabders commanding particular courts or offi- lished in England the payment of Peter's cers to attend to the cases of subjects who pence.' St. Swithin too has the credit of had petitioned the throne as the source of having procured the first Act of the Witjustice, were alike authenticated. The tenagemot for enforcing universal payment Chancellor had a place from the first in the of tithes; which circumstance may possiAula Regia, but his place there was a sub- bly account for the place he still occupies ordinate one until the abolition of the office in our own Calendar. He died July 15th, of Great Justiciary; and even after that A.D. 862; and his parting command was event, the importance and dignity of the that he should be buried in the churchyard custos of the Great Seal appear to have of Winchester, ubi cadaver et pedibus grown by not rapid steps, and to have prætereuntium et stillicidiis ex cœlo roranreached their ultimate point solely in con- tibus esset obnoxium;' but upon his canonsequence of the commanding personal char-ization it was thought proper to remove the

relics to the high altar of his cathedral, and this violation of his injunctions was only averted by the direct interference of the Saint, who sent down a deluge of rain that lasted for forty days, and which, as we are all aware, is still repeated as often as the 15th of July is a wet day; whereas if St. Swithin's day be a fair one, we are sure of thirty-nine fine days more to succeed it.

contra inimicos crucis Christi strenuissime usque ad mortem dimicavit.'

One of the Chancellors whom this really great lawyer and great man overshadowed was Geoffrey Plantagenet, natural son of Henry II. by Fair Rosamond, who was placed in the see of Lincoln while in the twentieth year of his age, and held it for seven years, during which he served gallantly in the wars at the head of 140 knights from his bishopric, but never would take holy orders, and the Pope insisting on this point, at last resigned his mitre rather than comply. To console and compensate him for the loss of Lincoln, his father made Geoffrey Chancellor. It was not till long

the priestly vows, and became in a regular manner Archbishop of York, in which dignity he died.

Lord Campbell has been able to discover only one decision of Lord Chancellor Swithin's. The line was not as yet accurately drawn between equity and common law cases, for an old woman approached this high magistrate with a complaint, that on her way to market that morning a cer- afterwards that he laid aside his aversion to tain rude peasant had shoved her about, insomuch that every egg in her basket was broken. The right reverend holder of the Great Seal, instead of sending the case to a jury, was pleased to proceed in a summary manner-damnum suspirat, misericordiâ mentis cunctantem miraculum excitat, statimque porrecto signo crucis fracturam omnium ovorum consolidat' The reporter is William of Malmesbury (242); but we shall no doubt have more about the miraculous reconsolidation of the plaintiff's eggs in some early number of the 'Lives of the English Saints.'

Another noticeable Chancellor of that age was Walter de Gray-honorably noticeable as having resigned his office rather than affix the Great Seal to the shameful deed by which John resigned his kingdom to the Pope-noticeable also as having been afterwards, when recommended for the mitre of York, strenuously objected to by the chapter as minus sufficiens in literaturâ.' The Pope being appealed to, resisted also on the ground of the ex-chancellor's Chancellor Swithin was a man of peace; crassa ignorantia,' which the ex-chancelbut for several centuries after him we find lor seems to have admitted, pleading as a his office held, with rare exceptions, by set-off nothing more than 'virgin chastity' eminent churchmen who were also, when- and other virtues, which would not appaever occasion tempted, efficient leaders of rently have overcome the hesitation of the armed men, not a few of them distin- Holy Father, unless De Gray had superguished by personal acts of prowess in added a present of 10007.-equal to not siege or battle. One of the most redoubt- much less than 100,000l. now! It should ed soldiers that ever rose to the marble be added, that this Archbishop lived afterchair was Lord Chancellor Thomas à Beck- wards a life of extreme mortification, and et; but the noblest combination of military purchased by his savings, and bequeathed and legal renown was exhibited in the per- to his See, the manor and palace of Bishop son of Ranulphus de Glanville, who, as Thorpe, where his successors still hold Great Justiciary of England, overshadowed their provincial state, and York Place in all that immediately followed à Becket as Westminster, which they in like manner keepers of the Great Seal-for this magis-occupied till Wolsey resigned it to Henry trate not only commanded in chief when a king of Scotland was taken prisoner, but wrote a book on the Laws and Constitution of England, which must still be studied by all who would acquire a critical knowledge of them as they stood in the first century of the Conquest, before they were modified by the Magna Charta of King John. Lord Coke sums up his enthusiastic eulogy of Glanville in these words: vir præclarissimus genere, qui provectiore ætate ad terram sanctam properavit, et ibidem

VIII., when it was new-named Whitehall.

Among all these clerical Chancellors we think there occurs but one who did not ul timately reach the mitre. This was John Maunsel (A.D. 1246), who while holding the Great Seal became Provost of Beverley, his highest Church preferment-but not his only one. This personage, according to Matthew Paris, held at once 700 livings. He had, Lord Campbell presumes, presented himself to all that fell vacant, and were in the gift of the Crown, while he was

Chancellor. The greatest pluralist on record thought himself nevertheless an illused Chancellor-and with some reason too, for it was during his occupance of the marble chair that a king of England (since the Conquest) first practised the dispensing power-and it was he who introduced the non obstante clause into grants and patents. In the reign of Henry III. we have the agreeable variety of a Lady Keeper. In 1253 the king, proceeding to Gascony, committed the Great Seal, with all the usual formalities, to his Queen, Eleanor of Provence, and though the sealing of writs and

ward II., and there is no reason to doubt that she was ever a faithful wife and a loving mother to all her children.

Although none of her judicial decisions, while she held the Great Seal, have been transmitted to us, we have very full and accurate information respecting her person, her career, and her character, for which we are chiefly indebted to Matthew Paris, who often dined at table with her and her husband, and composed his history of those times with their privity and assistance.'-vol. i. p. 144.

handsome man, and for having drawn up Henry the Third's answers to a remon

Queen Eleanor (down to this time the only Lady Keeper) was succeeded by Archdeacon Kilkenny who had acted under her common instruments was left to Kilkenny, as a sort of vice-chancellor. He is celeArchdeacon of Coventry, her Grace execu-brated only for having been a remarkably ted in person the more important duties of her new office. This judge began her sittings on the Nativity of the Virgin, and continued them regularly till the 25th of November, when the Court was interrupted by her accouchemeut. 'The Lady Keeper had a favorable recovery, and, being churched, resumed her place in the Aula Regia.'

strance from certain heads of the church Crown on their order. The royal response respecting alleged encroachments by the

was in these words:

"It is true I have been faulty in this particular: I obtruded you, my Lord of Canterbury, on your see; I was obliged to employ both en'Soon after the accession of Edward I. to treaties and menaces, my Lord of Winchester, the crown, she renounced the world and retired to have you elected. My proceedings, I conto the monastery of Ambresbury, where, in the fess, were very irregular, my Lords of Salisyear 1284, she actually took the veil. She bury and Carlisle, when I raised you from the had the satisfaction of hearing of the brilliant lowest stations to your present diguities. I career of her son, and she died in 1292, when am determined henceforth to correct these he was at the height of his glory, having sub-abuses; and it will also become you, in order dued Wales, pacified Ireland, reduced Scot- to make a thorough reformation, to resign land to feudal subjection, and made England your present benefices, and try again to bemore prosperous and happy than at any former come successors of the Apostles in a more period. regular and canonical manner."-vol. i. p. 145.

'Although the temper and haughty demeanour of Eleanor were very freely censured in her own time, I believe no imputation was cast upon her virtue till the usurper Henry IV., assuming to be the right heir of Edmund her second son, found it convenient to question the legitimacy of Edward her first-born, and to represent him as the fruit of an adulterous intercourse between her and the Earl Marshal. Then was written the popular ballad representing her as confessing her frailty to the King her husband, who, in the garb of a friar of France, has come to shrive her in her sickness, accompanied by the Earl Marshal in the same disguise.

One of Edward the First's Chancellors, William de Grenefield, or de Grenvill (a younger son of the family now represented by the Duke of Buckingham) was on the 4th of December, 1303, elected Archbishop of York: but the papal legate obstinately objecting to him, he resigned the seal and proceeded to Rome in person with a purse of 9500 marks, which smoothed all difficulties. The rapidity of his proceedings, attested in the clearest manner, may well astonish us. He delivered the great seal to the king at Westminster on the 29th of December, 1304, and was, on his return from Rome, consecrated at Lambeth on the 30th of the ensuing month of January. But a few years ago this would have been thought laudable speed in a Cabinet courier. We must conjecture that the ex-Chancellor took shipping at Marseilles for Civita Vecchia, and returning in the same way had the extraordinary luck of a propitious gale both times. But indeed we have not a few