other prisons, and (what was no uncommon occurrence in those times) it was communicated by the prisoners brought into court for trial, to the judges, the jurymen, and the witnesses. He escaped, though exposed to the contagion; but Mr. Justice Abney, and many others, perished. He made a sharp remonstrance to the Lord Mayor and aldermen of London, and preventives were introduced which are still kept up at the Old Baileysuch as fumigating the court several times a day by means of a hot iron plunged in a bucket filled with vinegar and sweet-smelling herbs.'

Valuing above all things "a merry, honest wife," soon after he had lost his first-Anne, daughter of John Goodwin, Esq., of Burley, in the county of Suffolk,-he married, secondly, Margaret, daughter of Roger Drake, Esq., and relict of James Melmoth, Esq., who, on the authority of Lord Hardwicke, was "an agreeable lady, with £25,000 fortune." But he himself records this event with wonderful brevity, for, in his almanac for 1733, after writing "Six bushels of oats for four horses per week; hempseed good in their corn; walking them in the dewy grass in the morning, very good: for rheumatism, elder tea," he only adds these words: "I MARRYED TO MRS. M. M." (meaning Mrs. Margaret Melmoth). He lived happily with her till May, 1752: but he makes no further mention of her, living or dead.

It may alarm some who complacently exult in their present consequence, and confidently calculate on enjoying a lasting reputation, to know that Chief Justice Lee not only considered himself, but was considered by many in his own day, to be a great man. He was frequently a dedicatee, and the dedicators ascribed to him every virtue under heaven. Even after his death, when he could no longer give away masterships or clerkships, nor encourage nor frighten young barristers by his smile or frown, thus wrote Sir James Burrow-a very able man, afterwards the reporter of Mansfield:

"He was a gentleman of most unblemished and irre proachable character, both in public and in private life amiable and gentle in his disposition; affable and court

1 Gentleman's Magazine, xx. 333.

Harris's Life of Lord Hardwicke, i. 233.

eous in his deportment; cheerful in his temper, though grave in his aspect; generous and polite in his manner of living; sincere and deservedly happy in his friendships and family connections; and to the highest degree upright and impartial in the distribution of justice. He had been a Judge of the Court of King's Bench almost twenty-four years; and for near seventeen had presided in it. In this state the integrity of his heart and the caution of his determination were so eminent, that they probably never will, perhaps never can be, excelled.":

Sir James has been laughed at for concluding with this anti-climax:-" He was peculiarly master of that sort of knowledge which respects the settlement of the poor;" but I doubt very much whether the legal hero thus extolled would not himself have been gratified by the panegyric.

Lord Chief Justice Lee is now represented by his great-grandson, the very learned civilian, Dr. Lee, who has inherited Hartwell and the other large estates of his family.'

1 Burrow's Settlement Cases, p. 328, 4to. 1768.

* Since I finished the above little memoir, by the kindness of Dr. Lee (for which I am most grateful) I have had an opportunity of perusing all the Chief Justice's MSS., amounting to above 100 volumes; but I have been unable to extract any thing from them for the instruction or amusement of the reader. They prove the extraordinary industry of the compiler during the whole course of his long life. His common-place book is stupendous, and he had digested reports of an immense number of cases decided while he was a student and at the bar. Beyond his own profession he appears to have had some taste for metaphysics, and he copies passages from Locke, Hobbes, and Bishop Berkeley; but in the whole mass I can find nothing original, either grave or gay. His note-books from the time he was made a judge, both in civil and criminal trials, are extant without any incident being recorded in them, or any remark being made on the counsel who pleaded before him. None of the letters he received are preserved, and there is the draught of only one letter written by him. This was to Lord Hardwicke, and describes the writer's growing infirmities:-"As to my present state of health," says he, "it is but low, and I cannot walk at all without help. What my future condition will be, God only knows. as long as I exist I trust and hope the consciousness I have of your Lord. ship's judgment and integrity will remain; and may your counsels long. very long, flourish, is the most sincere wish of your Lordship's most humble servant, W. LEE."

But

I

CHAPTER XXVII.

LIFE OF CHIEF JUSTICE RYDER.

HAVE one other dull Chief Justice of the King's Bench to take in hand, but I am comforted by the recollection that he was immediately succeeded by the most accomplished Common Law Judge who presided in Westminster Hall during the eighteenth century. Although SIR DUDLEY RYDER was eminent in his profession, as well as a man of spotless character, his career was without any stirring incidents; he was not distinguished either in literature or politics, and his intimacies were chiefly with men as insipid as himself. Unluckily for his biographer, he not only never excited much admiration in public life, but he did no act deserving of severe censure, and nothing dishonorable was even imputed to him. Yet I cannot pass over in silence a man who filled the important office of Attorney General much longer than any of his predecessors or successors, who was for many years the colleague of Mansfield, who ranks among the Chief Justices of England, whose patent of peerage was signed when he was suddenly snatched away, and whose death produced a very memorable crisis in the party history of our country.

The Ryders are all said to be descended from the ancient family of Rythre, which was seated for many ages at Rythre, in the hundred of Barkston, in the county of York; but the line we are considering cannot be distinctly traced higher than the Reverend Dudley Rider, who, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, was a nonconformist minister at Bedworth, in the county of Warwick. Although a zealous Puritan, he was not without worldly ambition; and he prophesied that in his descendants the name of Ryder would recover and exceed its ancient splendor. He did not live to see the fulfill

ment of this prophecy, but one of his grandsons was Archbishop of Armagh, and another was Chief Justice of England. In the first generation after him there was no appearance of such an elevation, for his two sons, John and Richard, were both tradesmen. John, the father of the Irish Primate, kept a haberdasher's shop at Nuneaton, in Warwickshire. Richard, the father of the Chief Justice, was a mercer in West Smithfield, in the city of London. A love of learning, however, was still hereditary in the famlly; the Reverend Dudley's library was divided among his descendants, and they were remarkable for intelligence as well as sobriety of manners.

Sir Dudley, whose career we are now to follow, was the second son of the mercer, and was born in the year 1691. He is the first Englishman I read of who laid the foundation of future eminence at a Scotch University; being in due time to be followed by an illustrious band of successors, including Lord Melbourne and Lord John Russell. After a tolerably good school education at a dissenting academy at Hackney, he studied some years at Edinburgh, which was then rising into celebrity from the eminence of its professors. Being destined to the profession of the law, he followed the custom, which he found then almost universal among Scotchmen who were to pass as advocates, of going to Leyden to be initiated in the Roman civil law. Both there and at Edinburgh he enjoyed the opportunity, which was still much prized by his family, of having the Gospel preached and its rites administered in true Genevese presbyterian purity. When mixing in after-life with those who had been bred at the English public schools and the English universities, and who were perpetually talking of these seminaries as if there were no valuable knowledge to be acquired elsewhere in the world, he sometimes regretted, for the sake of being on an equal footing with them in. conversation, that he had not fagged or been fagged by some of them at Eton, nor joined in their boasted bacchanalian exploits at Oxford; but he felt that he had amassed a greater stock of valuable knowledge than most of them, and that, having lived with those who like himself were a little pinched by penury, he had acquired habits of reflection, of self-denial, and of persevering

industry, which would enable him to outstrip those who for the present superciliously affected a superiority over him.

After entering as a student at the Temple, notwithstanding his high veneration for the memory of hist grandfather, the Puritan pastor, he joined in communion with the Episcopalians, being of opinion that forms of ecclesiastical government were left by our Blessed Saviour to be adapted to the exigencies of different societies, and that the enlightened and tolerant Church of England, respected and beloved by the great majority of the inhabitants of this country, was then to be preferred to the Presbyterian persuasion, which had fallen off both from the orthodoxy and the learning which had distin guished it in the times of Calamy and Baxter.'

Having been called to the bar by the Society of the Middle Temple, he soon afterwards transferred himself to Lincoln's Inn. In due time he was elected a Benche and Treasurer of this Society, and he became much attached to it. Although from his first start he was always advancing, so noiseless was the tenor of his way that we read little more respecting him till he was about to be appointed a law officer of the Crown. His rise was chiefly to be ascribed to the friendship of Lord King, who, like him, was the son of a tradesman, had studied at Leyden, had been brought up among Dissenters, and, taking to the profession of the law, had conformed to the Established Church. By this powerful patron he was introduced to Sir Robert Walpole, who had the sagacity to discover his serviceable merit, and resolved to employ him.

Accordingly, in the move which took place on the promotion of Talbot and Yorke to the Chancellor and Chief Justice of the King's Bench, Ryder was made Solicitor General.

I do not recollect any lawyer of great eminence whose

'The English Presbyterians were then passing through Arianism to the Socinianism or Rationalism, which they reached about the middle of the 18th century.

It appears from the books of Lincoln's Inn, tnat he was admitted of that Society, Jan. 26, 1725; invited to the Bench, Jan. 23, 1733; elected Treasurer, Nov. 28, 1734; and made Master of the Library, Nov 28, 1735 The last council he attended was on Feb. 12, 1754.