fear I shall not be completely careful of myself till you come and give that cheerfulness to my spirits which makes me think it worth while to be well, as I hardly do while you are absent.

"Adieu, thou best of women,

"D. R."

The next letter accompanied the coach and four heavy blacks by which she was to be conveyed to London. The vehicle was to be four days in going to Bath, and four days coming back,—and there was yet no quicker transit for a family; post saddle-horses were provided on the principal routes for cavaliers, but those who traveled in their own coaches were, for years after, obliged to perform the whole journey with their own cattle.

"Tuesday.'

"My Dear,-The coach goes to-morrow morning. I am impatient till it returns. We have never been separated so long. How do you like it? It is a solitude very different from that which I had before we were united, when I did not know the happiness of such a union.

"I am just come from the House. The great attack was not made to-day. I understand our enemies can't yet agree about it. We, however, expect it soon, but without fear. Their strength is tried to-day, though in a lesser matter. A Tory petition against the sitting Member for Derby was presented to-day. They would have brought it to the bar of the House, which was debated about an hour, and we rejected it by a majority of 235 against 190. We look upon this as a stronger question against us than any they can make on their intended motion.'

"My dear, I have the greatest satisfaction in the thought of seeing you so soon. Think of me, and believe that I am and always shall be, with the greatest tenderness, "Your affectionate husband,

"D. R.

"P. S. Your thoughts about not dining on the road 1 Indorsed "Nov. 30, 1742."

It was on election petitions, the merits of which were not at all regarded, that the strength of parties was chiefly tried. A few months be

fore, Sir Robert Walpole had been turned out by an unfavorable division on the petition complaining of an undue election for Chippenham. (Jan. 28, 1742.)

and making four days of it, fall in with what I wrote to you yesterday."

I close my specimens of this conjugal correspondence with an extract from the last letter he wrote to her during this separation, which would be received by her as she stopped for the night on her approach to London ;

"Friday, Dec. 3.

"My heart leaps for joy at the thought of the time of you return being so near. I can hardly think of anything else, except when business calls me off. We had another attack to-day by a motion for a Place Bill. It seems principally calculated to abuse Sandys and his companions, the new comers, by forcing them to eat their own words of last session. However, they can digest them with their places. We carried it in the negative by 221 to 196. This you will say is not a great majority. The truth is, some people are hard put to it to distinguish between this session and the last; others are afraid of their boroughs; others think it is a popular thing, and have a mind to seem patriots. So that many who are with us in other things deserted us here."

The amiable lady to whom the letters was addressed was deeply afflicted by the loss of her husband, the Chief Justice; but the disappointment in never wearing the coronet upon which she had received so many congratulations was no aggravation of her sufferings. Her exemplary piety triumphed over her grief for her bereavement, and she survived her husband for many years.

I have already told how their son was at last ennobled. His son Dudley, by a daughter of Terrick, Bishop of London, was a most distinguished statesman and orator,-filled high offices in the reigns of George III. and George IV. was created Viscount Sandon and Earl of Harrowby,-and might have been Prime Minister if he had pleased. The Chief Justice is worthily represented by the present Earl, his great grandson, who after having long served in the House of Commons as member for the important commercial constituency of Liverpool, is adding in another House of Parliament to the splendor of the name he bears-so that old Sir Dudley must now rejoice over the entire fulfillment of his grandfather's prophecy.

B

CHAPTER XXVII.

LIFE OF CHIEF JUSTICE WILLES.

EFORE devoting myself to my last and most illustrious Chief Justice of the King's Bench, Lord Mansfield, I must beg leave to introduce two Chief Justices of the Common Pleas, each of whom refused the great seal of Great Britain, the one being the most ambitious lawyer of the 18th century, and the other the least ambitious lawyer of our judicial annals, --CHIEF JUSTICE WILLES, and CHIEF JUSTICE WILMOT.

I have no respect for the former, and I shall dispatch him very rapidly. Although a man of splendid abilities, he was selfish, arrogant, and licentious; and, although at one time there was a strong probability that he would play a very important part in public life (in which case an interest would have been cast upon his early career), he died disappointed and despised. Among the bright legal constellations he twinkles a star of the tenth magnitude, and he does not deserve to be long examined by the telescope of the biographer.

The Chief Justice himself affected to derive his name from VELIUS or VILLUS, and tried to connect his ancestor with the ARGONATUS who carried off the GOLDEN FLEECE; while his detractors preferred the etymology of VILIS or VILICUS, and insisted that if the individual of his race who first bore a surname was not a villein, he was not higher than the bailiff of the lord of a manor. In sober truth, the Willes's were a respectable family of small estate, long seated in the county of Warwick. For centuries they had been content to plough their paternal acres, occasionally sending off a younger son to be an attorney or a county parson; but they suddenly rose into distinction, for while the "Head of the House" (as he loved to call himself) was a Chief Justice, and almost

Lord Chancellor, his younger brother sat in the House of Lords as a Bishop.'

991

Of the lawyer, till he entered public life, it will be enough to relate that he was born in 1685; that he was educated at Lichfield Free Grammar School, and Trinity College, Oxford; that he was called to the bar in 1707; that from his youth upward he showed a wonderful combination of steady application to business and striking gravity of manner with extreme profligacy of conduct; and that his determination was to reach the highest honors of his profession at any sacrifice of money, of ease, of principle, and even of pleasure.

His success at the bar was respectable, but not such as to enable him to rely on professional reputation. So he resolved to plunge into politics, and on the dissolution of parliament in 1722 he declared himself a candidate for Weymouth, long one of the most venal and most expensive boroughs in England. After a severe contest, which cost him more than all he had been able to save from his fees, he was returned, and joyfully took his seat in the House of Commons."

As Sir Robert Walpole had gained undisputed power on the death of Lord Sunderland, Willes enlisted himself under the banner of the new minister, and hoped to gain favor not only by making himself useful in parliament, but by a rich stock of facetious stories, in which his patron took delight, and which, as the second bottle was going round, he could bring out with redoubled effect from his usual starchiness of demeanor. At first every thing turned up to his mind. Without making any dashing speech, he was serviceable to Government; he assisted in carrying through the House of Commons. the proceedings against Bishop Atterbury and the bill for doubly taxing Roman Catholics,-and he added to the popularity of the Government by distantly rivaling Sir Robert himself, after the ladies had withdrawn, in drawing forth loud roars of laughter from the squires who had been invited to dine at Chelsea. Accordingly,

The Right Rev. Edward Willes, D.D., successively Bishop of St. David's and of Bath and Wells, consecrated in 1742-died in 1773.

• In subsequent pur'iaments he was returned at a small expense for the close borough of West Looe.

before two sessions had expired, such merits were rewarded with a "Welsh wig;" he was appointed "Second Justice of Chester," and he thought the great seal within his grasp. But, afterwards, his patience was Jong and cruelly tried, and many bright gleams of hope were succeeded by the alternating gloom of despondency. When he had been eleven years in parliament he was still only "Second Justice of Chester." Nevertheless, he could not complain of being ill-used, for he did not expect to supersede Sir Philip Yorke, who had long been Attorney General; and although the office of Solicitor General had twice become vacant, he did not deny the superior claims of Sir Clement Wearg and Mr. Talbot. One of these competitors was removed by a premature death,' another succeeded Lord Raymond as Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and the third obtained the great seal on the resignation of Lord King.

Willes at last got the step which he thought assured him all else that he desired; and to crown his present felicity, at the same time that he was constituted Attorney General he was promoted from "Second" to be "Chief Justice of Chester,"-the duties of law officer of the Crown, and of a Judge in this County Palatine and in the principality of Wales, not being considered incompatible.'

Soon after, it was thought that the Administration was in danger from a coalition, brought about by Lord Bolingbroke, between the Tories and the discontented Whigs. Their grand movement was an attack upon the SEPTENNIAL ACT, which the Tories had always strenuously opposed, and which Whigs not in office, nor likely to be, although they formerly supported it, had lately discovered to be highly unconstitutional. In the famous

From "A Brief Memoir of Sir Clement Wearg," published in 1843, by his relative, George Duke, Esq., of Gray's Inn, barrister-at-law, he appears to have been a most learned, eloquent and excellent man. He died of a violent fever, in the prime of life, on the 6th of April, 1726, when he had been three years Solicitor General. He was succeeded by Talbot, afterwards Lord Chancellor.

* Down almost to the time when these jurisdictions were abolished, Sir William Garrow and Sir John Copley held, at the same time, the offices of Attorney General and Chief Justice of Chester. We have now lost the professional joke of the prime minister baiting his rat-trap with Cheshire cheese.