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Another story of his juvenile extravagance is well told by my friend Mr. Welsby:

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Having prolonged one of his unlicensed rambles round the country, in company with some associates as reckless as himself, until their purses were all utterly exhausted, it was determined after divers consultations how to proceed: that they should part company, and try to make their way singly, each by the exercise of his individual wits. Holt, pursuing his separate route, came to the little inn of a straggling village, and, putting the best face upon the matter, commended his horse to the attentions of the ostler, and boldly bespoke the best supper and bed the house afforded. Strolling into the kitchen, he observed there the daughter of the landlady, a girl of about thirteen years of age, shivering with a fit of the ague; and on inquiring of her mother how long she had been ill, he was told nearly a year, and this in spite of all the assistance that could be had for her from physicians, at an expense by which the poor widow declared she had been half ruined. Shaking his head with much gravity at the mention of the doctors, he bade her be under no further concern, for she might assure herself her daughter should never have another fit: then scrawling a few Greek characters upon a scrap of parchment, and rolling it carefully up, he directed that it should be bound upon the girl's wrist, and remain there till she was well. By good luck, or possibly from the effect of imagination, the ague returned no more, at least during a week for which Holt remained their guest. At the end of that time, having demanded his bill with as much confidence as if his pockets were lined with jacobuses, the delighted hostess, instead of asking for payment, bewailed her inability to pay him as she ought for the wonderful cure he had achieved, and her ill-fortune in not having lighted on him ten months sooner, which would have saved her an outlay of some forty pounds. Her guest condescended after much entreaty, to set off against his week's entertainment the valuable service he had rendered, and wended merrily on his way. The sequel of the story goes on to relate, that when presiding, some forty years afterwards, at the assizes of the same county, a wretched, decrepit old woman was indicted before him

for witchcraft, and charged with being in possession of a spell which gave her power to spread diseases among the cattle, or cure those that were diseased. The Chief Justice desired that this formidable implement of sorcery might be handed up to him; and there, enveloped in many folds of dirty linen, he found the identical piece of parchment with which he himself played the wizard so many years before. The mystery was forthwith expounded to the jury; it agreed with the story previously told by the prisoner; the poor creature was instantly acquitted, and her guest's long-standing debt amply discharged."

He had been early destined to the profession of the law, having been entered on the books of Gray's Inn when he was only ten years old. His father was then treasurer of that society, and entitled to admit a son without a fee. Before he had completed his first year's residence at Oxford, such were his excesses, and such were the complaints which they called forth, that Sir Thomas thought the only chance of saving him from utter ruin was a change of scene, of company, and of pursuits. Accordingly he was brought to London; he was put under the care of a sober attorney, and he was required to keep his terms with a view to his being called to the bar. The experiment had the most brilliant success. His reformation was at once complete; and, without taking any vow, like Sir Matthew Hale, against stage plays and drinking, or renouncing society to avoid temptation, he applied ardently to the study of the law, and his moral conduct was altogether irreproachable.

Unfortunately we have no particular account of the manner in which he rendered himself so consummate a jurist. "Moots" and "Readings" at the Inns of Courts were going out of fashion; and the ponderous commonplace book, by which every student was expected to make out for himself a Corpus Juris Anglicani, was, since the publication of ROLLE and other compilations, thought rather a waste of labor. I suspect that, after acquiring a knowledge of practice from his attorney. tutor, young Holt improved himself chiefly by the diligent perusal of well-selected law-books, and by a fre1 Lives of Eminent English Judges, p. 91.

quent attendance in the course at Westminster when important cases were to be argued. By an intuitive faculty not to be found in your mere black-letter lawyer, he could distinguish genuine law, applicable to real business, from antiquated rubbish, of no service but to show a familiarity with the YEAR-BOOKS. He made himself master of all that is useful in our municipal code, and, from his reasoning in Coggs v. Barnard, and in other cases, it is evident that he must have imbued his mind with the principles of the Roman civil law. If he once took delight in classical studies, he now renounced them; and he never wandered into philosophy, or even cared much about the polite literature of his own country. But he mixed occasionally in general society, and picked up much from conversation; so that he was well acquainted with the actual business of life, and had a keen insight into character. His mother-wit was equal to his clergy.

Soon after he came of age he was called to the bar; a wonderful precocity in those days, when a training of seven or eight years, after taking a degree at a university, was generally considered necessary before putting on the long robe. His juvenile appearance seems to have been adverse to his success, as for some years he was still dependent on his father's bounty for his subsistence. He sought for practice in the Court of King's Bench, and rode the Oxford Circuit, but long remained without clients. Being advised to try his luck in the Court of Chancery, he expressed an unbecoming contempt for our equitable system, which certainly was then in a very crude state, and he professed a determined. resolution to make his fortune by the common law.

He still read diligently, and took notes of all the remarkable cases which he heard argued. When he was at last found out, business poured in upon him very rapidly. He was noted for doing it not only with learning always sufficient, but with remarkable good sense and handiness; so that he won verdicts in doubtful cases, and was noted for having "the ear of the court." Yet he would not stoop, for victory, to any unbecoming art, and always maintained a character of straightforwardness and independence. His name frequently ap

pears as counsel in routine cases in the King's Bench Reports about the middle of the reign of Charles II., and he was soon to gain distinction in political prosecutions which interested the whole nation.

He always showed in domestic life much reverence, as well as affection, for his father; but on public affairs he thought for himself, and he decidedly preferred the "country party." He had regarded with horror the iniquities of the infamous CABAL, and he associated himself with those who were struggling for the principles of civil and religious liberty. He was tainted with the rage against Popery, from which no patriot was then. free; but, although a sincere member of the Church of England, he was for extending a liberal toleration to all orthodox Dissenters. With these principles, and his professional eminence, he was sure to be of service to his country in the struggles that were then going forward between the contending parties in parliament and in the courts of law.

The first cause célebre in which he was engaged was the impeachment of the Earl of Danby. The King, dreading the disclosures which might be made in investigating the charges against his prime minister, had granted him a pardon, to which with his own royal hand he had affixed the great seal; but the Commons, allowing that it was within the power of the prerogative to remit the sentence after it had been pronounced, denied that a pardon could be pleaded in bar of an impeachment. The Lords received the plea, and assigned Mr. Holt as counsel for the defendant to argue its validity; the understood rule then being (as had been settled in the case of the Earl of Strafford), that upon an impeachment the defendant might have the assistance of counsel on any question of law, although not to argue the merits of the accusation. The Commons were now so unreasonable as to pass a resolution "That no commoner whatsoever shall presume to maintain the validity of the pardon pleaded by the Earl of Danby, without the consent of this House first had; and that the persons so doing shall be accounted betrayers of the liberties of the Commons of England." Holt remained

111 St. Tr. S07.

undismayed, and would manfully have done his duty at the peril of being seized by the Sergeant-at-arms and lodged in "Little Ease." But the King put an end for the present to the controversy between the two Houses by an abrupt dissolution of that Parliament which had sat seventeen years, which on its meeting was ready to make him an absolute sovereign, but which now seemed disposed to wrest the scepter from his hand.'

Holt was afterwards assigned by the Lords to be counsel for the Earl of Powis and Lord Bellasis, two of the five Popish peers capitally impeached on the charge of being concerned in the Popish Plot, which was converted into high treason, the murder of the King being one of its supposed objects. However, the unhappy Lord Strafford was alone brought to trial, and his murder caused such a reaction in the public mind that the other intended victims were released when they seemed inevitably doomed to share his fate.

By one of the professional accidents to which all men at the bar are liable, from not being at liberty to refuse a retainer, Holt was next associated with Sir George Jeffreys in prosecuting a bookseller for publishing a pamphlet alleged to be libelous and seditious, because it attempted to discredit the testimony of the witnesses against those who had died as authors of the Popish Plot. There might have been a design to influence the jury by presenting before them as counsel, in support of a tale which was becoming unpopular, one who was known to have opposed it when few had had courage to express a doubt of its most improbable fictions.

Mr. Holt had merely, as junior, to open the pleadings, and was followed by his leader, who delivered a panegyric on Lord Chief Justice Scroggs, and denounced all who did not believe in the Popish Plot as traitors, regretting that the present defendant was orly indicted for a misdemeanor, so that his punishment could not be carried beyond fine, imprisonment, whipping, and pillory. This harangue caused such consternation that the defendant submitted to a verdict of GUILTY, although, on the part of the prosecution, they seem not to have 27 St. Tr. 1242, 1200.

15 Parl. Hist. 1074.

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