be disposed to give much credit to this statement: while it appears, at the same time, that he procured, in almost every case of difficulty or importance, the assistance or opinion of some of the other judges. Several copies of "Ordinances for the redress of sundry errors, defaults, and abuses, in the High Court of Chancery,” framed by Lord Coventry in conjunction with Sir Julius Cæsar, the then Master of the Rolls (in 1635), are to be found among the manuscript collection in the British Museum. How far they were enforced seems very questionable; but they enacted undoubtedly a considerable and judicious reform in the practice and proceedings of the Court. The first, for instance, contained regulations which, if fully carried into practice, must have worked a radical cure of the grievous prolixity of equity pleadings :

"I. That bills, answers, replications, and rejoinders, be not stuffed with repetitions of deeds and writings in hæc verba, but the effect and substance of so much of them only as is pertinent and material to be set down, and that in brief and effectual terms; that long and needless traverses of points not traversable or material, causeless recitals, tautologies, and multiplications of words, and all other impertinences occasioning needless prolixity, be avoided, and the ancient brevity and succinctness in bills and other pleadings. restored. And upon any default herein, the party or counsel under whose hands it passeth, shall pay the charge of the copy, and be further punished as the case shall merit."

Subsequent sections provided for equally decided amendments of the practice in taking interrogatories, proceedings before the Masters, &c. Notwithstanding, however, these indications of reform, the contemporary complaints of the abuses and grievances of the equity jurisdiction are as loud and vehement as in later times. In Carey's "Present State of England," published in 1627, the Court of Chancery is especially denounced as "a gulph without a bottom, never full; a court swelling and ready to burst with causes" (this, by the way, at the very time when, according to our MS. biographer, Lord Coventry had so laudably and marvellously succeeded in clearing off all the arrears); and the pleadings are characterized as " full of impertinent matter, with large margins, great distances between the lines, and protraction of

words, and with their many dashes and slashes put in place of words." The writer describes the reformation of these mischiefs as depending mainly on the will and pleasure of the chief clerks and officers, who "fain amend any abuses that make not for their own profit, but none other." Another pamphleteer, of the date of 1642, denominates the abuse of equity "the foulest ulcer in all our legal grievances, and but an upstart of no antiquity;" and congratulates himself that the seals have been transferred to the hands of commissioners, as he considers "the weight of Chancery too great for the shoulders of an Atlas." In our own time, as we have been informed by high authority, its pressure has become so overwhelming as not to be duly sustainable by the exertions of three angels.

The prudent and wary temperament of Lord Coventry enabled him, in spite of the disfavour of several influential members of the court party, in particular the Earl of Manchester, to retain his office, with all its lucrative appurtenances, -of which so few have died possessors—until his death, which occurred at his mansion of Durham House, in the Strand, on the 14th of January 1639-40; escaping thus by a few months only the perils and revenges of the civil war; "so that," says Fuller," it is hard to say whether his honourable life, or seasonable death, was the greatest favour which God bestowed upon him." What indeed he might have looked for at the hands of that "fierce democratie" which so soon became triumphant, may be pretty well estimated by the fact, that in the year 1649 a resolution passed the Commons for levying the sum of £3000 out of his estate towards the indemnifica tion of Colonel Lilburne, to whose iniquitous sentence in the Star Chamber he had been a party. His remains were conveyed for interment to Croome d'Abitot, and within a few days his office was bestowed upon the profligate and infamous Sir John Finch.

The narrative of the MS. closes with the following sum..

"To make 'twixt words and lines huge gaps,

Wide as meridians in maps;

To squander paper, and spare ink,

Or cheat men of their word, some think."

Hudibras, Part ii. Canto 3, v. 327.

mary of Lord Coventry's personal appearance, qualifications, and character, drawn with considerable force and happiness of expression. "The character of his outward man was this:

he was of a middle stature, somewhat broad and roundfaced, of hair black, and upright in his comportment and gesture, of complexion sanguine, and of a comely aspect and presence.1 He was of a very fine and grave elocution, in a kind of graceful lisping; so that when nature might seem to cast something of imperfection on his speech, on due examination, she added a grace to the perfection of his delivery; for his words rather flowed from him in a kind of native pleasingness than by any artificial help or assistance. He was of a very liberal access, and to all addresses presented, affable; and, as he was of a very quick apprehension, so was he of an exceeding judicious and expeditious dispatch of all affairs, either of state or of the tribunal; of hearing patient and attentive, and, that which is not usually incident to persons of dignity and place, seldom in any distempered mood or motion of choler; and it was none of his meanest commendations, that he was an helper, or coadjutor, of counsel at the bar, and understood better what they would have said in the case than what they sometimes did say for their clients; so that there appeared in his constitution a kind of natural and unaffected insinuation, to creep into the good opinion of all men, rather than any affected greatness to discountenance any; but never rashly to discontent many. Through the whole course of his life his fortune was so obsequious, that it seemed she always waited upon him with a convoy, for in all the steps of his rise he had ever an even and smooth passage, without any rub or mate in the check.

-"For his erudition and acquisitions of art, though all knew he was learned in the sciences, and most profound in his profession, yet such was the happiness of his constellation, that he rather leaned to his native strength than depended on any artificial reliance. Without doubt he was one of a most solid and immovable temper, and void of all pride and ostentation; neither was he ever in any umbrage or disfavour with his

1 A fine portrait of him, by Jansen, forms one in the noble gallery collected by Lord Chancellor Clarendon, and still adorning the seat of his descendants, the Grove, in Hertfordshire.

Prince, an argument both of his wisdom and sincerity (!); neither in any fraction with his equals worthy of exception, for that of my Lord of Suffolk's business1 was an act of his that told the world in how little esteem he held greatness that would justle and stand in competition with justice; and it is remaining among the best of his memorials that he always stood impregnable, and not to be overcome by might.

"Amongst all the many felicities of his life, that of his short sickness, and the willing embracement of death with open arms, were of the most remarkable observation, for it is our fines qui coronat opus, and changes our mortality into that of immortal glory; for his sickness was not continued with any lingering or loathsome languishing, nor so precipitate as that it bereaved him of the ability of disposing his estate to the contentment of his posterity, or hindered the composing of his thoughts to another and better world.

"Now to this little model of his praise and virtue, I know somewhat of course may be expected to be said of his vices, for man is composed of human flesh and frailty, and the best of men are all subject unto error; justus septies in die labitur. And who is he that feeleth not in himself the force of his own corrupt nature, and the contagion of our first father's transgression streaming through the veins of his posterity? Surely, modest men may say that this noble man had not the privilege of canonization, to be sainted on earth, and that nothing of blackness could be laid to his eye during the whole course of his life but when we consider his estate now it is translated to another world, liquor post fatum quiescit, and that odium altissimum and monoculated envy, which is so emphatically fabled in avarum et invidum, becomes checked by the respect of profanation, and fear of trampling on the sacred ashes of the dead; yet I am not ignorant what murmuration hath passed on his integrity, charging it in implicit terms of playing the game closely and dexterously, and that if our faults could be all pencilled in our foreheads, this deceased lord might then bear in front sufficient argument of his human frailty. Howsoever, thus much I say, that could he have been limned

:

An information exhibited in the Star Chamber against Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, for malpractices in his office of Lord Treasurer, in 1619, when Coventry was Solicitor-general. See Bacon's Works, vol. xi. p. 369. (Montagu's edit.)

to the life (and I believe it) we should not find in him much of blemish."

We will conclude by placing beside this portrait, in justice to its subject, the beautiful but no less flattering picture drawn by Clarendon, in that admirable review of the court of Charles the First, which prefaces his History.

"The Lord Coventry enjoyed his place with an universal reputation (and sure justice was never better administered) for the space of about sixteen years, even to his death, some months before he was sixty years of age; which was another important circumstance of his felicity, that great office being so slippery, that no man had died in it before for near the space of forty years. Nor had his successors, for some time after him, much better fortune. And he had himself use of all his strength and skill (as he was an excellent wrestler in this kind) to preserve himself from falling, in two shocks: the one given him by the Earl of Portland, Lord High Treasurer of England; the other by the Marquis of Hamilton, who had the greatest power over the affections of the King of any man of that time.

"He was a man of wonderful gravity and wisdom; and understood not only the whole science and mystery of the law, at least equally with any man who had ever sat in that place; but had a clear conception of the whole policy of the government both of church and state, which, by the unskilfulness of some well-meaning men, justled each the other too much. He knew the temper, disposition, and genius of the kingdom most exactly; saw their spirits grow every day more sturdy, inquisitive, and impatient; and therefore naturally abhorred all innovations, which he foresaw would produce ruinous effects. Yet many, who stood at a distance, thought that he was not active and stout enough in opposing those innovations. For though, by his place, he presided in all public councils, and was most sharp-sighted in the consequences of things, yet he was seldom known to speak in matters of state, which he well knew were for the most part concluded before they were brought to that public agitation; never in foreign affairs, which the vigour of his judgment could well have comprehended; nor indeed freely in any thing, but what immediately and plainly concerned the justice of the kingdom; and in that, as