Atrocious Judges : Lives of Judges Infamous as Tools of Tyrants and Instruments of Oppression

He next zealously lent himself to the scheme of the court for upsetting the municipal privileges of the city of London, and of obtaining sheriffs for London and Middlesex who would return juries at the will of the government. The lord mayor having been gained over, and the stratagem devised of creating a sheriff by the lord mayor drinking to him, instead of by the election of his fellow-citizens, the difficulty was to find any freeman of fair character who would incur all the odium and risk of being so introduced to the shrievalty. It so happened that at that time there returned to England a brother of the chief justice, Mr. Dudley, afterwards Sir Dudley North, who was free of the city from having been apprenticed there to a merchant, and who had amassed considerable wealth by a long residence in Turkey. It being suggested at court that this was the very man for their sheriff; “the king very much approved of the person, but was very dubious whether the chief justice, with his much caution and wisdom, would advise his brother to stand in a litigious post. But yet he resolved to try; and one day he spoke to Sir Francis with a world of tenderness, and desired to know if it would be too much to ask his brother Dudley to hold sheriff on my lord mayor’s drinking.” The wily chief justice immediately saw the advantage this proposal might bring to the whole family, and returned a favorable answer. “For matter of title,” says Roger, “he thought there was more squeak than wool; for whatever people thought was at the bottom, if a citizen be called upon an office by the government of the city, and obeys, where is the crime? But then such a terrible fear was artificially raised up in the city as if this service was the greatest hazard in the world.” Sir Francis gently broke the matter to his brother, saying “that there was an opportunity which preferred itself whereby he might make a fortune if he wanted it, and much enlarge what he had, besides great reputation to be gained, which would make him all the days of his life very considerable, laying open the case of the lord mayor’s right very clear and plain, against which in common sense there was no reply.” Dudley, however, made many objections, and talked of the terrible expense to which he should be exposed. The chief justice urged that if he served, the obligation was so transcendent, that there could be no employment by commission from the crown which would not fall to his share, “and as for the charge,” said he, “here, brother, take a thousand pounds to help make good your account, and if you never have an opportunity by pensions or employments to reimburse you and me, I will lose my share; else I shall be content to receive this thousand pounds out of one half of your pensions when they come in, and otherwise not at all.” The merchant yielded; and under this pure bargain, proposed by the judge before whom the validity of the appointment might come to be decided, when his health was given by the lord mayor as sheriff of London and Middlesex, he agreed to accept the office.

But the old sheriffs insisted on holding a common hall for the election of their successors, according to ancient usage, on Midsummer day; when Lord Chief Justice North had the extreme meanness, at the king’s request, to go into the city and take post in a house near Guildhall, belonging to Sir George Jeffreys, “who had no small share in the conduct of this affair, to the end that if any incident required immediate advice, or if the spirits of the lord mayor should droop, which in outward appearance were but faint, there might be a ready recourse.” It is true the opposite faction had the Lord Grey de Werke and other leaders from the west end of the town, to advise and countenance them; but this could be no excuse for a judge so degrading himself. The poll going for the popular candidates, the lord mayor, by Chief Justice North’s advice, under pretence of a riot, attempted to adjourn the election; but the sheriffs required that the polling should continue, and declared Papillon and Dubois duly elected.

This causing great consternation at Whitehall, a council was called, to which the lord mayor and aldermen were summoned. Lord Chief Justice North, by the king’s command, addressed them, saying, “that the proceedings of the sheriffs at the common hall after the adjournment were not only utterly null and void, but the persons were guilty of an audacious riot and contempt of lawful authority, for which by due course of law they would be severely punished; but in the mean time it was the lord mayor’s duty and his majesty’s pleasure that they should go back to the city and summon the common hall, and make election of sheriffs for the year ensuing.” The lord mayor, having been told that the courtiers would bamboozle him and leave him in the lurch, when North had concluded, said, “My lord, will your lordship be pleased to give me this under your hand?” The king and all the councillors were much tickled to see the wily chief justice thus nailed, “expecting some turn of wit to fetch himself off, and thinking to have sport in seeing how woodenly he would excuse himself.” But to their utter astonishment, for once in his life Francis North was bold and straightforward, and cheating them all, he answered, without any hesitation, “Yes, and you shall have it presently.” Then seizing a pen, he wrote, “I am of opinion that it is in the lord mayor’s power to call, adjourn, and dissolve the common hall at his pleasure, and that all acts done there, as of the common hall, during such adjournment, are mere nullities, and have no legal effect.” This he signed and handed to the lord mayor, who then promised obedience.

Accordingly, another common hall was called, at which it was pretended that Sir Dudley North and Rich were elected, and they were actually installed in the office of sheriff. By the contrivance of Lord Chief Justice North, the office of lord mayor for the ensuing year was likewise filled by a thorough passive-obedience tool of the court. Gould, the liberal candidate, had a majority of legal votes on the poll, but under a pretended scrutiny, Pritchard was declared duly elected, and Sir John More, the renegade mayor, willingly transferred to him the insignia of chief magistrate, so that the king had now the city authorities completely at his devotion. Shaftesbury fled to Holland; and it was for the court to determine when the blow should be struck against the popular leaders who remained.

Such were the services of Lord Chief Justice North, which all plainly saw would ere long be rewarded by higher promotion. The health of Lord Nottingham, the chancellor, was rapidly declining, and the court had already designated his successor. Lord Craven, famous for wishing to appear intimate with rising men, in the circle at Whitehall, now seized Lord Chief Justice North by the arm and whispered in his ear; and the foreign ambassadors so distinctly saw the shadow of the coming event that they treated him with as great respect as if he had been prime minister, “and when any of them looked towards him and thought he perceived it, they very formally bowed.”

We are told that in many things North acted as “co-chancellor” with Nottingham; and for the first time the office of chancellor seems to have been like that of sheriff of Middlesex, one in its nature, but filled by two officers of equal authority. It is said that “the aspirant dealt with all imaginable kindness and candor to the declinant, and that never were predecessor and successor such cordial friends to each other, and in every respect mutually assistant, as those two were.”

While the lord chancellor was languishing, the chief justice being at Windsor, the king plainly intimated to him that when the fatal event, which must be shortly looked for, had taken place, the great seal would be put into his hands. He modestly represented himself to his majesty as unfit for the place, and affected by all his art and skill to decline it. In truth, he really wished to convey to the king’s mind the impression that he did not desire it, although he had been working so foully for it – as he knew it would be pressed upon him, there being no competitor so knowing and so pliant, and he had an important stipulation to make for a pension before he would accept it. When he came back to London, and confidentially mentioned what had passed between him and the king, he pretended to be annoyed, and said “that if the seal were offered to him he was determined to refuse it;” but it is quite clear that he was highly gratified to see himself so near the great object of his ambition, and that his only anxiety now was, that he might drive a good bargain when he should consent to give up “the cushion of the Common Pleas.”

Lord Nottingham having died about four o’clock in the afternoon of Monday, the 18th of December, 1682, the great seal was carried next morning from his house, in Great Queen Street, to the king at Windsor. The following day his majesty brought it with him to Whitehall, and in the evening sent for the lord chief justice of the Common Pleas, to offer it to him. When North arrived, he found Lord Rochester, the treasurer, and several other ministers, closeted with Charles. As yet there was no distinction between the funds to be applied to the king’s private expenses and to the public service – the exchequer being now very empty, and the resolution being taken never more to summon a Parliament for supplies – it was considered an object that the keeper of the great seal should be contented with the fees of his office, without any allowance or pension from the crown. Charles himself was careless about such matters, but the treasurer had inculcated upon him the importance of this piece of economy. As soon as North entered, his majesty offered him the seal, and the ministers began to congratulate the new lord keeper; but, with many acknowledgments for his majesty’s gracious intentions, he begged leave to suggest the necessity, for his majesty’s honor, that a pension94 should be assigned to him, as it had been to his predecessor, for otherwise the dignity of this high office could not be supported. Rochester interposed, pointing out the necessity, in times like these, for all his majesty’s servants to be ready to make some sacrifices; that the emoluments of the great seal were considerable; and that it would be more becoming to trust to his majesty’s bounty than to seek to drive a hard bargain with him. But Sir George Jeffreys being yet only a bustling city officer, who could not with any decency have been put at the head of the law; the attorney and solicitor general not being considered men of mark or likelihood; Sir Harbottle Grimston, the master of the rolls, being at death’s door, and no other common law judge besides himself being produceable, the little gentleman was firm, and positively declared that he would not touch the great seal without a pension. After much haggling, a compromise took place, by which he was to have two thousand pounds a year instead of the four thousand pounds a year assigned to his predecessor. The king then lifted up the purse containing the seal, and putting it into his hand, said, “Here, my lord, take it; you will find it heavy.” “Thus,” says Roger North, “his majesty acted the prophet as well as the king; for, shortly before his lordship’s death, he declared that, since he had the seal, he had not enjoyed one easy and contented minute.”

When the new lord keeper came home at night from Whitehall to his house in Chancery Lane, bringing the great seal with him, and attended by the officers of the Court of Chancery, instead of appearing much gratified, as was expected by his brother and his friends, who were waiting to welcome him, he was in a great rage – disappointed that he had not been able to make a better bargain, and, perhaps, a little mortified that he had only the title of “lord keeper” instead of the more sounding one of “lord chancellor.” Recriminating on those with whom he had been so keenly acting the chapman, he exclaimed, “To be haggled with about a pension, as at the purchase of a horse or an ox! After I had declared that I would not accept without a pension, to think I was so frivolous as to insist and desist all in a moment! As if I were to be wheedled and charmed by their insignificant tropes! To think me worthy of so great a trust, and withal so little and mean as to endure such usage! It is disobliging, inconsistent, and insufferable. What have I done that may give them cause to think of me so poor a spirit as to be thus trifled with?” It might have been answered that, though the king and the courtiers made use of him for their own ends, they had seen his actions, understood his character, and had no great respect for him. Till Jeffreys was a little further advanced, they could not run the risk of breaking with him; but then he was subjected to all sorts of mortifications and insults.

On the first day of the following Hilary term he took his place in the Court of Chancery. By this time he was in possession of his predecessor’s house in Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and he had a grand procession from thence to Westminster Hall, attended by the Duke of Ormond, the Earls of Craven and Rochester, the great officers of state, and the judges. He took the oaths, the master of the rolls holding the book. He does not appear to have delivered any inaugural address. The attendant lords staid and heard a motion or two, and then departed, leaving the lord keeper in court.

They might have been well amused if they had remained. For the crooked purposes of the government, with a view to the disfranchising of the city of London by the quo warranto defending against it, Pemberton95 was this day to be removed from being chief justice of the King’s Bench to be chief justice of the Common Pleas, and Edmund Saunders was to be at once raised from wearing a stuff gown at the bar to be chief justice of the King’s Bench. This keen but unscrupulous lawyer was previously to be made a serjeant, that he might be qualified to be a judge, and, coming into the Court of Chancery, he presented the lord keeper with a ring for himself, and another for the king, inscribed with the courtly motto, “Principi sic placuit.” The lord keeper then accompanied him into court where he was to preside, called him to the bench, and made him a speech on the duties of his office. The ceremonies of the day were concluded by his lordship afterwards going to his old court, the Common Pleas, and there swearing in Pemberton as his successor, whom he congratulated upon “the ease with dignity” which he was now to enjoy.

Parasites and preferment-hunters crowded the levee of the new lord keeper. He was immediately waited upon by the courtly Evelyn, who discovered in him a thousand good qualities.96

In the midst of these blandishments he applied himself with laudable diligence to the discharge of his judicial duties. He declared that he was shocked by many abuses in the Court of Chancery, and he found fault with the manner in which his two predecessors, Bridgeman and Nottingham, had allowed the practice of the court to lead to delay and expense.

North’s conduct as a law reformer was extremely characteristic. He talked much of issuing a new set of “rules and orders” to remedy all abuses, but he was afraid “that it would give so great alarm to the bar and officers, with the solicitors, as would make them confederate and demur, and, by making a tumult and disturbance, endeavor to hinder the doing any thing of that kind which they would apprehend to be very prejudicial to their interests.”97 Then, when he wished to simplify the practice and to speed causes to a hearing and final decree, he considered that he was not only to regard the suitors, but that “there was a justice due as well to the crown, which had advantage growing by the disposition of places, profits, by process of all sorts, as also the judges and their servants, and counsel at the bar, and solicitors, who were all in possession of their advantages, and by public encouragement to spend their youth to make them fit for them, and had no other means generally to provide for themselves and their families, and had a right to their reasonable profits, if not strictly by law, yet through long connivance.”

I think we must say that his alleged merit as a chancery reformer consists chiefly in the profession of good intentions; that he allowed the practice of the court to remain pretty much as he found it; and that if he saw and approved what was right, he followed what was wrong – aggravating his errors by disregarding the strong dictates of his conscience.

Nevertheless, he applied himself very assiduously to the business of his court, which, from his experience at the bar, and from his having often sat for his predecessor, was quite familiar to him; and he seems to have disposed of it satisfactorily. He was not led into temptation by having to decide in equity any political case; and no serious charge was preferred against him of bribery or undue influence. Till the meeting of Parliament in the reign of James, and the failure of his health, he prevented the accumulation of arrears; and, upon the whole, as an Equity judge, he is to be praised rather than censured.

I wish as much could be said of his political conduct while he held the great seal. He may have wished “to bring the king to rule wholly by law, and to do nothing which, by any reasonable construction, might argue the contrary;” but for this purpose he would make feeble efforts, and no sacrifice; and all the measures of the court, however profligate, when resolved upon, he strenuously assisted in carrying into execution.

The ministers who now bore sway, and who were on several points opposed to each other, were Halifax, Sunderland, and Rochester. The Duke of York, restored to the office of lord high admiral and to the Privy Council, in direct violation of the “test act,” had so much influence, that it was said that “to spite those who wished to prevent him from reigning at the king’s death, he was permitted to reign during the king’s life.” The Duchess of Portsmouth was likewise at the head of a party at court, although Mrs. Gwin, her Protestant rival, did not interfere with politics. With none of these would the lord keeper combine. His policy was to study the peculiar humors of the king – to do whatever would be most agreeable personally to him – to pass for “the king’s friend” – and to be “solus cum solo.”

Charles, although aware of his cunning and his selfishness, was well pleased with the slavish doctrines he laid down, and with the devoted zeal he expressed for the royal prerogative; and till Jeffrey’s superior vigor, dexterity, and power of pleasing gained the ascendancy, usually treated him with decent consideration.

He never would give any opinion on foreign affairs, nor attend a committee of council summoned specially to consider them, professing himself, for want of a fit education and study, incompetent to judge at all of these matters, and declaring, like a true courtier, that “King Charles II. understood foreign affairs better than all his councils and councillors put together.” But he regularly attended all other cabinet meetings, and when there was any business of a judicial nature to be done at the council-table, he always presided there, “the lord president not having the art of examining into and developing cases of intricacy.”

The first of these in which he had to display his powers, was the disfranchisement of the city of London. Saunders, counsel in the quo warranto, having been appointed chief justice, to decide in favor of the sufficiency of the pleadings which he himself had drawn, the opinion of the Court of King’s Bench had been pronounced for the crown, “that all the city charters were forfeited.” Formal judgment was not yet entered on the record, to give an opportunity to the mayor, aldermen and citizens, to make their submission and to accept terms which might henceforth annihilate their privileges and make them the slaves of the government. They accordingly did prepare a petition to the king, imploring his princely compassion and grace, which they presented to him at a council held at Windsor on the 18th of June, 1683. The petition being read, they were ordered to withdraw, and when they were again called in, the lord keeper thus addressed them, disclosing somewhat indiscreetly the real motives for the quo warranto: “My lord mayor, I am by the king’s command to tell you that he hath considered the humble petition of the city of London, where so many of the present magistrates and other eminent citizens are of undoubted loyalty and affection to his service; that for their sakes his majesty will show the city all the favor they can reasonably desire. It was very long before his majesty took resolutions to question their charter; it was not the seditious discourses of the coffee-houses, the treasonable pamphlets and libels daily published and dispersed thence into all parts of the kingdom, the outrageous tumults in the streets, nor the affronts to his courts of justice, could provoke him to it. His majesty had patience until disorders were grown to that height, that nothing less seemed to be designed than a ruin to the government both of church and state.” After pointing out the mischief of having factious magistrates, he adds: “It was high time to put a stop to this growing evil. This made it necessary for his majesty to inquire into the abuses of franchises, that it might be in his power to make a regulation sufficient to restore the city to its former good government.” He then stated the regulations to which they were required to assent, among which were – “That no lord mayor, sheriff, or other officer should be appointed without the king’s consent; that the king might cashier them at his pleasure; that if the king disapproved of the sheriffs elected, he might appoint others by his own authority; and that the king should appoint all magistrates in the city by his commission, instead of their being elected as hitherto.”

The citizens refused to comply with these terms, and judgment was entered up. Thus, on the most frivolous pretexts, and by a scandalous perversion of the forms of law, was the city of London robbed of the free institutions which it had enjoyed, and under which it had flourished for many ages. The proceeding was less appalling to the public than the trial and execution of eminent patriots, but was a more dangerous blow to civil liberty. London remained disfranchised, and governed by the agents of the crown, during the rest of this reign, and till the expected invasion of the Prince of Orange near the conclusion of the next – when, too late, an offer was made to restore its charters with all its ancient privileges. Immediately after the revolution, they were irrevocably confirmed by act of Parliament.

The lord keeper’s conduct in this affair gave such high satisfaction at court, that, as a reward for it, he was raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Guilford. His brother says that he did not seek the elevation from vanity, but that he might be protected against the attacks which might hereafter be made upon him in the House of Commons. He obtained it on the recommendation of the Duke of York, who overlooked his dislike of Popery in respect of his steady hatred to public liberty.

To show his gratitude, the new peer directed similar proceedings to be commenced against many other corporations, which ended in the forfeiture or surrender of the charters of most of the towns in England in which the liberal party had enjoyed an ascendancy.

Gilbert Burnet,98 about this time appointed preacher at the rolls, thought he had secured a protector in the lord keeper; but as soon as this whig divine had incurred the displeasure of the court, his lordship wrote to the master of the rolls that the king considered the chapel of the rolls as one of his own chapels, and that Dr. Burnet must be dismissed as one disaffected to the government. In consequence, he was obliged to go beyond seas, and to remain in exile, till he returned with King William.

Soon after followed the disgraceful trials for high treason, which arose out of the discovery of the rye-house plot. The lord keeper did not preside at these; but having directed them – superintending the general administration of justice, and especially bound to see that the convictions had been obtained on legal evidence – he is deeply responsible for the blood that was shed. He must have known that if, in point of law, the witnesses made out a case to be submitted to the jury against Lord Russell, that virtuous nobleman was really prosecuted for his support of the exclusion bill; and he must have seen that against Algernon Sydney no case had been made out to be submitted to the jury, as there was only one witness that swore to any thing which could be construed into an overt act of treason, and the attempt to supply the defect by a MS. containing a speculative essay on government, which was found in his study, and had been written many years before, was futile and flagitious. Yet did he sign the death-warrants of both these men, whose names have been honored, while his has been execrated in all succeeding times.