that may best suit the Lord Chancellor; when he hopes to hear who may be most eligible to be appointed Solicitor General to the Queen. "GEORGE R." Yet, a week after, the Princess Elizabeth thus writes to Dr. Thomas Willis: "June 6th, 1801. "After receiving one note you will be surprised at this; but second thoughts are sometimes best: besides which, I am commanded by the Queen to inform you by letter how much this subject of the Princess is still in the King's mind, to a degree that is distressing, from the unfortunate situation of the family; and Mamma is of opinion that the Lord Chancellor should be informed of it, as he has mentioned the subject to Mr. Dundas to-day. The Queen commands me to add, that if you could see her heart, you would see that she is guided by every principle of justice, and with a most fervent wish that the dear King may do nothing to form a breach between him and the Prince, for she really lives in dread of it; for from the moment my brother comes into the room till the instant he quits it, there is nothing that is not kind that the King does not do by him. This is so different to his manner when well, and his ideas concerning the child so extraordinary, that, to own to you the truth, I am not astonished at Mamma's uneasiness. She took courage, and told the King, that now my brother was quiet, he had better leave him so, as he never had forbid the Princess seeing the child when she pleased; to which he answered, That does not signify; the Princess shall have her child, and I will speak to Mr. Wyatt about the building of the wing to her present house.' You know full well how speedily every thing is now ordered and done. In short, what Mamma wishes is, that you would inform the Lord Chancellor that his assistance is much wanted in preventing the King doing any thing that shall hurt him. The Princess spoke to me on the conversation the King had had with her, expressed her distress, and I told her how right she was in not answering, as I feared the King's intentions, though most kindly meant, might serve to hurt and injure her in the world. I hope I was not wrong, but I am always afraid when she speaks to me on such unfortunate subjects. I think the King heated and fatigued, which I am not surprised at, not having been one minute quiet the whole day. I assure you it is a very great trial, the anxiety we must go through; but we trust in God,-therefore we hope for the best. "Your friend, In another letter to him, dated 9th June, her Royal Highness, after mentioning the Queen's name in connexion with some indifferent subject thus proceeds: "She commands me to say to you that she wishes the Lord Chancellor would show Mr. Addington, that, as the King is contented with it, that he had better not hurry our going, as he is so much better, that there is hope that in gaining strength it will ensure us from having a relapse, which you may easily believe is her earnest and daily prayer. He has been very quiet, very heavy, and very sleepy, all the evening, and has said two or three times, yesterday was too much for me. God grant that his eyes may soon open, and that he may see his real and true friends in their true colours! How it grieves one to see so fine a character clouded by complaint! But He who inflicted it may dispel it; so I hope all will soon be well. Finally she writes to him on the 12th June: "Your friend, 66 ELIZABETH." "I have the pleasure of saying, yesterday was a very good day, though the sleepiness continues to a great degree. I am told the night has been tolerable, but he has got up in his usual way, which is very vexatious. I am commanded by the Queen to desire you will say every thing from her to the Lord Chancellor, and thank him in the strongest terms for the interest he has taken in her distress. She so entirely builds her faith on him, that she doubts not his succeeding in every thing with his Majesty, who, to say true, greatly wants the advice of so good a friend and so good a head. How providential is it that he is, thank God! placed where one can know his worth! I have just seen Brown, who is very well satisfied. This morning, therefore, I trust all is going on well, though I feel that there is still fear. "Your friend, Near a week after, Dr. Thomas Willis wrote the following alarming letter to the Lord Chancellor : “My Lord, "Kew Green, June 16th, 1801. Eight o'clock, P. M. "Dr. John, who has not seen the King, will bring this to town. I have nothing to say that is in truth very favourable. His Majesty rode out this morning at ten o'clock, and did not return till four: he paid a visit in the course of the day to Mr. Dundas. His attendants thought him much hurried, and so think his pages. He has a great thirst upon him, and his family are in great fear. His Majesty still talks much of his prudence, but he shows none. His body, mind, and tongue are all upon the stretch every minute; and the manner in which he is now expending money in various ways, which is so unlike him when well, all evince that he is not so right as he should be. "Your Lordship's most obedient servant, His Majesty seems now to have become very impatient of the control of the Willises, and very desirous to get rid of them; whereupon Lord Eldon, who was supposed to have the greatest influence over hin, wrote to him, earnestly requesting that at least Dr. Robert might still be allowed to be in attendance. His Majesty returned the following very touching answer, which it is difficult to peruse with a dry eye:— "Kew, June 21st, 1801. "The King would not do justice to the feelings of his heart, if he an instant delayed expressing his conviction of the attachment the Lord Chancellor bears him, of which the letter now before him is a fresh proof; but, at the same time, he cannot but in the strongest manner decline the idea of having Dr. Robert Willis about him. The line of practice followed with great credit by that gentleman renders it incompatible with the King's feelings that he should, now by the goodness of Divine Providence restored to reason, consult a person of that description. His Majesty is perfectly satisfied with the zeal and attention of Dr. Gisborne, in whose absence he will consult Sir Francis Millman ; but cannot bear the idea of consulting any of the Willis family, though he shall ever respect the character and conduct of Dr. Robert Willis. No person, that ever has had a nervous fever, can bear to continue the physician employed on the occasion: and this holds much more so in the calamitous one that has so long confined the King, but of which he is now completely recovered. "GEORGE R." The Lord Chancellor was ready enough to take the King's word for his recovery; and having sent him a commission to sign, for giving the Royal assent to Acts of Parliament, received the following answer :— "Kew, June 23d, 1801. "The King is much pleased with the whole contents of the Lord Chancellor's letter, and returns the commission, having signed it, for passing the bills now ready for the Royal assent. He cannot avoid adding, as he knows it will give pleasure to the person to whom it is addressed, that appetite and good sleep is perfectly, by the goodness of Divine Providence, restored; and that no degree of attention shall be wanting to keep those necessary assistants of perfect health. "GEORGE R." In spite of the apprehensions of his family and his physicians, his Majesty's health soon after really was quite restored, and he remained rational for several years. Lord Eldon, I think, has been much too severely blamed for his personal dealings with the King under such circumstances. When there was a moral certainty, that if entirely conscious and in possession of his faculties, he would have approved of the steps to be taken, and that he would be sure, if again conscious and in possession of his faculties, to sanction and ratify what had been done in his name, and when the most serious detriment would have arisen to the public service, from suspending the exercise of the Royal authority, I must say that the loud complaints against Lord Eldon for acts of state done in the King's name, during the King's temporary incapacity, savour a little either of prudery or of faction. Nor could it be expected that in public the Chancellor would admit the full truththough I could much wish that he had made his statements on the sub 6 ject in Parliament with less of emphasis and solemnity.-He will more easily be forgiven for the manner in which he mystified his friends who put impertinent questions to him on the subject in private society. "Eldon," says Wilberforce in his Diary, "had just received the Great Seal, and I expressed my fears that they were bringing the King into public too soon after his late indisposition. You shall judge for yourself,' he answered, 'from what passed between us, when I kissed hands on my appointment. The King had been conversing with me, and when I was about to retire, he said, 'Give my remembrance to Lady Eldon.' I acknowledged his condescension, and intimated that I was ignorant of Lady Eldon's claim to such a notice. 'Yes, yes,' he answered, 'I know how much I owe to Lady Eldon; I know that you would have made yourself a country curate, and that she has made you my Lord Chancellor.'"* Till the happy and unexpected turn which took place in the King's health in the end of June, Lord Eldon had been contemplating a Regency, and a speedy change of Administration; but he now looked forward to a long tenure of office, although he would not have believed any wizard who should have foretold that he was to be Chancellor, not only under George III., by whom he was so much liked, but under George IV., by whom as yet he was mortally hated-and that he was to hold the office longer than any of his predecessors since the time of St. Swithin. On the first day of Easter Term he headed a grand procession from his house in Bedford Square to Westminster Hall, and he was installed in the Court of Chancery, being [APRIL 22, 1801.] attended by all his colleagues in the Cabinet, and the whole profession of the law.† His promotion had been very generally approved of, and, although it cannot be said that he continued to enjoy the same unmixed applause which had been showered down upon him as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, the public expectation of him in his new position was by no means disappointed. I reserve for the conclusion of this memoir a deliberate estimate of his qualities as an Equity Judge, and a review of his decisions. At present it must suffice to say, that if there was still something to desiderate, the "marble chair" certainly had not been so ably filled since the time of Lord Hardwicke. * Life of Wilberforce, iii. 9. "Alexander Lord Loughborough, Lord High Chancellor of that part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland called Great Britain, having delivered the Great Seal to the King at the Queen's House on Tuesday, the 14th day of April, 1801, his Majesty the same day delivered it to John Lord Eldon, Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, with the title of Lord High Chancellor of that part of Great Britain and Ireland called Great Britain, who was then sworn into the said office before his Majesty in Council. His Lordship sat in Lincoln's Inn Hall during the Seals before Easter Term, and on Wednesday, the 22d day of April, 1801, being the first day of Easter Term, he went in state from his house in Bedford Square, accompanied by the Earl of Chatham, Lord President of the Council, the Earl of Westmoreland, Lord Keeper of the Privy CHAPTER CXCVIII. CONTINUATION OF THE LIFE OF LORD ELDON TILL HIS FIRST LORD ELDON's first speech in the House of Lords as Chancellor I myself heard, and I have mentioned it in my ac[MAY 20, 1801.] count of the striking scene when Lord Thurlow, after years of absence, re-appeared, to support the right of a woman to be divorced from her husband, who had committed incest with her sister.* He next came forward to support a Bill brought in to indemnify those who had acted in arresting and detaining persons suspected of high treason during the suspension of the "Habeas Corpus Act." This was violently opposed by Thurlow, from spite to Mr. Pitt and Lord Loughborough, but Lord Eldon gallantly defended it, saying that " one of his earliest maxims in politics was, that political liberty could not be durable unless the system of its administration permitted it to be occasionally parted with, in order to secure it for ever. When it was otherwise, liberty contained the seeds of its own destruction. With respect to the consideration of necessity, he was aware that it was often the plea of tyrants; yet it was that consideration on which the most moderate men, when they took prudence for their guide, must sometimes act. In all periods of our history, their Lordships would find that the benefits of the Habeas Corpus Act were occasionally relinquished; but the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act did not take away the responsibility of Ministers. There were cases in which, if a Minister did not act, he would deserve to lose his head. Such, for instance, and he stated no hypothetical case, was the occasion of ambassadors passing from Ireland Seal, his Grace the Duke of Portland, one of his Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State, the Earl of St. Vincent, the Earl of Rosslyn, Lord Hobart, one other of his Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State, Lord Kenyon, Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench, the Right Hon. Henry Addington, Chancellor and Under Treasurer of the Exchequer, the Right Hon. Sir Wm. Scott, Knight, Judge of the High Court of Admiralty of England, the Judges, King's Serjeants, King's Counsel, and several other persons. The Lords accompanied him to the Court of Chancery, where (before he entered upon business,) in their presence, he took the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and the oath of Chancellor, the same being administered by the Deputy Clerk of the Crown, Master Holford, the Senior Master in Chancery, holding the book (the Master of the Rolls being prevented from attending by indisposition;) which being done, the Attorney General moved that it might be recorded, and it was ordered accordingly. Then the Lords departed, leaving the Lord Chancellor in Court."-Minute Book, No. 2, fol. 80. I ought to have mentioned that, on the arrival in his own country of the news of his appointment as Chancellor, all the bells in Newcastle and Gateshead were set a-ringing, and all the ships in the Tyne hoisted their flags. The "Hoast men's Company" must have been particularly proud of their brother freeman. # Ante, Vol. V. 35 Parl. Hist. 1432. |