A Book About Lawyers. John Cordy Jeaffreson

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СКАЧАТЬ it not been for Sir Joseph Jekyll's counsel, Mr. Cocks, the Worcestershire squire, would have rejected Philip Yorke as an ineligible suitor, in which case plain Mrs. Lygon would never have been Lady Hardwicke, and worked her husband's twenty purses of state upon curtains and hangings of crimson velvet. And, if he were so inclined, this writer could point to a learned judge, who in his days of 'stuff' and 'guinea fees' was deemed an ineligible match for a country apothecary's pretty daughter. The country doctor being able to give his daughter £20,000, turned away disdainfully from the unknown 'junior,' who five years later was leading his circuit, and quickly rose to the high office which he still fills to the satisfaction of his country.

      Disappointed in his pursuit of Anne Bawdon, Somers never again made any woman an offer of marriage; but scandalous gossip accused him of immoral intercourse with his housekeeper. This woman's name was Blount; and while she resided with the Chancellor, fame whispered that her husband was still living. Not only was Somers charged with open adultery, but it was averred that for the sake of peace he had imprisoned in a madhouse his mistress's lawful husband, who was originally a Worcester tradesman. The chief authority for this startling imputation is Mrs. Manley, who was encouraged, if not actually paid, by Swift to lampoon his political adversaries. In her 'New Atalantis'—the 'Cicero' of which scandalous work was understood by its readers to signify 'Lord Somers,'—this shameless woman entertained quid-nuncs and women of fashion by putting this abominable story in written words, the coarseness of which accorded with the repulsiveness of the accusation.

      At a time when honest writers on current politics were punished with fine and imprisonment, the pillory and the whip, statesmen and ecclesiastics were not ashamed to keep such libellers as Mrs. Manley in their pay. That the reader may fully appreciate the change which time has wrought in the tone of political literature, let him contrast the virulence and malignity of this unpleasant passage from the New Atalantis, with the tone which recently characterized the public discussion of the case which is generally known by the name of 'The Edmunds Scandal.'

      Notwithstanding her notorious disregard of truth, it is scarcely credible that Mrs. Manley's scurrilous charge was in no way countenanced by facts. At the close of the seventeenth century to keep a mistress was scarcely regarded as an offence against good morals; and living in accordance with the fashion of the time, it is probable that Somers did that which Lord Thurlow, after an interval of a century, was able to do without rousing public disapproval. Had his private life been spotless, he would doubtless have taken legal steps to silence his traducer; and unsustained by a knowledge that he dared not court inquiry into his domestic arrangements, Mrs. Manley would have used her pen with greater caution. But all persons competent to form an opinion on the case have agreed that the more revolting charges of the indictment were the baseless fictions of a malicious and unclean mind.

CHAPTER X.

       Table of Contents

      BROTHERS IN TROUBLE.

      In the 'Philosophical Dictionary,' Voltaire, laboring under misapprehension or carried away by perverse humor, made the following strange announcement:—"Il est public en Angleterre, et on voudroit le nier en vain, que le Chancelier Cowper épousa deux femmes, qui vécurent ensemble dans sa maison avec une concorde singulière qui fit honneur à tous trois. Plusieurs curieux ont encore le petit livre que ce Chancelier composa en faveur de la Polygamie." Tickled by the extravagant credulity or grotesque malice of this declaration, an English wit, improving upon the published words, represented the Frenchman as maintaining that the custodian of the Great Seal of England was called the Lord Keeper, because, by English law, he was permitted to keep as many wives as he pleased.

      The reader's amusement will not be diminished by a brief statement of the facts to which we are indebted for Voltaire's assertions.

      William Cowper, the first earl of his line, began life with a reputation for dissipated tastes and habits, and by unpleasant experience he learned how difficult it is to get rid of a bad name. The son of a Hertfordshire baronet, he was still a law student when he formed a reprehensible connexion with an unmarried lady of that county—Miss (or, as she was called by the fashion of the day Mistress) Elizabeth Culling, of Hertingfordbury Park. But little is known of this woman. Her age is an affair of uncertainty, and all the minor circumstances of her intrigue with young William Cowper are open to doubt and conjecture; but the few known facts justify the inference that she neither merited nor found much pity in her disgrace, and that William erred through boyish indiscretion rather than from vicious propensity. She bore him two children, and he neither married her nor was required by public opinion to marry her. The respectability of their connexions gave the affair a peculiar interest, and afforded countenance to many groundless reports. By her friends it was intimated that the boy had not triumphed over the lady's virtue until he had made her a promise of marriage; and some persons even went so far as to assert that they were privately married. It is not unlikely that at one time the boy intended to make her his wife as soon as he should be independent of his father, and free to please himself. Beyond question, however, is it that they were never united in wedlock, and that Will Cowper joined the Home Circuit with the tenacious fame of a scapegrace and roué.

      That he was for any long period a man of dissolute morals is improbable; for he was only twenty-four years of age when he was called to the bar, and before his call he had married (after a year's wooing) a virtuous and exemplary young lady, with whom he lived happily for more than twenty years. A merchant's child, whose face was her fortune—Judith, the daughter of Sir Robert Booth, is extolled by biographers for reclaiming her young husband from a life of levity and culpable pleasure. That he loved her sincerely from the date of their imprudent marriage till the date of her death, which occurred just about six months before his elevation to the woolsack, there is abundant evidence.

      Judith died April 2, 1705, and in the September of the following year the Lord Keeper married Mary Clavering, the beautiful and virtuous lady of the bedchamber to Caroline Wilhelmina Dorothea, Princess of Wales. This lady was the Countess Cowper whose diary was published by Mr. Murray in the spring of 1864; and in every relation of life she was as good and noble a creature as her predecessor in William Cowper's affection. Of the loving terms on which she lived with her lord, conclusive testimony is found in their published letters and her diary. Frequently separated by his professional avocations and her duties of attendance upon the Princess of Wales, they maintained, during the periods of personal severance, a close and tender intercourse by written words; and at all other times, in sickness not less than in health, they were a fondly united couple. One pathetic entry in the countess's diary speaks eloquently of their nuptial tenderness and devotion:—"April 7th, 1716. After dinner we went to Sir Godfrey Kneller's to see a picture of my lord, which he is drawing, and is the best that was ever done for him; it is for my drawing-room, and in the same posture that he watched me so many weeks in my great illness."

      Lord Cowper's second marriage was solemnized with a secrecy for which his biographers are unable to account. The event took place September, 1706, about two months before his father's death, but it was not announced till the end of February, 1707, at which time Luttrell entered in his diary, "The Lord Keeper, who not long since was privately married to Mrs. Clavering of the bishoprick of Durham, brought her home this day." Mr. Foss, in his 'Judges of England,' suggests that the concealment of the union "may not improbably be explained by the Lord Keeper's desire not to disturb the last days of his father, who might perhaps have been disappointed that the selection had not fallen on some other lady to whom he had wished his son to be united." But this conjecture, notwithstanding its probability, is only a conjecture. Unless they had grave reasons for their conduct, the Lord Keeper and his lady had better have joined hands in the presence of the world, for the mystery of their private wedding nettled public curiosity, and gave new life to an old slander.

      Cowper's boyish escapade was not forgotten by the malicious. No sooner had he become conspicuous in his profession and in politics, than СКАЧАТЬ