To these Orders, the authorship of Coventry is confined. With such a predecessor as Bacon, and such a contemporary as Hyde, he seems to have felt an utter contempt for literature and literary men, and to have lived almost entirely with lawyers. I find no further account of his domestic habits, and no personal anecdotes respecting him. One attempt which he made at a jest has come down to us. When Prynne, Bastwick and Burton were prosecuted in the Star Chamber for libeling the Bishops, they objected that the Bishops ought not to their Judges; whereupon smartly answered my Lord Keeper, "By that plea you can never be tried, for you have libeled all the magistrates in the land."

sit as

Seal.

He died the richest man that had yet held the Great Weldon says, "Coventry, so generally reputed an honest man, got such an estate by bribery and injustice, that he is said to have left a family worth a million,which may commend his wisdom but not his honesty." But the anonymous biographer I have before quoted, although he allows that Coventry's enormous wealth was a ground of considerable "murmuration" against his integrity in his own time, more good-naturedly, and perhaps more reasonably, says, "The vague objection vulgarly inferred that the amassing of his wealth could not well be done in justice, might be answered to the full in this, that his Patrimony considered, and the gainfulness of the places he passed through, together with the great fortunes of his own and his sons' intermarriages, all concurring and falling into a frugal family,-might soon wipe away all imputations of the most malignant, and persuade even detraction itself to rest in peace, and, as we may charitably believe, in glory, as his posterity surviving remains in his house and fortunes."

2

He was buried in the church of Crome d'Abitot, where a suitable monument, recording his age, family, and offices, was erected to his memory.

He was twice married: first, to Sarah, daughter of Edward Sebright, Esq., of Besford, in the county of Worcester, by whom he had a daughter, and a son who succeeded to his title and estates; and, secondly, to Elizabeth, daughter of John Aldersey, Esq., of Spenstow, in the county of Chester, by whom he had several sons

1

Lloyd.

2 Sloane MS. Brit. Mus.

and daughters. His grandson, Thomas, the fifth Baron, his last male descendant, was advanced in the peerage by King William to be Earl of Coventry and Viscount Deerhurst, with a special limitation on failure of his own issue to that of Walter, the third son of the Judge, and brother of the Lord Keeper. This remainder came into operation in the year 1719, by the death of the fourth Earl without issue, and under it the honors of the family are now enjoyed.'

CHAPTER LXIII.

LIFE OF LORD KEEPER FINCH FROM HIS BIRTH TILL THE MEETING OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT.

WE

E now come to one of the worst characters in English history. It is rather fortunate for his memory that he has not had his full share of notoriety with posterity. He was universally execrated in his own times, and ought now to be placed in the same category with Jeffreys and Scroggs. He raised himself to eminence in bad times by assisting to upset law and liberty, and when on the bench he prostituted, in the most shameless manner, his judicial duties for his private ends. It is some consolation to think that, if he did not meet the fate he deserved, he did not escape unpunished.

Although, previous to the death of Lord Keeper Coventry, it had been resolved to submit to the necessity of once more calling a parliament, the King and his advisers were by no means fully aware of the state of the public mind, or of the difficulties which surrounded them. Instead of making concessions, and trying to gain over opponents, they were resolved still to stretch the prerogative, and if they could not obtain a supply of money by dictating to the House of Commons, to throw aside all profession of respect for the constitution, and to govern by open force. The most violent and unscrupulous supporter of arbitrary power that could be found in the profession of the law was therefore to be chosen as Lord Keeper, and there was no hesitation in fixing on Sir John 1 Grandeur of the Law, p. 49.

Finch, Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, although he was, in reality, "a man exceedingly obnoxious to the people upon the business of ship-money, and not of reputation and authority enough to advance the King's service."1

He disgraced a family of considerable antiquity, which, in the seventeenth century, rose to great distinction by producing several very eminent lawyers. They were said to be descended from Sir Henry Fitzherbert, Chamberlain to King Henry I., and in the time of Edward I. to have assumed their present surname from the acquisition of the manor of Finch's, in Kent. Their possessions were enlarged by the marriage of Sir Thomas Finch with the heiress of Sir Thomas Moyle, Chancellor of the Court of Augmentations in the reign of Henry VIII. The eldest son of this marriage was Sir Moyle Finch, the ancestor of the Earls of Winchelsea and Nottingham. The second son, Sir Henry Finch, from whom sprang the subject of this memoir, was twice representative in parliament for the city of Canterbury, in the reign of Elizabeth, and the first great lawyer of the family. He was autumn reader of Gray's Inn in 1603, took the coif in 1614, and was made King's Sergeant in 1616. He wrote the treatise called "Finch's Law," which, till the production of Blackstone's Commentaries, was the chief elementary textbook for law students. From his preface, he seems to have had himself a very high opinion of his own performance, and to have thought it of infinitely greater importance than the NOVUM ORGANUM: "Inter innumeros tam augustæ disciplinæ alumnos, surrexit adhuc nemo, qui in eo elaboravit ut rerum præstantiam methodi præstantia consequatur. Aut ego vehementer fallor, aut superavi rei vix credendæ difficultatem maximam; syrtesque et scopulos, Scyllam et Charybdin præternavigavi."

John, his son, whom we have now to take in hand, was born on the 17th of September, 1584, and was of a very different character, being, from his early years, noted for idleness, though he showed a talent for turning the industry of other boys to his own advantage.

He was entered of Gray's Inn, and there professed to study the law, but instead of reading his father's blackletter treatise, or attending "moots and readings," he

1 Clarendon,

spent his time in dicing and roistering. When called to the bar, he had little acquired learning of any sort,-no clients, and many debts. He saw that he had no chance to get forward in the regular routine of his profession, and that he was in considerable danger of being sent to prison by his creditors; but his parts were lively, his manners were agreeable, he had powerful friends at Court, and he determined to make his fortune by politics. He avoided the degree of the coif, as he knew he could make no figure in the Court of Common Pleas, among the drowsy, long-winded Sergeants, but he contrived to be employed occasionally in libel cases, in the Star Chamber. What he looked forward to with most eagerness was the meeting of a parliament; a chance which an aspiring lawyer, in those days, might for years expect in vain. "Having led a free life in a restrained fortune, and having set up upon the stock of a good wit and natural parts, without the superstructure of much knowledge in the profession by which he was to grow, he was willing to use those weapons in which he had most skill."

He was disappointed in not being returned to Charles's first parliament, but he took his seat as a burgess in that which met in February, 1626. He was one of the lawyers then accused of "taking retainers on both sides," and "of waiting to see which way the cat jumped." The popular party had been gaining strength every new parliament since the middle of the reign of Elizabeth, and now had a complete ascendancy in the House of Commons, but they had no preferment to bestow, and John Finch would have been much better pleased with the appointment of Attorney to the Court of Wards than with the reputation of a flaming patriot. An expectation prevailed, which was not disappointed, that some of the most formidable leaders, who gave least open offense to the Court, would be offered employment.

Under the pretense of great moderation, the new member contrived to get himself appointed Chairman of the Committee, to whom was referred the very important question, "whether Sir Edward Coke, late Chief Justice of the King's Bench, having been appointed, against his will, Sheriff of Buckinghamshire before the general election, was disqualified to sit in the House of Commons for

1 Clarendon.

another county?" The Committee very much deferred to Finch as a gentleman of the long robe, who, among lay gents, could talk very glibly of law, and appointed him to draw up the report, "wherein many cases were cited, pro et contra, as to the nature of a High Sheriff for one county being elected knight of the shire for another; on all which cases, he said, the Committee would give no opinion, but desired that a search might be made amongst the records for more precedents of the like nature.' A dissolution took place before the point was decided. In the meantime, Coke was not allowed to sit, and the Court was relieved from his invectives, which proved so formidable in the next parliament, when the " Petition of Right" was passed; but Finch, to show his impartiality, the day before the dissolution, moved a resolution, which was carried, "that Sir Edward Coke, standing de facto returned a member of that House, should have privilege against a suit in Chancery commenced against him by the Lady Clare."

It must have required considerable ingenuity to mystify so clear a point as that though a Sheriff could not return himself as member for his own county, the Crown could not, at pleasure, disqualify him for being returned for another county, or for a borough, over which he had no official control; but Finch had the good luck, from his conduct of this case, to establish the reputation of a constitutional lawyer, and to be courted, if not confided in, by both parties.

In consequence of this, at the meeting of Charles's third parliament, in March, 1628, he was actually elected Speaker of the House of Commons. He had now his foot in the stirrup, and he resolved to push forward, appalled by no obstacle, Though elected by the voice of the popular party, he instantaneously deserted them, and made himself the mere tool of the Court. His conduct as Speaker might have been anticipated from the slavish and fulsome language he held as soon as his formal disqualifying of himself had been overruled, and his appointment had been confirmed by the King:

It is now no longer good time nor good manners to dispute with my Lord the King; but with all joy and alacrity of heart, humbly and thankfully to meet so great