acted honourably and conscientiously, he by no means added to his permanent fame. I cannot help wishing, indeed, that like HOLT he had died a commoner. The coronet placed on his brow might raise his consequence with the vulgar, but in the eyes of those whose opinion was worth regarding he was a much greater man when seated on his tribunal, with conscious mastery of all that belonged to his high office, he distributed justice to his admiring fellow-subjects, than when he sought to sway a legislative assembly with which he was wholly unacquainted, and to which he was wholly unsuited.

His degra

CHAPTER LIV.

CONCLUSION OF THE LIFE OF LORD TENTERDEN.

dation to the peerage.

THE supposed elevation of the Chief Justice at this time, which exposed him to some censure, was no fault of his. He used confidentially to express surprise that his friend and patron Lord Chancellor Eldon, whose advice would have been implicitly followed by the Prime Minister and the King, had not raised him to the peerage when he became Chief Justice, but had actually resigned the Great Seal without making him such an offer. He concluded that at any rate Sir Charles Abbott ought to have had the refusal of the honour in 1824, when Sir Robert Giffard was created a Baron, having filled only the inferior offices of Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and Master of the Rolls. But he made no application or remonstrance by reason of what might have been considered a slight, and I believe that he would have been perfectly contented to remain Sir Charles Abbott, Knight, for the rest of his days. Lord Eldon's conduct is very inexplicable in withholding a peerage from one who from his high office had a fair claim to it, of whom he could have felt no jealousy, who had been many years his devil and dependent, and with whom his word in the House of Lords would have been law. Can we suppose that he was actuated by a disinterested study of Abbott's real good? *

* Since writing the statement in the text respecting Abbott's peerage, I have been favoured with a perusal of his DIARY from which I make the following extract, showing that he had become

more desirous of having his blood ennobled than could have been suspected from his usual moderation and good sense, and from the sentiments which he himself had expressed in his letter to

However, he was most unexpectedly made a peer on the disgrace of that patron in all whose notions respecting State and Church he fully coincided, by a Prime Minister whom he had never seen, and whose principles, although they were not altogether Whiggish, he considered dangerously latitudinarian.

Mr. Canning, the warm friend of religious toleration, having agreed to form a balanced Cabinet with an anti-Catholic Lord Chancellor, Sir John Copley, still in dreadful apprehension of the Pope, although on the verge of a sudden conversion to Catholic emancipation, had agreed to take the Great Seal, and was to be raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Lyndhurst. Moreover Plunket, upon a slight show of opposition from the bar, having renounced the office of Master of the Rolls in England, and accepted the office of Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in Ireland, was likewise to be made

Sir Egerton Brydges [ante, p. 290]:

"April 7th, 1824.-Lord Giffard took his seat in the House of Lords on the first day of the Session, and within a day or two afterwards a patent issued, appointing him to act as Speaker of the House of Lords in the absence of the Lord Chancellor. A few days afterwards, the Lord Chancellor, with some hesitation and appearance of difficulty in introducing the subject, asked me what my feelings had been on Lord G.'s promotion to the peerage? I told him I had felt very little as it regarded myself, but much as it regarded my office, being higher than Lord G.'s. He asked whether I should think it right to move in the matter myself or to leave it to him? I told him I certainly should not think it right to move it in myself, All that I could collect farther was that some of the Ministers had thought it not necessary to propose a peerage to me on the present occasion, because it was conferred on Lord G. for the special purpose of enabling him to sit in the House of Lords to hear appeals. I remarked hat though I could not

give my eldest son a fortune by any means suitable to the dignity, yet, under present circumstances, I should hardly think myself at liberty to refuse the honour, and should leave my son to make such advantage as he could of it, being sure he would never disgrace it by his conduct."

In a letter to the second Lord Kenyon, Lord Eldon professes to explain his sincere views respecting Abbott's peerage: "I agree with you that, generally speaking, the Chief Justice of the King's Bench should be a peer, even if there had been no usage on the subject. Now, as to Abbott, his practice has been behind the bar. He never had any office -I think not a silk gown. He enters therefore on the office in very moderate circumstances, with a considerable family. His health is tender, and his eyesight not in a very safe state. Upon the whole, his own difficulty about taking the office was the apprehension that peerage was to go with it. This determination appears to me to have been quite right."-Lives of Chancellors, vol. vii. p. 338, 3rd. ed.

a British Peer by the family name, which his eloquence had rendered illustrious. It was thereupon suggested to the new premier by Scarlett, long his intimate private friend, and now his Attorney-General elect, that it would be a graceful act in public estimation, and would throw some obloquy on Lord Eldon, whom they both heartily hated and who heartily hated them both, if a peerage were given to Lord Eldon's neglected protégé, the Chief Justice of England. Accordingly Mr. Canning, in a letter to him, dated 19th April, 1827, after an introduction of polite eulogy, said-" As in the approaching law promotions more than one peerage will be conferred by his Majesty, it has occurred to Mr. Canning as due to Lord Chief Justice Abbott, to his Lordship's eminent services and to the dignity of the Court over which he presides, that an opportunity should be offered to the Lord Chief Justice to express his willingness (if he entertains it) to accept a similar honour, which his Majesty is ready graciously to bestow upon him." The answer expressed humble and grateful acquiescence, upon which immediately came a notice from the Home Office that the inchoate peer should notify his choice of a title, and that a sum of money, about 8001., should be deposited for the fees of the patent. He was afraid of jests if he should become "Lord Abbott," and he thought of the title of HENDON, where he had a villa; but he was advised to have something more sounding, and TENTERDEN being familiar to him as a Kentish man, from the well-known connection between the first appearance of its steeple and of the Goodwin Sands, the Gazette announced "that his Majesty had ordered letters patent April 30. to pass the Great Seal, to create Sir Charles Abbott, Knight, a Baron of the United Kingdom, by the name, style, and title of Lord Tenterden, of Hendon, in the county of Middlesex."

Ceremony

seat in the

Lords.

On the 2nd of May following there was a grand ovation in Westminster Hall, to do honour to the solemnity of his taking his seat in the of his House of Lords. Sir James Scarlett, the taking his Attorney-General, mustered an immense House of congregation of barristers, and we followed the new peer, as yet only in his judicial robes, from the Court of King's Bench to the room of the Earl Marshal. There he was habited in his peer's robes, and marching between Lord Bexley and Lord Kenyon, he entered the House, and presented his patent and writ to the Lord Chancellor. We all stood under the bar, and the space being too small for us, such a serried conglomeration of wigs never was seen before or since. We could hear nothing of the patent, the writ, or the oaths which were read, but we witnessed the procession through the House, headed by the Earl Marshal, and our Chief being seated by Garter King at Arms on the Barons' bench, we joyfully took our departure. Next morning in Court the new peer threw down the following note, which was handed through all the rows till it reached the junior of our body :

"DEAR MR. ATTORNEY,

:

"I was indeed gratified yesterday by the flattering mark of attention which I received from the Bar. Assure them that it went to my heart.

"Ever most faithfully yours,

"TENTERDEN."

He continued to attend the House for some time very diligently, much pleased with his new honours, and afterwards as often as he entered it he wore his judicial costume, being the last Chief Justice who ever did so, when not officiating as Speaker. There was franking in those days, and he was pleased to say to me that "he considered this privilege to be conferred upon him for the benefit of the profession." He really was tickled