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Honoratissimi viri Roberti Raymond,
Baronis de Abbot's Langley;

Cujus meritis raro examplo respondit Fortuna;
honesto enim loco natus,

literisque humanioribus primâ ætate excultus,
universam juris scientiam, cui sese addixerat,
tantâ ingenii facilitate complexus est,
ut inter præcipuos causarum patronos
brevi tempore haberetur;

in quo munere exequendo,
cum pari fide solertiâ atque gravitate
indies magis magisque inclaruisset,
ad diversos juris honores gradatim ascendit;
donec augustissimorum principum Georgii I. et II. jussu
Capitalis Angile Justiciarius constitutus,
mox, ut uberiorem virtutis suæ frunetum caperet,
in amplissimum procerum ordinem
Cooptatus est."

He left behind him one son, by his wife, who was a daughter of Sir Edward Northey, Attorney General to Charles II.

The second Lord Raymond was not very distinguished, and I do not find him noticed except in the proceedings against Astley and Cave for printing an account of Lord Lovat's trial-when he was chairman of the committee to whom the matter was referred, and moved their commitment. He was married to a daughter of Lord Viscount Blundell, of the kingdom of Ireland; but, dying without issue, in the year 1756, the title became extinct.'

The Chief Justice's REPORTS' are the great glory of the family, and have obtained his introduction into Horace Walpole's Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors, who describes him as one of those many eminent men who have risen to the peerage from the profession of the law.""

The warmest eulogium pronounced upon Lord Raymond is in the dedication to him of the Reports of

It is a curious fact that Lord Kenyon is the first ennobled Chief Justice of the King's Bench of whom there is a descendant now a member of the House of Lords.

These reports were first printed in 1743, and a second edition came out in 1745. The last edition, by Mr. Justice Bayley, with valuable notes, appeared in 1790. From the multiplicity of modern Reports, the old ones will probably never be reprinted.

Works, vol 1 p. 245.

Chief Baron Comyns. The eulogist, after describing the splendor of his reputation as supreme magistrate of the common law, adds

"The difficulty of succeeding a person so truly eminent as your Lordship's noble and learned predecessor was toc apparent to all the world; but I may venture to add, with as much truth, that his Majesty (whose great regard and paternal affection for his subjects can appear in nothing more than so worthily filling the seats of justice) never gratified them in a more sensible manner than when he conferred that honor on your Lordship; for, however excellent great abilities and profound science are in themselves, however necessary to persons intrusted with the public sword of justice, they only become truly valuable to the rest of mankind when governed and directed by the rules of honor, virtue, and integrity.""

On the death of Lord Raymond, the office of Chief Justice of the King's Bench remained vacant for several months. About the same time, Lord King, from severe indisposition, was obliged to resign the great seal, and the arrangements which, in consequence, became necessary, caused great perplexity. At last it was settled that Mr. Talbot, the Solicitor General, should be Lord Chancellor; and, in Michaelmas Term, Sir PHILIP YORKE, the Attorney, took his seat as Chief Justice of the King's Bench.

I ought now to describe his wonderful course, from the time when being an attorney's gratis clerk he was sent to buy cabbages at the greengrocer's and oysters at the fishmonger's for an imperious mistress, till he became Lord High Chancellor, an earl, and the renowned framer of our equitable code; but I have already, to the best of my ability, narrated his adventures, and drawn his character; and, upon reflection, I see no reason to retract or to qualify any of the praise or of the censure which I had ventured to mete out to him."

1 See Chalmers's Biographical Dictionary, "Lord Raymond;" Kent's Commentaries, 488.

Lives of the Chancellors, vol. v. ch. cxxix.-cxxxvii. Since the first edition of my book, a Life of Lord Hardwicke, by Mr. Harris, has been published, in which complaint is made of me as often as I have ventured to

It was thought that he would end his days as a common law judge, like Hale, Holt, and many of his most illustrious predecessors; but, after he had presided in the King's Bench little more than two years, Lord Talbot died suddenly, while still a young man; and Lord Hardwicke, being transferred to the woolsack, fulfilled his illustrious destiny.

Much difficulty was experienced in fixing upon a successor to him in the Court of King's Bench. From the earliest times, in each of the superior common law courts, a CHIEF had been constituted, with puisnies under him; for, with a perfect equality of rank among all the judges, a constant struggle would be carried on among them for ascendency, the bar could not be duly kept in order, and the business would be thrown into confusion. But the full advantage of this arrangement can only be obtained when the Chief is superior to his brethren in talents and reputation. The condition of the court is very unseemly and inconvenient when the collar of S.S. is worn by one who feels that he does not deserve it, or who is considered by others inferior in authority to those who sit, undecorated, by his side.

Lord Hardwicke, during the chancellorship of Lord Talbot, having been eclipsed in the House of Lords by the superior brilliance of that extraordinary man, was supposed to be anxious to avoid the annoyance of having another law lord as a rival. Some applied to him the magniloquent comparison that he would

"Bear, like the Turk, no brother near his throne;"

and others in homely but expressive language, said "he was resolved to rule the roast." He therefore cast his mantle on SIR WILLIAM LEE, who had been one of his puisnies, who was of decent character and respectable qualifications, who had no pretensions to a peerage, and who could never in any way be formidable to a chancel lor. Although this selection was suspected to proceed doubt the propriety of anything that our hero ever did, said, wrote, o thought. But the "faultless monster" whom this author describes bears a very partial resemblance to Lord Hardwicke.

Lond. Mag. 1737. He actually did rule the roast more than twenty years, sitting during all that time the only law lord in the House of Peers

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fro selfish motives, there is some doubt whether, from the peculiar state of the bar at the time, a better could have been made: for there were serious objections to Willies, the Attorney General, on account of his profligate private life; and Ryder, the Solicitor General, had as yet very little weight or legal reputation. The honors of the profession may be considered a lottery; or if they are supposed to be played for,-in the game there is more of luck than of skill. At times, we see a superfluity of men well qualified for high legal offices, while years roll on without a vacancy. At times, vacancies inopportunely arise when they cannot be reputably filed up. Sir William Lee had never dreamed of being more than a puisne, till the hour when it was announced to him that he was CHIEF JUSTICE OF ENGLAND.

He and his brother Sir George, like the two Scotts, Lord Eldon and Stowell, had the rare felicity of presiding at the same time over the highest common law and civil law courts in this country; for while Sir William Lee was Chief Justice of England, Sir George Lee presided as Dean of the Arches and Judge of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. They were the sons of Sir Thomas Lee, of Hartwell, in the county of Bucks, Bart.

William, the younger, who was born in the year of the Revolution (1688), used often to say that "as he came in with King William, he was bound to be a good Whig." He might have been called "Singlejoke Lee," for although highly honorable and respectable, he was the dullest of the dull throughout the whole course of • his life; and this oft-repeated pleasantry, with which he was in the habit of introducing his opinion on any controverted question of politics, was the only one which he was ever known to attempt or relish.' Great astonishment was expressed by most of those who knew him at college when it was announced that he was destined for the profession of the law, and predictions were uttered. that he would starve in it. But an old gentleman who had been his tutor, and who knew what was in him, said, "I shall not-but you who are young may-live to see him Chief Justice of England, for to plodding and 1 According to this instance, Pope's line ought to have been

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For gentle dullness ever loves ONE joke."

perseverance nothing is impossible." The dull and despised William Lee did plod, did persevere, and did become Chief Justice of England.

In preparing for the bar, he mainly devoted himself to special pleading, in which he took great delight. He never even had attempted to cross the "Ass's Bridge," so that he could not tell whether this would have proved an insuperable obstacle to his mathematical progress; and, though well drilled in the rules of prosody, he utterly and for ever renounced classics as soon as he had taken his bachelor's degree at Oxford. Of modern literature he had not the slightest tincture. He felt no regret that he had lost an opportunity of being presented to Dryden. Instead of writing a paper in the SPECTATOR, like his contemporary and fellow lawstudent, Mr. Philip Yorke, he declared that he had never got further than the second number, where he was shocked "by the description of the idle Templar, who read Aristotle and Longinus, who knew the argument of each of the orations of Demosthenes and Tully, but not one case in the reports of our own courts, and whose hour of business was the time of the play, when, crossing Russell Court and having his periwig powdered at the barber's, he took his place in the pit of Drury Lane Theatre, exciting the ambition of the actors to please him." It cost Lee no effort of self-denial to abjure such unprofitable pursuits. As it were in the natural gratification of a natural instinct, he took to the Liber Placitandi; and, to fix it in his memory, he copied it over three times with his own hand. He luxuriated likewise in Coke's Entries; and in pursuing Saunders's Reports he loved more to dwell upon the declarations, pleas, and replications, as there set out at full length, than the subsequent epigrammatic statements of the arguments and the decision which have gained to the author the title of "the Terence of Reporters." The fiction of "giving color," which had driven some very scrupulous pleaders from the bar, particularly charmed him; and, considering the rules of law to be founded either on the eternal fitness of things or on the revealed will of God, (a question on which, it appears in his Diary, he was accustomed to dispute,) there was no dexterity sanctioned

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