There were some difficulties in disposing of the Great Seal. The King at first wished to confide it to Nottingham, whose father had borne it during several years with high reputation. 21 Nottingham, however, declined the trust; and it was offered to Halifax, but was again declined. Both these Lords doubtless felt that it was a trust which they could not discharge with honour to themselves or with advantage to the public. In old times, indeed, the Seal had been generally held by persons who were not lawyers. Even in the seventeenth century it had been confided to two eminent men, who had never studied at any Inn of Court. Dean Williams had been Lord Keeper to James the First. Shaftesbury had been Lord Chancellor to Charles the Second. But such appointments could no longer be made without serious inconvenience. Equity had been gradually shaping itself into a refined science, which no human faculties could master without long and intense application. Even Shaftesbury, vigorous as was his intellect, had painfully felt his want of technical knowledge; 22 and, during the fifteen years which had elapsed since Shaftesbury had resigned the Seal, technical knowledge had constantly been becoming more and more necessary to his successors. Neither Nottingham therefore, though he had a stock of legal learning such as is rarely found in any person who has not received a legal education, nor Halifax, though, in the judicial sittings of the House of Lords, the quickness of his apprehension and the subtlety of his reasoning had often astonished the bar, ventured to accept the highest office which an English layman can fill. After some delay the Seal was confided to a commission of eminent lawyers, with Maynard at their head. 23
The choice of judges did honour to the new government. Every Privy Councillor was directed to bring a list. The lists were compared; and twelve men of conspicuous merit were selected. 24 The professional attainments and Whig principles of Pollexfen gave him pretensions to the highest place. But it was remembered that he had held briefs for the Crown, in the Western counties, at the assizes which followed the battle of Sedgemoor. It seems indeed from the reports of the trials that he did as little as he could do if he held the briefs at all, and that he left to the Judges the business of browbeating witnesses and prisoners. Nevertheless his name was inseparably associated in the public mind with the Bloody Circuit. He, therefore, could not with propriety be put at the head of the first criminal court in the realm. 25 After acting during a few weeks as Attorney General, he was made Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. Sir John Holt, a young man, but distinguished by learning, integrity, and courage, became Chief Justice of the King's Bench. Sir Robert Atkyns, an eminent lawyer, who had passed some years in rural retirement, but whose reputation was still great in Westminster Hall, was appointed Chief Baron. Powell, who had been disgraced on account of his honest declaration in favour of the Bishops, again took his seat among the judges. Treby succeeded Pollexfen as Attorney General; and Somers was made Solicitor. 26
Two of the chief places in the Royal household were filled by two English noblemen eminently qualified to adorn a court. The high spirited and accomplished Devonshire was named Lord Steward. No man had done more or risked more for England during the crisis of her fate. In retrieving her liberties he had retrieved also the fortunes of his own house. His bond for thirty thousand pounds was found among the papers which James had left at Whitehall, and was cancelled by William. 27
Dorset became Lord Chamberlain, and employed the influence and patronage annexed to his functions, as he had long employed his private means, in encouraging genius and in alleviating misfortune. One of the first acts which he was under the necessity of performing must have been painful to a man of so generous a nature, and of so keen a relish for whatever was excellent in arts and letters. Dryden could no longer remain Poet Laureate. The public would not have borne to see any Papist among the servants of their Majesties; and Dryden was not only a Papist, but an apostate. He had moreover aggravated the guilt of his apostasy by calumniating and ridiculing the Church which he had deserted. He had, it was facetiously said, treated her as the Pagan persecutors of old treated her children. He had dressed her up in the skin of a wild beast, and then baited her for the public amusement. 28 He was removed; but he received from the private bounty of the magnificent Chamberlain a pension equal to the salary which had been withdrawn. The deposed Laureate, however, as poor of spirit as rich in intellectual gifts, continued to complain piteously, year after year, of the losses which he had not suffered, till at length his wailings drew forth expressions of well merited contempt from brave and honest Jacobites, who had sacrificed every thing to their principles without deigning to utter one word of deprecation or lamentation. 29
In the Royal household were placed some of those Dutch nobles who stood highest in the favour of the King. Bentinck had the great office of Groom of the Stole, with a salary of five thousand pounds a year. Zulestein took charge of the robes. The Master of the Horse was Auverquerque, a gallant soldier, who united the blood of Nassau to the blood of Horn, and who wore with just pride a costly sword presented to him by the States General in acknowledgment of the courage with which he had, on the bloody day of Saint Dennis, saved the life of William.
The place of Vice Chamberlain to the Queen was given to a man who had just become conspicuous in public life, and whose name will frequently recur in the history of this reign. John Howe, or, as he was more commonly called, Jack Howe, had been sent up to the Convention by the borough of Cirencester. His appearance was that of a man whose body was worn by the constant workings of a restless and acrid mind. He was tall, lean, pale, with a haggard eager look, expressive at once of flightiness and of shrewdness. He had been known, during several years, as a small poet; and some of the most savage lampoons which were handed about the coffeehouses were imputed to him. But it was in the House of Commons that both his parts and his illnature were most signally displayed. Before he had been a member three weeks, his volubility, his asperity, and his pertinacity had made him conspicuous. Quickness, energy, and audacity, united, soon raised him to the rank of a privileged man. His enemies, and he had many enemies, said that he consulted his personal safety even in his most petulant moods, and that he treated soldiers with a civility which he never showed to ladies or to Bishops. But no man had in larger measure that evil courage which braves and even courts disgust and hatred. No decencies restrained him: his spite was implacable: his skill in finding out the vulnerable parts of strong minds was consummate. All his great contemporaries felt his sting in their turns. Once it inflicted a wound which deranged even the stern composure of William, and constrained him to utter a wish that he were a private gentleman, and could invite Mr. Howe to a short interview behind Montague House. As yet, however, Howe was reckoned among the most strenuous supporters of the new government, and directed all his sarcasms and invectives against the malcontents. 30
The subordinate places in every public office were divided between the two parties: but the Whigs had the larger share. Some persons, indeed, who did little honour to the Whig name, were largely recompensed for services which no good man would have performed. Wildman was made Postmaster General. A lucrative sinecure in the Excise was bestowed on Ferguson. The duties of the Solicitor of the Treasury were both very important and very invidious. It was the business of that officer to conduct political prosecutions, to collect the evidence, to instruct the counsel for the Crown, to see that the prisoners were not liberated on insufficient bail, to see that the juries were not composed of persons hostile to the government. In the days of Charles and James, the Solicitors of the Treasury had been with too much reason accused of employing all the vilest artifices of chicanery against men obnoxious to the Court. The new government ought to have made a choice which was above all suspicion. Unfortunately Mordaunt and Delamere pitched upon Aaron Smith, an acrimonious and unprincipled politician, who had been the legal adviser of Titus Oates in the days of the Popish Plot, and who had been deeply implicated