CHAPTER IX.
"CICERO" UPON HIS TRIAL.
A complete history of the loves of lawyers would notice many scandalous intrigues and disreputable alliances, and would comprise a good deal of literature for which the student would vainly look in the works of our best authors. From the days of Wolsey, whose amours were notorious, and whose illegitimate son became Dean of Wells, down to the present time of brighter though not unimpeachable morality, the domestic lives of our eminent judges and advocates have too frequently invited satire and justified regret. In the eighteenth century judges, without any loss of caste or popular regard, openly maintained establishments that in these more decorous and actually better days would cover their keepers with obloquy. Attention could be directed to more than one legal family in which the descent must be traced through a succession of illegitimate births. Not only did eminent lawyers live openly with women who were not their wives, and with children whom the law declined to recognize as their offspring; but these women and children moved in good society, apparently indifferent to shame that brought upon them but few inconveniences. In Great Ormond Street, where a mistress and several illegitimate children formed his family circle, Lord Thurlow was visited by bishops and deans; and it is said that in 1806, when Sir James Mansfield, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, was invited to the woolsack and the peerage, he was induced to decline the offer more by consideration for his illegitimate children than by fears for the stability of the new administration.
Speaking of Lord Thurlow's undisguised intercourse with Mrs. Hervey, Lord Campbell says, "When I first knew the profession, it would not have been endured that any one in a judicial situation should have had such a domestic establishment as Thurlow's; but a majority of judges had married their mistresses. The understanding then was that a man elevated to the bench, if he had a mistress, must either marry her or put her away. For many years there has been no necessity for such an alternative." Either Lord Campbell had not the keen appetite for professional gossip, with which he is ordinarily credited, or his conscience must have pricked him when he wrote, "For many years there has been no necessity for such an alternative." To show how far his lordship erred through want of information or defect of candor is not the duty of this page; but without making any statement that can wound private feeling, the present writer may observe that 'the understanding,' to which Lord Campbell draws attention, has affected the fortune of ladies within the present generation.
That the bright and high-minded Somers was the debauchee that Mrs. Manley and Mr. Cooksey would have us believe him is incredible. It is doubtful if Mackey in his 'Sketch of Leading Characters at the English Court' had sufficient reasons for clouding his sunny picture of the statesman with the assertion that he was "something of a libertine." But there are occasions when prudence counsels us to pay attention to slander.
Having raised himself to the office of Solicitor General, Somers, like Francis Bacon, found an alderman's daughter to his liking; and having formed a sincere attachment for her, he made his wishes known to her father. Miss Anne Bawdon's father was a wealthy merchant, styled Sir John Bawdon—a man proud of his civic station and riches, and thinking lightly of lawyers and law. When Somers stated his property and projects, the rental of his small landed estate and the buoyancy of his professional income, the opulent knight by no means approved the prospect offered to his child. The lawyer might die in the course of twelve months; in which case the Worcestershire estate would be still a small estate, and the professional income would cease. In twelve mouths Mr. Solicitor might be proved a scoundrel, for at heart all lawyers were arrant rogues; in which case matters would be still worse. Having regarded the question from these two points of view, Sir John Bawdon gave Somers his dismissal and married Miss Anne to a rich Turkey merchant. Three years later, when Somers had risen to the woolsack, and it was clear that the rich Turkey merchant would never be anything grander than a rich Turkey merchant, Sir John saw that he had made a serious blunder, for which his child certainly could not thank him. A goodly list might be made of cases where papas have erred and repented in Sir John Bawdon's fashion. Sir John Lawrence would have made his daughter a Lord Keeper's lady and a peeress, if he and his broker had dealt more liberally with Francis North. Had 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.
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