By W. W. Ravenhill, Esq. 159 
four years of the Restoration in a foreign land, at the hands of a 
Cavalier, we will hope not Royalist, assassin. We look back on 
him in the proceedings of this circuit, as chiefly giving weight to 
_ the commission from the magnitude of his office. 
A very different man was the Lord Chief Justice Rolle,! one of 
the brightest characters of that time. He was born in Devonshire 
about the year 1589. Exeter College, Oxford, the Inner Temple, 
made him “zon sine labore” a highly educated gentleman and lawyer. 
‘ Justum et tenacem propositi virum.””—Hor. 
We see his industry and ability to-day, in his well-known legal 
works (the Abridgement and Reports). We see his integrity in the 
story of his blameless life. He was a member of the last parliament 
of King James the First, and of the first three of King Charles, re- 
presenting successively Kellington and Truro in the popular interest. 
So much was he respected by the House of Commons, that in the 
negotiations betwixt the King and themselves, February Ist, 1643, 
he was recommended to the King for a puisne Judgeship. The 
negotiations fell through, but the Parliament themselves appointed 
him to that office in 1645. Three years later he was promoted to 
the rank of Chief Justice. Thinking the powers that then were, 
the only possible ones for his distracted country, he, with five other 
judges, consented to act under them, “provided that the fundamental 
_ laws of the kingdom should not be abolished.” In 1650 he and Mr. 
Baron Nicholas went the western circuit, and won the thanks of 
_ Parliament for their services. In their charges to the various juries 
‘they had advised “settlement under that present government.” 
Pea eS 
1The Lord Chief Justice Rolle, whilst at Salisbury very discreetly demanded 
his horses from Captain Crook. The horses were amongst the spoils of South 
Molton, having been borrowed thither by the Cavaliers, Crook politely declined, 
saying the horses belonged to his soldiers. The Chief Justice then pressed 
Serjeant Glynn and the Attorney General to move the Protector, saying ‘the could 
not go circuit without them.” They wrote to Thurloe with no love to the Chief, 
and apparently he got his horses, for I find the following entry in the Draf$ 
“Order Book of the Council of State:— (Domestic State Papers. Interregnum.) 
“May 4th, Friday 1655. (His Highness present.) Order for payment of three score and eighteen 
pounds to the soldiers who recovered the horses of L.C.J. Rolles and Mr. Baron Nicholas seized by 
_ the rebells at Salisbury as satisfaction to the said soldiers—to be ‘paid to Robert Roberts out of 
Counsells contingent expenses,’’ 
