96 James Ley, Earl of Marlborough. 
standing as a culprit before him, as his presence was dispensed with 
on account of serious illness. The sentence was a fine of £40,000, 
and imprisonment during the King’s pleasure. He was, moreover, 
pronounced incapable of ever again holding office or voting in the 
House of Lords. 
Before the sentence was pronounced the great seal had been 
sequestered and a new commission awarded to the Lord Chief 
Justice “to execute the place of the Chancellor or Lord Keeper.” 
So says the author of the State Trials, but Lord Campbell says that 
when the King received the great seal, three commissions were 
ordered to be sealed with it in his presence, one to Sir Julius Cesar, 
Master of the Rolls, and certain common law judges, to hear causes 
in the Court of Chancery; another to Sir James Ley, to preside as 
Speaker in the House of Lords; and a third to Viscount Mandeville, 
the Lord Treasurer, the Duke of Lennox, and the Ear! of Arundell, 
to keep the great seal, and to affix it to all writs and letters requiring 
to be sealed. We can scarcely over-estimate the importance of 
these transactions, in which the Lord Chief Justice involuntarily 
took the foremost part, as they purged the judicial bench for ever 
after from all suspicion of corruption, and rendered it impossible for 
a judge to take a bribe. If Sir James Ley’s hands had not been, 
as Milton says, “ unstained with gold or fee,’ he could scarcely have 
been placed in such a position as he was. 
And now came the question as to the person to whom the great 
seal, now temporarily in commission, should be entrusted. There 
was Sir Edward Coke, the greatest lawyer of the day ; but Sir James 
Ley had so admirably performed the duties of Speaker of the House of 
Lords, that all eyes were turned on him; and there was also Hobert, 
Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, who was also by his reputation 
duly qualified to be Chancellor; but all expectations were disappointed 
when, through the interest of the Duke of Buckingham, it was 
offered to Williams, Dean of Westminster, soon to be Bishop of 
Lincoln, and by him accepted; and this was the last time that a 
clergyman has been Lord Chancellor. 
Sir James Ley was, however, rewarded for his integrity, and 
compensated for his disappointment, when in 1624 he was made 
