689 



SOMERS, JOHN, LORD. 



SOMERS, JOHN, LORD. 



690 



listened to him respectfully, he secretly continued to work out his 

 plan. [PIHISTRATUS.] When Pi3istratus had established himself as 

 tyrant of Athens, Solon, who was probably convinced that the mild 

 rule of one man was, after all, greatly preferable to the continuance of 

 party struggles, is said to have supported the tyrant with his advice. 

 At the same time, he withdrew from public life. How long he 

 survived the ascendancy of Pisistratus is not certain, but according 

 to the most probable account he died soon after, in the year B.C. 559. 

 (Clinton, 'Fast. Hell.,' ii. p. 301.) Respecting the constitution of 

 Solon, see Thirlwall, ' History of Greece,' vol. ii., and Orote, vol. iii, 



From the numerous works ascribed to Solon, it appears that ho 

 must have devoted all his leisure hours to the Muses ; and he ia said 

 to have clone so to the last moment of his life, for at the time when he 

 died, he is said to have been engaged in writing a poem upon the state of 

 Attica previous to tho Ogygian flood, and its wars with the inhabitants 

 of the island Atlantis, which was afterwards swallowed up by the 

 Atlantic Ocean. (Pint., 'Sol.,' 31, &c.) We are enabled to judge of 

 his poetical powers from the few fragments which are still extant. 

 They are distinguished by a graceful simplicity and great vigour. 

 They have been collected by Fortlage, in a work entitled ' Solonia 

 Carminum Fragmenta, Grsece, cum variis lectionibus notisque,' Lipsiac, 

 1776; and by N. Bach, in ' Solonis Carmiua quse super.sunt, emend, 

 atque anuot. instr.,' 8vo, Bonn., 1825. 



SOMEHS, JOHN, LORD SOMERS, was born at Worcester, where 

 his father, of the same name, was an attorney in good practice. His 

 mother was Catherine Ceaverne, of a good family in Shropshire. The 

 year of Somers'a birth is supposed to have been 1650; but some 

 accounts make it to have been 1652. We are not aware upon what 

 authority it has bsen sometimes stated, or assumed, that the day on 

 which he was born was the 4th of March. 



Somers's father, who was a zealous Commonwealth man, and had 

 commanded a troop under Cromwell in tho Civil War, intended to 

 bring up his son to his own profession. He managed the estates of the 

 Earl (afterwards Duke) of Shrewsbury, who often visited him, and in 

 that way had his attention early attracted to the promising qualities 

 of young Somers. He was also connected by electioneering services 

 with the member for tho city, Sir Francis Winnington, afterwards 

 solicitor-general, in whom his son found another useful patron when 

 he entered the profession of the law. He died in 1681, when the 

 subject of the present article inherited a small estate in Gloucester- 

 shire, which had been for some generations in possession of the 

 family. 



Young Somers however is said to have been educated at the expense 

 of his father's sister, who had married Mr. Blurton, an opulent 

 Worcester clothier, and who, having no children of her own, had 

 adopted him from his birth. At her house, and not at that of his 

 father, he resided throughout his boyhood. He appears to have been 

 placed first at the cathedral school of Worcester, and afterwards at a 

 private school at Walsall in Staffordshire ; and it has also been sup- 

 posed that after leaving school he may have spent a year or two in his 

 father's office. While at school he is said to have been remarkable 

 for his gravity of demeanour, as well as his studious habits. It is 

 stated, on the authority of his friend Winnington, that at this time 

 " by the exactness of his knowledge and behaviour, he discouraged 

 his father and all the young men that knew him ; they were afraid to 

 be in his company." This beginning would not lead us to expect the 

 robust heartiness of character by which Somers was distinguished in 

 after-life, nor the somewhat free or lax system of private morality 

 as to certain points, of which indeed we have not a hint in the common 

 formal biographies of the distinguished lawyer and statesman, but 

 which nevertheless he is very well known to have adopted and 

 practised. 



Winnington has the credit of having advised that he should be Kent 

 to the bar. With this view he entered himself of the Middle Temple, 

 and in 1674 was admitted a commoner of Trinity College, Oxford. 

 In 1676 he was called to the 'bar, but although he never took any 

 further degree than that of B.A., he continued to reside at the Uni- 

 versity for five or six years longer. To the latter part of this interval, 

 between the completion of his studies and his removal to London and 

 entrance upon the practice of his profession, belong the principal 

 literary performances which he sent to the press : 1, ' The Memor- 

 able Case of D^nzil Onslow, Esq., tried at the Assizes in Surrey, July 

 20, 1681, touching his election at Haslemere ia Surrey;' 2, 'A Brief 

 History of the Succession of the Crown of England, collected out of 

 Records and the most authentic Historians,' 1681 ; reprinted 1714; 3, 

 'A just and modest Vindication of the Proceedings of the two last Par- 

 liaments ' [ia which the question of the exclusion of the Duke of York 

 had been agitated], 1681 (a reply to the king's declaration), at first 

 penned, according to Burnet, by Algernon Sidney, but afterwards drawn 

 out anew by Somers, and finally corrected by Sir William Jones, who 

 had been attorney-general a few years before ; but, adds Burnet, "the 

 spirit of that side was now spent ; so that this, though the best writ 

 paper in all that time, yet had no great effect ; " 4, ' The Security of 

 Englishmen's Lives ; or the Trust, Power, and Duty of the Grand 

 Juries of England, explained according to the fundamentals of the 

 English government,' 1681, written on the failure of the charge against 

 the Earl of Shaftesbury; "it passed," says Burnet, "as writ by Lord 

 Essex, though I understood afterwards it was writ by Somers, who 



was much esteemed and often visited by Lord Essex, and who trusted 

 himself to him, and writ the best papers that came out in that time." 

 He had bsfore this time contributed poetical versions of Ovid's 

 ' Epistles of Dido to ^Eueas, and of Ariadne to Theseus,' to Tonson's 

 edition of Ovid's ' Epistles ' in English ; and a translation of Plutarch's 

 ' Life of Alcibiades ' to the English Plutarch, " by various hands," 

 produced by the same publisher. And there is also attributed to 

 him an original English poem, of some three hundred lines, entitled 

 ' Dryden's Satire to his Muse/ a libellous attack on that poet, which 

 from several allusions in it, must have been written early in 1682. It 

 has a considerable portion of the strength, as well as the coarseness, 

 of Dryden's moat prosaic manner. Walpole, in his Royal and Noble 

 Authors,' expresses his opinion that " the gross ribaldry " of this poem 

 "cannot be believed to have flowed from so humane and polished a 

 nature as Lord Somers's ; " but this, we apprehend, is to carry out too 

 strictly, or too far, tho figure with which Walpole introduces his 

 notice of Somers that he was " one of those divine men, who, like a 

 chapel in a palace, remain unprofaned, while all the rest is tyranny, 

 corruption, and folly." The poem is printed in part ii. of the 

 ' Supplement to the Works of the Minor Poets,' pp. 3-11. 



Somers, whose ability and professional learning wero already well 

 known to a circle of influential friends, at last came to London in 

 1682, and commenced practice at the bar. The first cause of public 

 importance in which he was engaged was the prosecution of Pilkington 

 and Shute, sheriffs of London, and other members of the Whig party, 

 who were tried and convicted, in May 1683, for a riot at the last 

 election of sheriffs, in which he appeared as junior counsel to his 

 friend Winnington for the defendants. From this time, it is stated 

 by the writer of the ' Memoirs of his Life,' 8vo, London, 1716, that his 

 practice increased daily, so that in the reign of James II. his profes- 

 sional income already amounted to 7QQI. a year, which was in those 

 days a large sum for a barrister of his standing; and, according to 

 this authority, " he was looked upon as one of the most rising counsel 

 in England, before he appeared at the trial of the Bishops." 



But no doubt his being selected to be one of the counsel for the 

 defence in that celebrated case, tried in the Court of King's Bench, in 

 June, 1688, was what first brought him prominently before the public 

 eye. He was selected, it is stated, on the strong recommendation of 

 Mr. Pollexfen, one of the leading counsel for the bishops, and a lawyer 

 of the highest eminence. " I have heard one of the bishops declare," 

 says Bishop Kenuett, in a note to his 'Complete History,' "that objec- 

 tion was made among themselves against Mr. Somers as too young 

 and obscure a man ; but old Pollexfeu insisted upon him, and would 

 not be himself retained without the other ; representing him as the 

 man who would take most pains, and go deepest into all that depended 

 on precedents and records." Somers's speech occupies only about a 

 column in the ' State Trials ' (vol. xii., p. 396) ; but it is probable that 

 his seniors were indebted for much of their matter to his learning and 

 research. 



From this time Somers is to be regarded as one of the leading po- 

 litical persons of his time. He is understood to have been associated 

 with his friend Shrewsbury and the other chiefs of the Whig party in 

 the negociations and arrangements which resulted in the coming over 

 of the Prince of Orange ; and he was taken into the confidence of 

 William from the first. Ho was returned as one of the representatives 

 for Worcester to the Convention, which met in January 1689; and 

 he took a distinguished part in the debates in the Commons and the 

 conferences with the Lords, which terminated in the adoption, by both 

 houses, of the decisive resolution that the late king had ' abdicated ' 

 the government. Somers indeed was a member of the first and chair- 

 man of the second of the two committees which prepared the Decla- 

 ration of Right ; and it was perhaps mainly drawn up by him, as is 

 hinted by Burke, who in his ' Reflections on the Revolution in France,' 

 says, " I never desire to be thought a better Whig than Lord Somers, 

 or to understand the principles of the Revolution better than those 

 by whom it was brought about; or to read in the Declaration of 

 Right any mysteries unknown to those whose penetrating style has 

 engraved in our ordinances, and in our hearts, the words and spirit of 

 that immortal law." 



Under the new government preferment flowed fast upon Somers. 

 In the beginning of May 1689, he was made solicitor-general and 

 knighted; on the 2nd of May 1692 he was made attorney-general; 

 and on the 23rd of March, in the same year, he was promoted to the 

 office of lord-keeper of the great seal. This last appointment, of 

 course, though he was not yet raised to the peerage, removed him both 

 from Westminster Hall and from the House of Commons. " All the 

 people," says Burnet, "were now grown weary of the givat seal being 

 in commission ; it made the proceedings in Chancery to be both more 

 dilatory and moro expensive; and there were such exceptions made to 

 the decrees of the commissioners, that appeals were brought against 

 most of them, and generally they were reversed. Sir John Somers 

 had now got great reputation, both in his post of attorney-general and 

 in tho House of Commons ; so the king gave him the great seal. Ho 

 was very learned in his own profession, with a great deal more learn- 

 ing in other professions in divinity, philosophy and history. He had 

 a great capacity for business, with an extraordinary temper : for he 

 was fair and gentle, perhaps to a fault, considering his post ; so that 

 he had all the patience and softness, as well as the justness and equity, 



