163 



TREVOR, SIR JOHN. 



TREW, CHRISTOPHER JAMES. 



101 



Morrico goes out, and bo believes without any compensation." (Pepys's 

 'Diary.') 



Sir John Trevor continued secretary of state until his death in 1672. 

 Tt was his merit, during the time that he held office, to oppose the 

 French policy which Charles was then pursuing at the instigation of 

 the Duke of York, and with the zealous co-operation of Lord Arling- 

 ton, the other secretary of state ; and to endeavour to moderate the 

 persecution of Protestant nonconformist?, which was carried on during 

 that period, under the same advisers, by means of the Conventicle 

 Acts. Having been originally one of the cabinet, he was put out of it 

 in consequence of his opposition to the Duke of York's policy in 1670. 

 " It was remarked," says Hume, " that the committee of council 

 established for foreign affairs was entirely changed ; and that Prince 

 Rupert, the Duke of Ormond, secretary Trevor, and lord keeper 

 Bridgeman, men in whose honour the nation had great confidence, 

 were never called to any deliberations." ('History of England,' 

 vol. vii., p. 458, ed. 1791.) Sir William Temple, who returned to 

 England from the* Hague in 1670, and grieved to see the rapid progress 

 of a policy directly contrary to that of the Triple Alliance which he 

 had achieved, found Trevor of the same opinion with himself, but 

 unable to do anything, as he was, in Sir W. Temple's phrase, " merely 

 in the skirts of business." ('Temple's Works,' vol. ii. p. 170.) 



Sir John Trevor died, after a short illness, on the 28th of May 1672. 

 He died a year before his father, who, when he died, was succeeded in 

 his estates by Sir John Trevor's eldest son. Sir John Trevor had 

 married Ruth, one of the daughters of the celebrated John Hampden, 

 by whom he left a numerous family. THOMAS TREVOR, his second 

 son, was bred to the law, and having pursued it with great suc- 

 cess, attained to political as well as legal eminence. He was in 

 William III.'s reign successively solicitor and attorney-general, and in 

 1701 was appointed chief-justice of the Common Pleas. He was 

 created a peer by Queen Anne in 1711, by the title of Lord Trevor of 

 Bromham, in Bedfordshire. In 1726 he was made lord privy seal by 

 George I., and in 1730, but a month before his death, received from 

 George II. the post of president of the council. He died on the 19th 

 of June 1730. His character is briefly sketched by Speaker Onslow in 

 a note on Burnet (vol. iv., p. 334, ed. 1823), where he is described as 

 having the general esteem of all political parties, though, beginning as 

 a Whig, he after a time left the party, and then again rejoined it, and 

 as an able and upright, but reserved, grave, and austere judge. 



The third son of this Lord Trevor ultimately inherited his title, 

 being the fourth Lord Trevor. He was a distinguished diplomatist, 

 and haviug published a volume of poems, is enrolled in Horace Wai- 

 pole's list of ' Royal and Noble Authors.' Having had the Hampden 

 estates left to him by his cousin, John Hampdeu, Esq., who was, like 

 himself, great grandson to the patriot Hampden, and who died 

 unmarried, he took the name and arms of Hampden, and was in 1766 

 created Viscount Hampden. (Collins's ' Peerage,' by Brydges, vol vi., 

 pp. 291-304.) 



TREVOR, SIR JOHN, KNIGHT, a lawyer of eminence, and speaker 

 of the House of Commons in the reigns of James II., and William 

 and Mary, was a member of the same Welsh family as the subject of 

 the previous article, and the second son, but ultimately heir, of John 

 Trevor, Esq., of Brynkinalt, in Denbighshire. By his mother, he was 

 first cousin to the notorious Judge Jefleries. He was born in 1633. 



The history of this Sir John Trevor has been sketched by the 

 strong pen of Roger North, in a well-known passage in his 'Life of 

 the Lord Keeper Guildford ' (vol. ii., p. 27): "He was a countryman 



of the lord chief justice Jefferies, and his favourite He was 



bred a sort of clerk in old Arthur Trevor's chamber, an eminent and 

 worthy professor of the law in the Inner Temple. A gentleman that 

 visited Mr. Arthur Trevor, at his going out, observed a strange-looking 

 boy in his clerk's seat (for no person ever had a worse sort of squint 

 than he had), and asked who that youth was ? ' A kinsman of mine,' 

 said Arthur Trevor, ' that I have allowed to sit here, to learn the 

 knavish part of the law." This John Trevor grew up, and took in 

 with the gamesters, among whom he was a great proficient ; and being 

 well grounded in the law, proved a critic in resolving gambling cases, 

 and doubts, and had the authority of a judge among them; and his 

 sentence for the most part carried the cause. From this exercise he 

 was recommended by Jefferies to be of the king's council, and then 

 master of the rolls and, like a true gamester, he fell to the good work 

 of supplanting his patron and friend ; and had certainly done it if 

 King James's affairs had stood right up much longer ; for he was 

 advanced so far with him as to vilify and scold with him publicly in 

 Whitehall." Having been solicitor-general in the reign of Charles II., 

 Sir John Trevor was appointed master of the rolls by James II. in 

 1685, and on the meeting of parliament in May of that year he was 

 elected speaker of the House of Commons. In the beginning of 1688 

 he was made a privy councillor. After the Revolution Trevor obtained 

 the confidence of William III., and was much consulted by him. 

 There is a paper of his addressed to William, published by Sir John 

 Dalrymple ('Appendix,' part ii., p. 80), in which ho counselled the 

 dissolution of the Convention parliament. This parliament having 

 been dissolved, and a new one assembled on the 20th of March 

 1690, Sir John Trevor was a second time elected speaker. He was 

 also appointed one of the commissioners of the great seal. " The 

 speaker of the House of Commons, Sir John Trevor," says Buruet, 



"was a bold and dexterous man, and know tho most effectual ways 

 of recommending himself to every government : he had been in great 

 favour in King James's time, and was made master of tho rolls by 

 him ; and if Lord Jefferies had stuck at anything, he was looked on as 

 the man likeliest to have the great seal. Ho now got himself to be 

 chosen speaker, and was made first commissioner of the great seal ; 

 being a Tory in principle, he undertook to manage that party, pro- 

 vided he was furnished with such sums of money as might purchase 

 some votes; and by him began the practice of buying off men, in 

 which hitherto the king had kept to stricter rules." (' History of his 

 Own Time,' vol. iv., p. 74, ed. 1823.) 



In the session of 1695 the corrupter of others was discovered to 

 have been himself corrupted, and was expelled from the speakership 

 and from the house. It was proved that he had received a bribe of 

 a thousand guineas from the city of London for his support of a bill 

 in which the city was greatly interested. (Burnet, vol. iv., p. 254.) 

 Being speaker, he had to put the question for his own expulsion. 

 " He sat above six hours," says North, " as prolocutor in an assembly 

 that passed that time with calling him all to nought to his face; and 

 at length he was forced, or yielded, to put the question upon himself, 

 as in the form, ' As many as are of opinion that Sir John Trevor is 

 guilty of corrupt bribery by receiving, &c. ; ' and in declaring the 

 sense of the house declared himself guilty. The house rose, and he 

 went his way, and came there no more." (' Life of the Lord Keeper 

 Guildford,' vol. il, p. 28.) 



Sir John Trevor, though thus expelled from the House of Commons, 

 retained the mastership of the rolls, " to the great encouragement," 

 as North remarks, " of prudent bribery for ever after." He had the 

 character of being a man of great talents, though of no principle. 

 There are some anecdotes of him in Noble's ' Continuation of Granger's 

 Biographical History ' (vol. i., p. 172), which show him to have been 

 extremely mean and avaricious. He died on the 20th of May 1717, in 

 London, at his house in Clement's Lane, and was buried in the Rolls' 

 chapel. 



His only daughter married Michael Hill, Esq., a privy councillor 

 and member of parliament, and had two sons. The eldest son was 

 created Viscount Hillsborough, and his son Marquis of Dowushire. 

 The second son, succeeding to his grandfather Sir John Trevor's 

 estates, took the name and arms of Trevor, and was created, in 1766, 

 Viscount Dungannon. 



TREW, CHRISTOPHER JAMES, a celebrated anatomist and 

 botanist, was born at Lauffen, a small town in Franconia, near Niiru- 

 berg, on the 26th of April 1695. His father, who was an apothecary, 

 took charge of his education and taught him the principles of botany 

 and pharmacy. Trew went in 1611 to Altdorf in order to attend the 

 lectures of the faculty of medicine, and was admitted to the degree of 

 doctor in 1716, after five years' study. On his return to his own 

 country he immediately began to practise, and obtained sufficient 

 support to encourage him to continue. He however soon formed the 

 resolution of travelling ; and accordingly he went through Germany, 

 Switzerland, France, and Holland, and stayed for a year at Danzig. 

 In 1720 he returned to Lauffen, and became a member of the College 

 of Physicians at Nurnberg. The extensive practice that he soon suc- 

 ceeded in obtaining made him so well known to the world, that the 

 Margrave of Anspach granted him the title of physician-in-ordinary 

 and counsellor to the court (Hofrath). He was admitted in 1742 as 

 a member of the ' Academic des Curieux de la Nature,' and was raised 

 in 1746 to the dignity of president, which at this time included the 

 titles of count palatine, aulic counsellor, and physician to the emperor. 

 He died on the 18th of June 1769, at the age of seventy-four, without 

 ever having been persuaded to leave Nurnberg, notwithstanding the 

 attractive offers that were made to draw him to Altdorf and elsewhere. 

 Assisted by the excellent painter Ehret, he published the beginning 

 of a magnificent work on botany, which was continued after his death 

 by Vogel. With regard to anatomy he conjectured that the mesaraic 

 veins possessed the faculty of absorption; ho proved that the pre- 

 tended salivary ducts of Coschwitz are simple veins ; and he very 

 well demonstrated the differences which are observed in the human 

 body both before and after birth with regard to the organs of circula- 

 tion. Besides one hundred and thirty-three observations which are 

 to be met with in the ' Commercium Litterarium,' of Nurnberg, and 

 one hundred and thirty-seven which have been inserted in the ' Acta 

 Curiosum Natures,' the following are his principal works in anatomy 

 and botany. In the former science he published ' Dissertatio Epis- 

 tolica, de Difierentiis quibusdam inter Horninein natum et nascendum 

 intercedentibus deque Vestigiis Divini Numinis inde colligendis,' 

 4to, Nurnberg, 1736, with a great number of plates representing 

 peculiarities of the foetus; 'Epietola ad Alb. Hallerum de Vasis 

 Linguso salivalibus atque sanguiferis,' 4to, Nurnberg, 1734 ; 'Tabula 

 Osteologicse Corporis Humani,' folio, max., fine coloured plates, Nurn- 

 berg, 1767. In botany his first publication was the description of a 

 flowering American aloe, 4to, Nurnberg, 1727. In 1750 he began to 

 publish one of the most splendid botanical works that has ever 

 appeared, under the title of ' Plantse selectee quarum Imagines ad 

 Exemplaria Naturalia manu pinxit G. Dionysius Ehret, Nominibus 

 Propriis et Notis illustravit, C. J. Trew,' folio, Nurnberg. To the 

 incomparable designs of Ehret, Trew added descriptions and remarks 

 and the work appeared in decades, of which seven were completed. 





