NOTE D D D. 



rotection, in the first case ; and the prosecutors to be put into the bill against 

 i formers. 



That offered from the Lord Chancellor, he would willingly consent that any 

 lan might speak freely any tiling concerning his court. 

 i\Ir. A 1 ford : To re-commit all these things, because not yet ripe. 

 To inform the lords, what liberties they have lost. 2dly. Of the luxuriant 

 luthority of the Chancery ; and that it devoureth all that cometh into it. 



16 March. Length of causes : 23 his ; some 30 years. Mulct in the civil 

 law if a cause above three years. This power too much for any one man. 

 That the Masters in Chancery should be reduced from twelve to six, &c. &c. 

 3rdly. From the increased but unavailing exertion of the Chancellor to 

 subdue the business. 



Lord Egerton. 



In Lord Bacon s speech upon taking his seat, he says : For it hath been a 

 manner much used of late in my last lord s time, of whom I learn much to 

 imitate, and somewhat to avoid ; that upon the solemn and full hearing of a 

 cause nothing is pronounced in court, but breviates are required to be made ; 

 which I do not dislike in itself in causes perplexed. For I confess I have 

 somewhat of the cunctative ; and I am of opinion, that whosoever is not wiser 

 upon advice than upon the sudden, the same man was no wiser at fifty than he 

 was at thirty. And it was my father s ordinary word, &quot; You must give me 

 time.&quot; But yet 1 find when such breviates were taken, the cause was some 

 times forgotten a term or two, and then set down for a new hearing, three or 

 four terms after. And in the mean time the subject s pulse beats swift, though 

 the Chancery pace be slow. 



D Aguesseau. 



The same anxiety was felt in France by Chancellor d Aguesseau. Mr. 

 Butler, in his Reminiscences says, &quot; The only fault imputed to him was dila- 

 toriness of decision. We should hear his own apology. The general feeling of 

 the public on this head was once respectfully communicated to him by his son. 

 My child, said the Chancellor, when you have read what I have read, seen 

 what I have seen, and heard what 1 have heard, you will feel that if on any 

 subject you know much, there may be also much that you do not know, and 

 that something, even of what you know, may not at the moment be in your 

 recollection. You will then too be sensible of the mischievous and often 

 ruinous consequences of even a small error in a decision; and conscience, I 

 trust, will then make you as doubtful, as timid, and consequently as dilatory as 

 I am accused of being. &quot; 



Sir Matthew Hale. 



So too of Sir Matthew Hale it is said, &quot; He continued eleven years in that 

 place ; and it was observed by the whole nation how much he raised the repu 

 tation and practice of that court. The only complaint ever made against him 

 was, that he did not dispatch matters quick enough, but the causes that were 

 tried before him were seldom if ever tried again.&quot; 



Lord Keeper North. 



The biographer of Lord Keeper North says, &quot; I come now to his lordship s 

 last and highest step of preferment in his profession, which was the custody of 

 the great seal of England. And for conformity of language, I call this a pre 

 ferment ; but in truth (and as his lordship understood) it was the decadence of 

 all the joy and comfort of his life, and instead of a felicity, as commonly 

 reputed, it was a disease like a consumption, which rendered him heartless 

 and dispirited. By his acceptance of the great seal, he became, as before of 

 the law, so now of equity, a chief, or rather sole justice. And more than that, 

 he must be a director of the English affairs at court as chief minister of state, 

 with respect to legalities, for which he was thought responsible. So, what with 

 equity, politics, and law, the cares and anxieties of his lordship s life were 



VOL. xv. 18 



