abhorrence which they never fail to excite in every heart of common sensibility. It is a salutary lesson to see the memory of Jefferies descending to posterity darkened with the indignant reproaches of each succeeding age, and weighed down by an ever-increasing weight of infamy. To affix to his polluted name an additional stigma, to brand his dishonoured memory with a fresh mark of reprobation, is an office grateful to humanity. In his personal character, Jefferies was remarkable for his laxity and disregard of the decencies of his station. Roger North has left a character of him, which, though perhaps highly coloured, is certainly, in its main representations, correct. "His friendship and conversation lay much amongst the good fellows and humorists, and his delights were accordingly drinking, laughing, singing, kissing, and all the extravagancies of the bottle. He had a set of banterers for the most part near him, as, in old times, great men kept fools to make them merry, and these fellows, abusing one another and their betters, were a regale to him; and no friendship or dearness could be so great in private, which he could not use ill, and to an extravagant degree, in public. No one that had any expectations from him was safe from his public contempt and derision, which some of his minions at the bar bitterly felt. Those above, and that could hurt or benefit him, and none else, might depend on fair quarter at his hands. When he was in temper, and matters indifferent came before him, he became his seat of justice better than any other I ever saw in his place. He took a pleasure in mortifying fraudulent attorneys, and would deal forth his severities with a sort of majesty. He had extraordinary natural abilities, but little acquired, beyond what practice in affairs had supplied. He talked fluently and with spirit; and his weakness was, that he could not reprehend without scolding, and in such Billingsgate language as should not come out of the mouth of any man. He called it giving a lick with the rough side of his tongue. It was ordinary to hear him say, Go, you are a filthy, lousy, nitty rascal, with much more of like elegance. Scarce a day passed that he did not chide some one or other of the bar, when he sate in the chancery, and it was commonly a lecture of a quarter of an hour long. And they used to say, This is yours; my turn will be to-morrow. He seemed to lay nothing of his business to heart, nor care what he did, nor what he left undone, and spent in the chancery court what time he thought fit to spare. Many times on days of causes at his house, the company have waited five hours in a morning, and after eleven he hath come out inflamed, and staring like one distracted, and that visage he put on when he animadverted on such as he took offence at, which made him a terror to real offenders, whom also he terrified with his face and voice, as if the thunder of the day of judgment broke over their heads, and nothing ever made men tremble like his vocal inflictions. He loved to insult, and was bold without check, but that only was when his place was uppermost. To give an instance: A city attorney was petitioned against for some abuse, and affidavit was made that, when he was told of my lord chancellor, My lord chancellor!' said he, I made him!' meaning his being a means to bring him early into city business. When this affidavit was read, 'Well,' said the lord chancellor, then I will lay my maker by the heels,' and with that conceit one of his best old friends went to jail. One of these intemperances was fatal to him. There was a scrivener of Wapping brought to hearing for relief against a bummery bond: the contingency of losing all being shown, the bill was going to be dismissed; but one of the plaintiff's counsel said that he was a strange fellow, and sometimes went to church, sometimes to conventicles, and none could tell what to make of him, and it was thought he was a trimmer. At that the chancellor fired: A trimmer!' said he; I have heard much of that monster, but never Come forth, Mr. Trimmer! turn you round, and let us see your shape!' and at that rate talked so long, that the poor fellow was ready to drop under him; saw one. but at last the bill was dismissed with costs, and he went his way. In the hall, one of his friends asked him how he came off. Came off!' said he; I am escaped from the terrors of that man's face, which I would scarcely undergo again to save my life; and I shall certainly have the frightful impression of it as long as I live.' Afterwards, when the prince of Orange came, and all was in confusion, this lord chancellor, being very obnoxious, disguised himself, in order to go beyond sea: he was in a seaman's garb, and drinking a pot in a cellar. This scrivener came into the cellar after some of his clients, and his eye caught that face, which made him start; and the chancellor, seeing himself eyed, feigned a cough, and turned to the wall with his pot in his hand; but Mr. Trimmer went out and gave notice that he was there, whereupon the mob flowed in, and he was in extreme hazard of his life; but the lord mayor saved him, and lost himself. For the chancellor being hurried, with such crowd and noise, before him, and appearing so dismally, not only disguised but disordered, and there having been an amity betwixt them, as also a veneration on the lord mayor's part, he had not spirit to sustain the shock, but fell down in a swoon, and not many hours after died."* Evelyn, who was acquainted with Jefferies, tells us, that being present at the wedding of Mrs. Castle, a city lady, he met there "Sir George Jefferies, newly made chief justice of England, who, with Mr. Justice Withings, danced with the bride, and was exceeding merry. These great men,” adds Evelyn, "spent the rest of the afternoon, until eleven at night, in drinking healths, taking tobacco, and talking much beneath the gravity of judges, who had but a day or two before condemned Mr. Algernon Sidney." + Sir John Reresby also has left us an account of a dinner party at the house of Jefferies, while he was chancellor, at which the lord mayor and some other gentlemen were present. Jefferies, + Memoirs, vol. I. p. 530. Life of Lord Guilford, vol. ii. p. 31. according to custom, drank deep at dinner; and in order, as he said, to divert the company, he called for Mountfort, one of his gentlemen, who had been a comedian, and who was an excellent mimic. Mountfort was then desired to plead before them, which he did, imitating all the great lawyers of the day, to the great diversion of the lord chancellor. The person and character of Jefferies have been thus sketched by an anonymous writer :— "He was rather above the middle stature; his complexion fair; his face well enough, though mixed with an air a little malicious and unpleasant. He was a man of tolerable sense, and had, by long practice, acquired some tolerable knowledge of the law, though, as little as it was, more than he had occasion to make use of. He had a pretty large stock of ill nature and wit, in which lay his greatest excellence, though an unenvied one. But, in short, his law and his tongue were the two best accomplishments he was master of; by the help of which he sometimes put falsehood, but more frequently truth, out of counte nance. "He spoke many pleasant things, but very few handsome ones, disgracing his wit by his intolerable railing, and mean passions; and would frequently, even upon the bench itself, fall into such heats as were not only unworthy of a judge, but even of a private man. To do him justice, he had a great deal of baseness and cruelty in his nature, having a particular delight and relish in such things as give horror to the rest of mankind."* On some rare occasions Jefferies did indeed display feelings approaching to kindness and gratitude. When chief justice of Chester, certain proceedings instituted against the celebrated Philip Henry, for attending a conventicle, were brought to his notice; but in this instance, at least, he manifested no desire to persecute a man whose conscientious discharge of his duty had already subjected him to much suffering. "He did not," says the biographer of Mr. Henry, "in private conversation, seem to Life and Character of Jefferys, p. 44. applaud what was done in this matter, as was expected; whether out of a private pique against some that had been active in it, or for what other reason is not known; but it was said, he pleasantly asked some of the gentlemen, by what new law they pressed carts, as they passed upon their occasions along the road, to carry away goods distrained for a conventicle? It was also said that he spoke with some respect of Mr. Henry; saying, he knew him, and his character well, and that he was a great friend of his mother's (Mrs. Jefferies of Acton, near Wrexham, a very pious, good woman), and that sometimes, at his mother's request, Mr. Henry had examined him in his learning, when he was a schoolboy, and had commended his proficiency. And it was much wondered at by many, that of all the times Sir George Jefferies went that circuit, though it is well enough known what was his temper, and what the temper of that divine, yet he never sought any occasion against Mr. Henry, nor took the occasions that were offered, nor countenanced any trouble intended him, though he was the only non-conformist in Shropshire." Mr. Seward, in his collection, has preserved another anecdote favourable to the character of Jefferies. On his arrival at Taunton, previously to opening the commission for the trial of the persons concerned in Monmouth's rebellion, he was waited upon by the minister of the church of Saint Mary Magdalen, in that town, who, in a very mild manner, remonstrated with him on the barbarity of his proceedings. Jefferies listened to him with great calmness, and soon after his return to London, sent for the clergyman, and presented him to a stall in the cathedral of Bristol.t * Life of Mr. Philip Henry, p. 150. ed. 1825. " |