I shall not attempt to draw any general character of this eminent man. His good and bad qualities may best be understood from the details of his actions, and are immortalised by the dialogue between Queen Catherine and Griffith her secretary, which is familiar to every reader.* But the nature of this work requires that I should more deliberately consider him as a Judge; for although he held the Great Seal uninterruptedly for a period of fourteen years, and greatly extended its jurisdiction, and permanently influenced our juridical institutions, not only historians, but his own biographers, in describing the politician and the churchman, almost forget that he ever was Lord Chancellor. CHAP. XXIX. His conduct as a Judge. Equity. From his conference with Justice Shelly respecting York His noPlace, we know exactly his notions of the powers and duties tions of of the Chancellor as an Equity Judge. When pressed by the legal opinion upon the question, he took the distinction between law and conscience, and said, "it is proper to have a respect to conscience before the rigour of the common law, for laus est facere quod decet non quod licet. The King ought of his royal dignity and prerogative to mitigate the rigour of the law where conscience hath the most force; therefore, in his royal place of equal justice he hath constituted a Chancellor, an officer to execute justice with clemency, where conscience is opposed to the rigour of the law. And therefore the Court of Chancery hath been heretofore commonly called the Court of Conscience, because it hath jurisdiction to command the high ministers of the Common Law to spare execution and judgment, where conscience hath most effect."† With such notions he must have been considerably more arbitrary than a Turkish Kadi, who considers himself bound by a text of the Koran in point, and we are not to be surprised when we are told that he chose to exercise his equitable authority over every thing which could be a matter of judicial inquiry. In consequence, bills and petitions multiplied to an unprecedented degree, and notwithstanding his despatch there was a great arrear of business. To this grievance he applied a very Increase of Equity business. * Hen. VIII., act iv. sc. 2. † Cav. p. 283. XXIX. Establishes auxiliary Courts. CHAP. vigorous remedy, without any application to parliament to appoint Vice-chancellors; - for of his own authority he at once established four new Courts of Equity by commission in the King's name. One of these was held at Whitehall before his own deputy; another before the King's almoner, Dr. Stoherby, afterwards Bishop of London; a third at the Treasury Chamber before certain members of the Council; and a fourth at the Rolls, before Cuthbert Tunstall, Master of the Rolls, who, in consequence of this appointment, used to hear causes there in the afternoon.* The Master of the Rolls has continued ever since to sit separately for hearing causes in Chancery. The other three Courts fell with their founder. His complaints of the lawyers. Wolsey himself used still to attend pretty regularly in the Court of Chancery during term, and he maintained his equitable jurisdiction with a very high hand, deciding without the assistance of common law judges, and with very little regard to the common law. If he was sneered at for his ignorance of the doctrines and practice of the Court, he had his revenge by openly complaining that the lawyers who practised before him were grossly ignorant of the civil law and the principles of general jurisprudence; and he has been described as often interrupting their pleadings, and bitterly animadverting on their narrow notions and limited arguments. To remedy an evil which troubled the stream of justice at the fountain-head, he, with his usual magnificence of conception, projected an institution, to be founded in London, for the systematic study of all branches of the law. He even furnished an architectural model for the building, which was considered a masterpiece, and remained long after his death as a curiosity in the palace at Greenwich. Such an institution is still a desideratum in England; for, with splendid exceptions, it * In Reeve's History of the Law, it is said that this is the first instance of the Master of the Rolls ever hearing causes by himself, he having been before only the principal of the council of Masters assigned for the Chancellor's assistance; but there have lately been found in the Tower of London, bills addressed to the Master of the Rolls as early as the reign of Edward IV.-See 4 Reeves, 369. XXIX. must be admitted that English barristers, though very clever CHAP. practitioners, are not such able jurists as are to be found in other countries where law is systematically studied as a science. On Wolsey's fall his administration of justice was strictly Wolsey free overhauled; but no complaint was made against him of from bribery and bribery or corruption, and the charges were merely that corruption. he had examined many matters in Chancery after judgment given at common law;-that he had unduly granted injunctions; and that when his injunctions were disregarded by the Judges, he had sent for those venerable magistrates and sharply reprimanded them for their obstinacy. He is celebrated for the vigour with which he repressed perjury and chicanery in his Court, and he certainly enjoyed the reputation of having conducted himself as Chancellor with fidelity and ability, although it was not till a later age that the foundation was laid of that well-defined system of equity now established, which is so well adapted to all the wants of a wealthy and refined society, and, leaving little discretion to the Judge, disposes satisfactorily of all the varying cases within the wide scope of its jurisdiction. children. I am afraid I cannot properly conclude this sketch of His natural the Life of Wolsey without mentioning that "of his own body he was ill, and gave the clergy ill example." He had a natural son, named Winter, who was promoted to be Dean of Wells, and for whom he procured a grant of "arms" from the Herald's College. The 38th article of his impeachment shows that he had for his mistress a lady of the name of Lark, by whom he had two other children; there were various amours in which he was suspected of having indulged, and his health had suffered from his dissolute life. But we must not suppose that the scandal arising from such irregularities was such as would be occasioned by them at the present day. A very different standard of morality then prevailed: churchmen, debarred from marriage, were often licensed to keep concubines, and as the Popes themselves were in this respect by no means infallible, the frailties of a CHAP His repentance. Cardinal were not considered any insuperable bar either to secular or spiritual preferment." * In judging him we must remember his deep contrition for his backslidings; and the memorable lesson which he taught with his dying breath, that, to ensure true comfort and happiness, a man must addict himself to the service of God, instead of being misled by the lures of pleasure and ambition. The subsequent part of Henry's reign is the best panegyric on Wolsey; for, during twenty-nine years, he had kept free from the stain of blood or violence the Sovereign, who now, following the natural bent of his character, cut off the heads of his wives and his most virtuous ministers, and proved himself the most arbitrary tyrant that ever disgraced the throne of England.+ * Many gibes, however, seem to have been current against the licentious conduct of the Cardinal, as we may judge from Lord Surrey's speech to him:"I'll startle you Worse than the sacring bell, when the brown wench Skelton likewise was probably only embodying in rhyme the common talk of the † See Fiddes's Life of Wolsey, folio, 1724. Gall's Life of Wolsey, 4to. 1812. CHAPTER XXX. LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE, LORD CHANCELLOR OF ENGLAND, FROM XXX. Sept. 19. THE Great Seal having been surrendered, as we have seen, CHAP. by Cardinal Wolsey, into the hands of the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, they delivered it to Taylor, the Master of the Rolls, to carry to the King; who, having himself sealed 1529. certain letters patent with it, enclosed it in a bag under his own signet and under the seals of the Master of the Rolls and Stephen Gardyner, afterwards the famous Bishop of Rochester.* of appointing a successor to Wolsey. Considerable difficulty arose about the appointment of a Difficulty new Chancellor. Some were for restoring the Great Seal to Ex-chancellor Archbishop Warham; and Erasmus states that he refused itt: but there is reason to think that a positive resolution had been before taken by Henry, and his present advisers, that it should not be again intrusted to any churchman. + There was an individual designated to the office by the public voice. To give credit to the new administration, there was a strong desire to appoint him, for he was celebrated as a scholar in every part of Europe; he had long practised with applause as a lawyer; being called to Court, he had gained the highest credit there for his abilities and his manners; and he had been employed in several embassies abroad, which he had conducted with dexterity and success. The difficulty was that he had only the rank of a simple knight; and there had been no instance hitherto of conferring the Great Seal on a layman who was not of noble birth, or had not previously gained reputation by high judicial office. In consequence, † Ep. p. 1847. Rot. Cl. 21 Hen. 8. m. 19. On the 22d October the Bishop of Bayonne writes to his court, "On ne sçait encore qui aura le sceau. Je croy bien que les prestres n'y toucheront plus, et que en ce parliament ils auront de terribles alarmes." |