Atrocious Judges : Lives of Judges Infamous as Tools of Tyrants and Instruments of Oppression

CHAPTER XIII.

FRANCIS NORTH

We now come to one of the most contemptible of men – Francis North, known by the title of Lord Keeper Guilford. He had not courage to commit great crimes; but – selfish, cunning, sneaking, and unprincipled – his only restraint was a regard to his own personal safety, and throughout his whole life he sought and obtained advancement by the meanest arts.

Our hero, although he himself ascribed his success to his poverty, was of noble birth. The founder of his family was Edward North, a serjeant at law, chancellor of the Augmentations, and created a baron by writ in the reign of Henry VIII. Dudley, the third baron, “having consumed the greatest part of his estate in the gallantries of King James’s court, or, rather, his son Prince Henry’s,” retired and spent the rest of his days at his seat in Cambridgeshire. When the civil war broke out, he sided with the Parliament, and on rare occasions coming to London, he is said to have sat on the trial of Laud, and to have voted for his death. Having reached extreme old age, he died in the year 1666.

Dudley, his heir, who, at the age of sixty-three, stood on the steps of the throne in the House of Lords as “the eldest son of a peer,” was a great traveller in his youth, and served with distinction in the Low Countries under Sir Francis Vere. Yet he never would put on his hat, nor sit down in the presence of his father, unless by the old peer’s express commands. Being returned to the Long Parliament for the county of Cambridge, he strenuously opposed the Court, and signed the Solemn League and Covenant; but, adhering to the Presbyterian party, he was turned out by Pride’s purge, and lived in retirement till the Restoration. He married Anne, one of the daughters and coheirs of Sir Charles Montagu, brother of the Earl of Manchester, by whom he had a very numerous family.

The subject of this memoir was their second son, and was born on the 22d of October, 1637. Though he turned out such a zealous royalist and high churchman, his early training began among republicans and fanatics. As soon as he left the nursery, he was sent to a preparatory school at Isleworth, the master of which was a rigid Presbyterian. His wife was a furious Independent, and she ruled the household. “She used to instruct her babes in the gift of praying by the Spirit, and all the scholars were made to kneel by a bedside and pray; but this petit spark was too small for that posture, and was set upon a bed to kneel, with his face to a pillow.”

His family becoming disgusted with the extravagance of the ruling powers, and beginning to look to royalty as the only cure for the evils the nation was suffering, he was removed from Isleworth, and put to a grammar school at Bury St. Edmunds, under a cavalier master.

In 1653, he was admitted a fellow commoner at St. John’s College, Cambridge. He is said to have remained there two or three years, applying diligently to the studies of the place; but he seems to have devoted much of his time to the bass-viol, and he left the university without a degree.

He was then transferred to the Middle Temple. His father bought him a very small set of chambers, in which he shut himself up, and dedicated himself to the study of the law. He early learned and often repeated this saying of the citizens to their apprentices, “Keep your shop, and your shop will keep you.” He did not frequent riding schools, or dancing schools, or playhouses, or gaming houses – so dangerous to youth at the Inns of Court. Though he could “make one at gammon, gleek, piquet, or even the merry-main, he had ever a notable regard to his purse to keep that from oversetting, like a vessel at sea that hath too much sail and too little ballast.”

While a student, he paid frequent and long visits to his grandfather, who seems to have become a most singularly tyrannical and capricious old man. Frank exerted himself to the utmost to comply with all his humors, being allowed by him £20 a year. He was always industrious during these visits, though he could not altogether avoid bowling, fishing, hunting, visiting, and billiards; he spent the greater part of his time in reading and commonplacing the law books brought down to him by the carrier.

While in town, he always dined in the hall – twelve at noon being the hour of dinner – and supped there again at six; after which “case-putting” began in the cloister walks; and he acquired the character of a great “put-case.” He kept a commonplace book, which seems to have been almost as massive as Brooke’s “Abridgment of the Law.” He made himself well acquainted with the Year Books, although not altogether so passionately attached to them as Serjeant Maynard, who, when he was taking an airing in his coach, always carried a volume of them along with him, which, he said, amused him more than a comedy. He attended all famous legal arguments, particularly those of Sir Heneage Finch, and taking notes in the morning in law French, he employed himself at night in making out in English a report of the cases he had heard.

By way of relaxation he would go to music meetings, or to hear Hugh Peters preach. Nothing places him in such an amiable point of view as the delight he is said to have taken, on rare occasions, in “a petit supper and a bottle,” when there really seems to have been a short oblivion of anxiety about his rise in the world; but, to show his constitutional caution, his brother Roger assures us that, “whenever he was a little overtaken, it was a warning to him to take better care afterwards.”

Long before he was called to the bar, “he undertook the practice of court-keeping;” that is, he was appointed the steward of a great many manors by his grandfather and other friends, and he did all the work in person, writing all his court-rolls, and making out his copies with his own hand. I am afraid he now began his violation of the rights and liberties of his fellow-subjects by practising some petty extortions upon the bumpkins who came before him. “His grandfather,” says Roger,82 with inimitable simplicity, “had a venerable old steward, careful by nature and faithful to his lord, employing all his thoughts and time to manage for supply of his house and upholding his rents, – in short, one of a race of human kind heretofore frequent, but now utterly extinct, – affectionate as well as faithful, and diligent rather for love than self-interest. This old gentleman, with his boot-hose and beard, used to accompany his young master to his court-keeping, and observing him reasoning the country people out of their pence for essoines, &c., he commended him, saying, ‘If you will be contented, Master Frank, to be a great while getting a little, you will be a little while getting a great deal;’ wherein he was no false prophet.”

Having been the requisite time on the books of the society of the Middle Temple, and performed all his moots, (upon which he bestowed great labor,) Francis was called to the bar.

The allowance of sixty pounds a year which he had hitherto received from his father was now reduced to fifty, in respect of the pence he collected by court-keeping and the expected profits of his practice. He highly disapproved of this reduction, and wrote many letters to his father to remonstrate against it. At last he received an answer which he hoped was favorable, but which contained only these words, “Frank, I suppose by this time, having vented all your discontent, you are satisfied with what I have done.” The reduced allowance, however, was continued to him as long as his father lived, who said “he would not discourage industry by rewarding it when successful with loss.”

The young barrister was now hard put to it. He took “a practising chamber” on a first floor in Elm Court, “a dismal hole – dark next the court, and on the other side a high building of the Inner Temple standing within five or six yards of the windows.” He was able to fill his shelves with all useful books of the law from the produce of certain legacies and gifts collected for him by his mother,83 and he seems still to have had a small pecuniary help from his grandfather. For some time he had great difficulty in keeping free from debt; but he often declared that “if he had been sure of a hundred pounds a year to live upon, he had never been a lawyer.”

He is much praised by his brother, because it is said “he did not, (as seems to have been common,) for the sake of pushing himself, begin by bustling about town and obtruding himself upon attorneys, or bargaining for business, but was contented if chance or a friend brought him a motion, as he was standing at the bar taking notes.” These, however, came so rarely that he fell into a very dejected and hypochondriacal state. Thinking himself dying, he carried a list of his ailments to a celebrated physician, Dr. Beckenham of Bury, who laughed at him and sent him away, prescribing fresh air and amusement.

He was in danger of utterly sinking in the slough of despond, when he was suddenly taken by the hand by the great lawyer, Sir Jeffrey Palmer, who was made attorney general on the restoration of Charles II., and who if he had lived must have been lord chancellor. His son Edward, a very promising young man, lately called to the bar, died about this time in the arms of Francis North, who had been at college with him, and had shown him great attention during his illness.

All the business destined for young Palmer now somehow found its way to his surviving friend. His powerful protector, the attorney general, rapidly brought him forward by employing him in government prosecutions, and even when he himself was confined by illness, by giving him his briefs in smaller matters to hold for him in court. North, we may be sure, was most devotedly assiduous in making a suitable return for this kindness, and in flattering his patron. Instead of the sentiments he had imbibed from his family in his early days, he now loudly expressed those of an ultra prerogative lawyer, exalting the power of the king both over the church and the Parliament.

Being considered a rising man, his private friends and near relations came to consult him. He was once asked if he took fees from them. “Yes,” said he; “they no doubt come to do me a kindness; and what kindness have I if I refuse their money?”

Soon after he was called to the bar, he went the Norfolk circuit, where his family interest lay; but here again he chiefly relied upon his grand resource of flattering his superiors and accommodating himself to their humors. “He was exceeding careful to keep fair with the cocks of the circuit, and particularly with Serjeant Earl, who had almost a monopoly. The Serjeant was a very covetous man, and when none would starve with him in journeys, this young gentleman kept him company.” They once rode together from Cambridge to Norwich without drawing bit, to escape the expense of baiting at an inn; and North would have been famished, if the serjeant’s man, knowing his master’s habits, had not privately furnished him with a cake. He asked the serjeant, out of compliment to his riches, how he kept his accounts, “for you have,” said he, “lands, securities, and great comings in of all kinds.” “Accounts, boy!” exclaimed the serjeant, “I get as much as I can, and I spend as little as I can; and there is all the account I keep.” In these journeys the serjeant talked so agreeably of law, and tricks, and purchases, and management, that North’s hunger was beguiled, and he thought only of the useful knowledge he was acquiring, and the advantage to be derived from the countenance of a man so looked up to.

Lord Chief Justice Hyde generally rode the Norfolk circuit, and so completely had North taken the measure of his foot, that my lord called him “cousin” in open court, “which was a declaration that he would take it for a respect to himself to bring him causes.” The biographer to whom we are so much indebted lays it down that there is no harm in a judge letting it be known “that a particular counsel will be easily heard before him, and that his errors and lapses, when they happen, will not offend his lordship or hurt the cause.” The morality of the bar in those days will be better understood by the following observations of simple Roger: “In circuit practice there is need of an exquisite knowledge of the judge’s humor, as well as his learning and ability to try causes; and he, North, was a wonderful artist at watching a judge’s tendency, to make it serve his turn, and yet never failed to pay the greatest regard and deference to his opinion; for so they get credit; because the judge for the most part thinks that person the best lawyer that respects most his opinion. I have heard his lordship say, that sometimes he hath been forced to give up a cause to the judge’s opinion when he (the judge) was plainly in the wrong, and when more contradiction had but made him more positive; and, besides, that in so doing he himself had weakened his own credit with the judge, thereby been less able to set him right when he was inclined to it. A good opinion so gained often helps at another time to good purpose, and sometimes to ill purpose; as I heard it credibly reported of Serjeant Maynard that, being the leading counsel in a small feed cause, he would give it up to the judge’s mistake, and not contend to set him right, that he might gain credit to mislead him in some other cause in which he was well feed.” These gentlemen of the long robe ought to have changed places in court with the highwaymen they were retained to prosecute.84

There was no nonsense, however arrant, a silly judge might speak in deciding for North, which he would not back. Thus a certain Mr. Justice Archer, who seems to have been the laughing stock of the profession, having, to the amusement of the juniors, “noted a difference between a renunciation of an executorship upon record and in pais,” North said, “Ay, my lord; just so, my lord;” upon which his lordship became as fierce as a lion, and would not hear the argument on the other side. But even such a learned and sensible judge as Chief Justice Hale, North could win by an affectation of modesty, diffidence, and profound veneration. Early in his career, when he found it difficult to get to his place in a very crowded court, Sir Matthew said from the bench, “Good people, make way for this little gentleman; he will soon make way for himself.”

His consultations were enormously long, and he gained vast applause at them by his care and dexterity in probing the cause, starting objections, inventing points, foretelling what would be said by the opposite counsel and by the judge, and showing how the verdict might be lost or was to be secured; but, to make security doubly sure, after mastering the record and perusing the deeds to be given in evidence, he himself examined the witnesses, and thus had an opportunity of presenting the facts properly to their minds.

Need we wonder that from an humble beginner, rejoicing in a cause that came to him, he soon became “cock of the circuit” – all who had trials rejoicing to have him on their side?

I shall give one specimen of his conduct as a leader. He was counsel for the defendant in an action tried before his friend Judge Archer, for not setting out tithes – in which the treble value was to be recovered. Finding that he had not a leg to stand upon, he manœuvred to get his client off with the single value; so he told his lordship that this was a cause to try a right of a very intricate nature, which would require the reading a long series of records and ancient writings, and that it ought not to be treated as a penal action; wherefore, they should agree upon the single value of the tithes, for which the verdict should be taken conditionally, and then proceed fairly to try the merits. The judge insisted on this course being adopted; and the other side, not to irritate him, acquiesced in North’s proposal. “Then did he open a long history of matters upon record, of bulls, monasteries, orders, greater and lesser houses, surrenders, patents, and a great deal more, very proper if it had been true, while the counsel on the other side stared at him; and having done, they bid him go to his evidence. He leaned back, as speaking to the attorney, and then, ‘My lord,’ said he, ‘we are very unhappy in this cause. The attorney tells me they forgot to examine their copies with the originals at the Tower;’ and (so folding up his brief,) ‘My lord,’ said he, ‘they must have the verdict, and we must come better prepared another time.’ So, notwithstanding all the mooting the other side could make, the judge held them to it, and they were choused of the treble value.”

While North had such success on the circuit, he was equally flourishing in Westminster Hall. By answering cases and preparing legal arguments for Sir Jeffrey Palmer, and by flouting at parliamentary privilege, he was still higher than ever in favor with that potential functionary. It happened that in the year 1668, after the fall of the Earl of Clarendon, a writ of error was brought in the House of Lords by Denzil Hollis, now Lord Hollis, the only defendant surviving, upon the judgment of the Court of King’s Bench in the great case of The King v. Sir John Elliot, Denzil Hollis, and Others, decided in the fifth year of the reign of Charles I. This had been a prosecution by the king against five members of the House of Commons, for what had been done in the House on the last day of the session, when Sir John Finch was held in the chair while certain resolutions alleged to be seditious had been voted, and one of the defendants had said “that the Council and judges had all conspired to trample under foot the liberties of the subject.” They had pleaded to the jurisdiction of the Court of King’s Bench, “that the supposed offences were committed in Parliament, and ought not to be punished or inquired of in this court, or elsewhere than in Parliament.” But their plea had been overruled, and they were all sentenced to heavy fine and imprisonment.

Although there had been resolutions of the House of Commons, on the meeting of the Long Parliament, condemning this judgment, it still stood on record, and Lord Hollis thought it was a duty he owed to his country, before he died, to have it reversed.

Sir Jeffrey Palmer, as attorney general, pleaded in nullo est erratum; but having returned his writ of summons to the House of Lords, and being in the habit of sitting there on the woolsack, as one of the assessors to the peers, he could not himself argue the case as counsel at the bar. The king’s serjeants declined to do so out of respect to the House of Commons. Francis North, thinking this a most favorable opportunity to make himself known at court as an anti-parliamentarian lawyer, volunteered to support the judgment, and his services were accepted. He says himself “he was satisfied he argued on the right side, and that on the record the law was for the king.” Accordingly, on the appointed day he boldly contended that, as the information averred that the offences were committed against the peace, as privilege of Parliament does not extend to offences in breach of the peace, as they had not been punished in the Parliament in which they were committed, and as no subsequent Parliament could take notice of them, they were properly cognizable in a court of common law. The judgment was reversed, but North’s fortune was made. The Duke of York was pleased to inquire “who that young gentleman was who had argued so well.” Being told that “he was the younger son of the Lord North, and, what was rare among young lawyers at that time, of loyal principles,” his royal highness undertook to encourage him by getting the king to appoint him one of his majesty’s counsel. North was much gratified by receiving a message to this effect, but was alarmed lest the Lord Keeper Bridgeman, who by his place was to superintend preferments in the law, might conceive a grudge against him for this interference with his patronage. The lord keeper acquitted him of all blame, wished him joy, and with peculiar civility desired him to take his place within the bar.

Things went on very smoothly with him now till the death of Sir Jeffrey Palmer, when Sir Heneage Finch being promoted to be attorney general, the solicitor’s place was vacant. North, being the only king’s counsel, and having been long employed in crown business, had a fair claim to succeed, and he was warmly supported by the lord keeper, as well as the new attorney general, who was desirous of having him for a colleague; but the Duke of Buckingham, at this time considered prime minister, preferred Sir William Jones, who was North’s chief competitor in the King’s Bench, and over whose head he had been put when he received his silk gown.85

To terminate the difference they were both set aside, and the office of solicitor general was given to Sir Edward Turner, speaker of the House of Commons, who held it for a twelvemonth, at the end of which he was made chief baron of the Exchequer, in the room of Sir Matthew Hale, promoted to be chief justice of the Common Pleas.

Buckingham’s influence had greatly declined, and North was made solicitor general without difficulty, Jones being solaced with a silk gown, and the promise of further promotion on the next vacancy.