Lord Chancellor of England

“ He was Lord Chancellor of England—the confidential friend and agent of the king, and his unscrupulous instrument in imposing the yoke of bondage on an insulted nation.
At this period, the condition of the Puritans was deplorable. At no previous time was Persecution of the Dissenters. persecution more inveterate, not even under the administration of Laud and Strafford. The persecution commenced soon after the restoration of Charles II., and increased in malignity until the elevation of Jeffreys to the chancellorship. The sufferings of no class of sectaries bore any proportion to theirs. ”

“ The people of England, as Disraeli said some seventy years ago, have been accustomed to recognize in the Lord Chancellor a man of singular acuteness, of profound learning, and vast experience, who has won his way to a great position by the exercise of great qualities, by patient study, and unwearied industry. ”

“ It is merely our object to criticise the office, and our observations, therefore, will have no personal bearing. In the first place, it is worthy of note that the most highly paid temporal office in England—that of the Lord Chancellor—is given rather as a reward for political than for legal success. ”

“ Once the Queen brought a man among them, who owed his rise only to her being pleased with his person and conversation, which likewise brought her much ill repute: [282] she [Pg 339] promoted her vice-chamberlain Christopher Hatton to be Lord Chancellor of England. The lawyers made loud and bitter complaints of this disregard of their claims and their order. Hatton had however been long on good terms with the leading statesmen: in all the late questions of difficulty as to Mary Stuart's trial he had held firm to them. His nephew and heir soon after married a granddaughter of Burleigh. ”

“ In order therefore to prevent disagreeable contests with young gentlemen, it has become a practice for many guardians, of large estates especially, to indemnify themselves by applying to the court of chancery, acting under it's direction, and accounting annually before the officers of that court. For the lord chancellor is, by right derived from the crown, the general and supreme guardian of all infants, as well as idiots and lunatics; that is, of all such persons as have not discretion enough to manage their own concerns. ”

“ Be it further enacted by the Authority aforesaid, That immediately upon the Prorogation or Dissolution of this present Parliament, the Lord Chancellor of England shall direct the King's Commission under his Grace's Great Seal, to such Persons as to him shall be thought convenient, to enquire and view all the said Shires of Kayermarthen, Pembroke, Cardigan, Monmouth, Brecknock, Radnor, Mountgomery, Glamorgan and Denbigh, and every Part and Parcel of them; and upon such View and Search, to divide them and every of them into so many Hundreds as they shall think most meet and convenient ”

“ But you know that God gives men duties to do for the country they live in, as well as for themselves; and as Sir Thomas More was a lawyer, he was obliged to attend to his business, and when he became a judge, it took up so much of his time that he could not be so much at his house at Chelsea as he wished. It was still worse when Henry the Eighth made him Lord Chancellor of England, and required most of his spare time to talk with him, instead of letting him go home. ”

“ In England, those who hold similar legal offices take no part in the daily administration of public affairs. The Lord Chancellor, as a member of the Cabinet, takes his share in responsibility for the policy of the Government. The law officers are consulted in special cases, and take their part from time to time in debates in the House of Commons. ”

“ They proposed that the issuing of the writs should take place at a fixed time, and to prevent the crown defeating this intention, they demanded, in case the king did not order the writs at the regular time, it should be imperative on the lord keeper or lord chancellor to do it; in case they neglected it, it should become the duty of the house of lords to do so; if the lords failed, then the sheriffs, and if the sheriffs neglected or refused, the people should proceed to elect their own representatives without any writs at all. ”

“ As you know, in the prize ring, when a boxer had got his adversary into a hopeless position and could treat him as he liked, the beaten man was said to be “in chancery.”
It is generally supposed that the Chancellor in “Bleak House” is the famous Lord Eldon, whose tenure of that exalted office is almost the longest on record. He was a man of many virtues and singularly kind-hearted,—the description of his reception of the wards in Chancery in the book before [Pg 236] us does ample justice to this trait—and as a lawyer he ranks among the very foremost exponents of the law of England. ”

“ The Lord Chancellor's speech at the opening.
The succession must be reconsidered.
"At the dissolution of the late parliament, the King's Highness had not thought so soon to meet you here again. He has called you together now, being moved thereunto by causes of grave moment, affecting both his own person and the interests of the commonwealth. You will have again to consider the succession to the [Pg 493] crown of this realm. His Highness knows himself to be but mortal, liable to fall sick, and to die. ”

“ Being placed in such a relation to his colleagues, it is not unnatural that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should often differ with them. As Gladstone notes in his diary in 1865, "Estimates always settled at the dagger's point." [76:1] Like other differences in the cabinet, these occasionally come to light, especially when they have been so sharp as to cause the Chancellor's resignation. Lord Randolph Churchill resigned in 1886 because the cabinet insisted upon appropriations for the Army which he opposed ”

“ The Queen had created four new peers; three of whom, Lord North, Lord Chandos, and Lord Williams, were bigoted Catholics; the fourth, Lord Howard, was absent with the fleet, and was unrepresented. Lord North held the proxy of Lord Worcester; and the Marquis of Winchester, Lord Montague, and Lord Stourton acted generally with the chancellor. ”

“ View of the Court of Saint Germains. The account given in this View is confirmed by a remarkable paper, which is among the Nairne MSS. Some of the heads of the Jacobite party in England made a representation to James, one article of which is as follows: "They beg that Your Majesty would be pleased to admit of the Chancellor of England into your Council; your enemies take advantage of his not being in it." James's answer is evasive. "The King will be, on all occasions, ready to express the just value and esteem he has for his Lord Chancellor." ”

“ Thus prevented from forming the moderate Conservative ministry he intended, Peel was reduced to fill his places with men of more pronounced opinions, which promised ill for any advance in reform. He himself became Chancellor of the Exchequer and First Lord of the Treasury. The Foreign, Home, War, and Colonial Offices were filled respectively by Wellington, Goulburn, Herries, and Aberdeen. Lord Lyndhurst became Lord Chancellor, Hardinge Irish Secretary, and Lord Wharncliffe Privy Seal. ”

“ So, in default of any other recognized authority, the Lord Chancellor, and the Speaker, took the lead in their different assemblies, and, after vainly trying to find out how they should act, an Order in Council cut the Gordian Knot, adjourning Parliament to the 29th of November, a decision which was confirmed in the House of Commons by a majority of 285. When they again met, they, after discoursing of the King, set to work to concoct a Regency. ”

“ The lord chancellor always belongs to a political party and is affected by its fluctuations. This has often been denounced as destructive of the independence and calm deliberativeness essential to the purity and efficiency of the bench. ”

“ The Chancellor added that if any member had anything else to suggest, to the profit and advantage of the realm, and for the common weal, he was not to omit doing so, in conformity with the obligation and duty of everybody, nor to fail thus to act readily and willingly as becoming; and his right reverend Lordship having spoken with much more energy than by reason of his indisposition any one would have expected, the business of this first day of the session ended. ”

“ Only in recent times has the Chancellor been necessarily made a peer, and there exists no statutory restriction incapacitating any man, unless he be a Roman Catholic, from holding the office of Lord Chancellor. ”

“ On 25 April 1587 the queen appointed Hatton lord chancellor, delivering the seal to him personally at the archiepiscopal palace at Croydon, and on 3 May he took the oaths of office, riding from Ely House to Westminster for that purpose in great state. He was preceded by forty of his retainers in blue livery wearing gold chains, part of the corps of gentlemen pensioners and other gentlemen of the court, and attended by the officers and clerks of the chancery. ”

“ Chancellor, Lord Cowper, to King George, "is so much in love with the advantages a king of Great Britain has to bestow without the least exceeding the bounds of law, that 'tis wholly in your majesty's power, by showing your power in good time to one or other of them, to give which party you please a clear majority in all succeeding parliaments." ”

“ No such plenitude of power has ever before been enjoyed by any autocrat or dictator in any nation, ancient or modern, as is possessed under present democratic conditions in wealthy England by a Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose popularity makes him an indispensable member of a Cabinet. ”

“ Our Lord Chancellor has never done what other Lord Chancellors have done, viz., wielded the fierce democracy of the lower house, shone unrivalled on the parliamentary arena, thundered from the platform, won fame by their daring, and acumen, and learning, and eloquence, in every corner of the land. ”

“ The ridiculous tradition of government by K. C.'s has for some time past been broken down, and quite a number of our present Ministers have never taken silk in their lives, except from cocoons in a match-box. There is at least one business man in the Cabinet, and even the Lord Chancellor, great lawyer though he is, is almost equally renowned as a horseman. ”

“ Surely to have been called by the acclamations of a whole people to defend the most important of its fortresses is quite as exalted a distinction as to be appointed a Lord Chamberlain or a Lord Chancellor by the favor of one minister, and liable to be dismissed the next morning by another. ”

“ The King was on his throne; but the Bishop of Winchester, his uncle, then Chancellor of England, opened the business of the session. On this, as on many similar occasions, the chancellor, generally a prelate, addressed the assembled states in an oration, half speech and half sermon, upon a passage of Scripture selected as a text. On the opening of this parliament, the chancellor informed the peers and the commons that the King's purpose in calling them together as the Great Council of the nation was threefold:—First, he was desirous of supporting the throne,—"his high and royal estate;" ”

“ And having no friend whom I believe myself to be so assured of as your lordship, even thereupon I am bold by these heartily to desire your travail in my behalf [if it so stand with your good opinion] to the Queen's Majesty, to grant me my discharge from the same. Wherein I trust my Lord Chancellor* will join with you, if it content you to move him thereunto, who, by words of marvellous effect comprising both the Queen's commandment that I should enter into it, and his earnest request at that time also, did cause me to take in hand the same. ”

“ They contended that the people wore so fleeced by the tax-gatherers, that the land-owners could not collect their rents, and that the ministers and their officers embezzled the public moneys. The first on whom they meant to open their charge was the chancellor, De la Pole, the new Earl of Suffolk. The chancellor opened the Parliament, which met at Westminster, in October, 1386, with a bold announcement: the king, he said, was resolved to punish the French for their menaced invasion, by passing over at the head of a suitable armament, and carrying the war into France. ”