William Thurlow

“ In 1775 he commenced practising as a special pleader on his own account, and soon made a handsome income. After five years' drudgery in chambers he was called to the bar on 12 June 1780 (the same day as William Pitt, his fellow-student of Lincoln's Inn) , and joined the northern circuit, where his family connection and the reputation which he had acquired as a special pleader stood him in good stead. He rapidly acquired a large practice, and in spite of Thurlow's objections to his whig principles was made a king's counsel on 27 June 1787, and on 16 Nov. ”

“ Horsley: it was well known that Thurlow hated Priestley from the bottom of his heart; and, indeed, whatever he might be practically himself, he on all occasions manifested a consistent [304] determination to support the Established Church. He was familiarly acquainted with Beaufoy, the Member for Yarmouth, in Norfolk, who was known to be a strict Dissenter, and the conversation one day turning on the subject of religion, he said to Beaufoy, “I would support your d⸺d religion, if it was that of the state.” ”

“ John's) , William Ludlam.
490 ↑ William Paley (1743-1805) was afterwards a tutor at Christ's College, Cambridge. He never contributed anything to mathematics, but his Evidences of Christianity (1794) was long considered somewhat of a classic. He also wrote Principles of Morality and Politics (1785) , and Natural Theology (1802) .
491 ↑ Edward, first Baron Thurlow (1731-1806) is known to Americans because of his strong support of the Royal prerogative during the Revolution. He was a favorite of George III, and became Lord Chancellor in 1778. ”

“ A great deal more might be said, and not without exciting interest, of this singular character, but it appears that our friend’s memorandums must be curtailed; they would otherwise extend to too great a length. With the exception of Lord Shelburne and Colonel Barré, Mr. T.’s political friends varied somewhat with times and circumstances. He was once very intimate with Lord Thurlow, with Horne Tooke, with Sawbridge, and Oliver, and Wilkes, and many similar characters of that day, but before his death, these connections ceased altogether. ”

“ And back of all, stood Thurlow Weed, the matchless manager, whose adroitness and wisdom had been crowned with success for a whole generation. "He is one of the most remarkable men of our time," wrote Samuel Bowles, in the preceding February. "He is cool, calculating, a man of expedients, who boasts that for thirty years he had not in political affairs let his heart outweigh his judgment." Governor Edwin D. Morgan and Henry J. Raymond were his lieutenants, William M. Evarts, his floor manager, and a score of men whose names were soon to become famous acted as his assistants. ”

“ Lord Thurlow was a man of pleasure, but a scholar, a patron of literature and the arts, though sometimes accused of 49bestowing benefits in an ungracious manner. He never married, and his honours devolved on his brother, the Bishop of Durham. He left three natural daughters, to two of whom he bequeathed good fortunes, and to the other only a scanty pittance, in consequence of her having made a marriage which displeased him. ”

“ This refusal the Chancellor accompanied with a munificent offer of supply out of his own purse, which he endeavoured to convey in such a manner as should least alarm the independent spirit of Johnson. "It would be a reflection on us all, (said Thurlow,) if such a man should perish for want of the means to take care of his health." The abilities of Thurlow had always been held in high estimation by Johnson, who had been heard to say of him, "I would prepare myself for no man in England but Lord Thurlow. ”

“ He seems to have regarded all mankind with distrust. On the Bench, his disposition vented itself in judgments remarkable for their brevity and the irascible tone in which they were delivered. His utterance was sonorous, with the mysterious pomp and grandiloquence of an oracle, kindling up at times into solemn denunciation. His "make up" must have been perfect in its way, from the awful air of preparation for which his speeches are said to have been so remarkable. Thurlow acted with Pitt and the Whigs, and was pronounced equally impracticable by both. ”

“ Thurlow, "my dear child," he took a chair and drew it to the sofa, and then lifted her slight languid hand and held it between his two plump palms. "My dear Lady Standish," pursued he in a purring, soothing tone. If he did not know how to deal with an afflicted soul (especially if that afflicted soul happened to belong to the aristocracy and in preference inhabited a young female body) , who did? "I came upon the very moment I received your letter. I might perhaps have instantly done something to help in this matter, had you been more explicit, but there was a slight incoherence ... ”

“ At an early age Thurlow learned to bend circumstances to his will and, ground by poverty, shut in by limitations as he was, even while contributing by his earning to the slender resources of the family, he gathered knowledge and pleasure where many would have found but thorns and bitterness. ”

“ Imprudently relying on the friendship of the king, and actuated by scarcely disguised enmity to Pitt, Thurlow passed rapidly from occasional acts of hostility to secret disaffection, and finally to open revolt. ”

“ The ex-chancellor, who had a few days before (June 12) been created Baron Thurlow of Thurlow, with remainder to his brothers and their male descendants, now retired into private life, and, with the exception of a futile intrigue, under the auspices of the prince of Wales, for the formation of a ministry from which Pitt and Fox should be excluded, and in which the earl of Moira should be premier and Thurlow chancellor (1797) , finally abandoned the hopes of office and the dictatorship which he had so long exercised in the House of Lords. ”

“ For porter, Edward Thurlow, in his student days, had high respect and keen relish; but in his mature years, as well as still older age, full-bodied port was his favorite drink, and under its influence were seen to the best advantage those colloquial powers which caused Samuel Johnson to exclaim—"Depend upon it, sir, it is when you come close to a man in conversation that you discover what his real abilities are; to make a speech in a public assembly is a knack. Now, I honor Thurlow, sir; Thurlow is a fine fellow: he fairly puts his mind to yours." ”

“ THURLOW, EDWARD, first Baron Thurlow (1731–1806) , lord chancellor, eldest son of the Rev. Thomas Thurlow (d. 1762) , incumbent successively of Little Ashfield, Suffolk, and of Thurston, Long Stratton, and Knapton, Norfolk, by Elizabeth, daughter of Robert Smith, a descendant of Sir Richard Hovell, esquire of the body to Henry V, was born at Bracon Ash, Norfolk, on 9 Dec. 1731. His grandfather, Thomas Thurlow, whose cousin, John Thurlow, obtained a license for armorial bearings, 19 Nov. ”

“ Gentlemen, I will trouble you no further—I confidently expect your verdict." And the woman was acquitted: and from that day the powers of Thurlow, in voice, sarcasm, gesture, and all the superior intonations of browbeating, which raised him to the most dangerous pinnacle of legal greatness, became known, and rapidly advanced him to fame,14 and the grandchildren of his father to be enrolled among the established peers of our realm.
Spirit of Discovery. ON THE POTATO. By T.A. Knight, Esq., F.R.S., Pres. Hort. Soc. ”

“ The more one investigates the character and lives of those men whom we so often envy, the more we are forced to see that it was will-power rightly directed that overcame all obstacles. Certain it is to this that Thurlow Weed owes his everlasting fame as the 'American Warwick'; for knowledge is power. He first left the farm work as a cabin boy on a Hudson river steamboat bound for New York, but being born a journalist he soon drifted into a printing office where he became a good journeyman. ”

“ In the debates on the government measures for the partial relief of Irish and Scottish catholics, passed in 1791 and 1793, he took no part. On Thurlow's dismissal, on 15 June 1792, he tendered Pitt his resignation, but eventually withdrew it at Thurlow's instance, and on 13 Feb. 1793 succeeded Sir Archibald Macdonald as attorney-general. Being thus identified with the vigorous and rigorous policy pursued by the government during the next few years, he became for the time the best hated man in England. ”

“ When an entering wedge was attempted for the improvement of the bloody code of criminal law, Thurlow opposed it with passion. The particular clause selected by the reformers was one which demanded that women who had been connected with any treasonable movements should be burnt alive. It was proposed to reduce their punishment to the same scale as men's. Thurlow made it his duty to defend the ancient practice. He was, in short, mixed up with every effort of his time, which we now consider disgraceful, for arresting the gradual progress of reform. ”

“ His Majesty's attachment to Lord Thurlow may possibly have been founded on the conviction that he could securely calculate on the allegiance of a man who was [Pg 228] ready to avail himself of every opportunity to promote his own interests, and who might therefore be expected, on all occasions, to pay a deferential attention to the wishes of the King. ”

“ The moment they have you trapped, they come down upon your pocket-book like a hawk upon a May bug. After they are married they are all waste.” What a libellous fellow!
LORD CHANCELLOR THURLOW.
When Lord Thurlow was at the bar, his clerk was one day reading to him a legal instrument, and when he came to the part, “I do devise all that farm to,” &c., &c., he was seized with so very violent a fit of coughing that he could not proceed, on which the testy lawyer exclaimed, “Read on, with a curse to you—your heirs and their heirs for ever.” ”

“ He was convinced, he said, that it would come in the end to your proposition. But in the meantime Thurlow was against it, and meant to oppose the Bill; and Shelburne wanted to be forced to it, and said that he was sure a stand would be to be made somewhere; and why not now? I answered that it did not seem to me the most prudent step to choose a post where no man of any description would stand by you. We had much more conversation of the same sort. There were those, Townshend said, who had said that as the preliminaries were expected soon, it would come with better grace then. ”

“ She held herself rigid and listened—listened for the life of John Thurlow whom Elizabeth loved.
“Forty muskets and seven kegs of powder,” said one voice.
“Aye, and Thurlow and his recruits to take all on Monday night?”
“Hist!” said the captain, looking round uneasily. “Walls have ears. Monday at midnight you will have a strong band ready. We will surround the meeting-house, and then——”
“Down with the rebels! And the pay, captain?”
“Trust His Majesty for that. You can have my own share, too. Success is enough for me.”
“That and a fair field to Betty Pearson’s favor,” [200] laughed the other. ”

“ The street of a busy town was not safe from such press-gang captures, as Lord Thurlow could have told, after a certain walk he took about this time on Tower Hill, when he, the attorney-general of England, was impressed, when the Admiralty had its own peculiar ways of getting rid of tiresome besiegers and petitioners. Nor yet were lonely inland dwellers more secure; many a rustic went to a statute fair or 'mop,' and never came home to tell of his hiring; many a stout young farmer vanished from his place by the hearth of his father, and was no more heard of by mother or lover ”

“ She left a letter for her husband, and Thurlow wrote him another, offering to meet him when and where he wished, but declaring that nothing but his death should separate him from the woman he loved.
“Meanwhile—let me see, now; have I got this right? Yes, meanwhile Thurlow’s sister had married a New York man and moved away. Well, the story goes that old Walford Forrest never made a sign when he learned of his wife’s desertion. He came back here to the Hall, gave up his political career and settled down here quietly. But one thing he did do. ”

“ Thurlow was asked what he had to say for himself. He coolly, perhaps improperly replied, "that what he had done proceeded not from disrespect, but from a feeling of tenderness for the dean; he did not wish to puzzle him!" The dean, greatly irritated, ordered him out of the room; and then insisted that the Masters and Fellows ought immediately to expel or rusticate him. This request was nearly complied with, when two of the Fellows, wiser than the rest, observed, that expelling or rusticating a young man for such an offence would perhaps do much injury to the college, and expose it to ridicule ”

“ Lord Thurlow was one of those persons who, being taken by the world at their own estimate of themselves, contrive to pass upon the times in which they live for much more than they are worth. His bluntness gained him credit for superior honesty, and the same peculiarity of exterior gave a weight, not their own, to his talents; the roughness of the diamond being, by a very common mistake, made the measure of its value. The negotiation for his alliance on this occasion was managed, if not first suggested, by Sheridan ”

“ In opposition Thurlow resisted in vain the concession of exclusive jurisdiction to the Irish courts and House of Lords. He continued to be consulted by the king, and it was by his advice that the royal mind in regard to the India Bill was communicated to the peers (Buckingham, Courts and Cabinets of George III, i. 227, 289; FOX, Corresp. ed. Russell, ii. 47, 61 et seq., 251 et seq.) . On the consequent defeat of that measure the king sent for Pitt, and Thurlow resumed the great seal (23 Dec.) ”