PREFACE. THE following pages record with necessary brevity, but it is believed with faithfulness, the life-story of one who has passed from us as full of honours as of years. Without the aid either of great wealth or of political influence, Henry Lord Brougham and Vaux early achieved a greatness, to which the peerage subsequently conferred upon him for his services added nothing but the stamp of his sovereign's recognition. His untiring industry, no less than his brilliant abilities, placed him in the fore-front of his profession. His gene rous sympathies threw him in the vanguard of that small but determined band of philanthropic statesmen who, in the face of obstacles which looked insuperable, succeeded in impressing their love of freedom upon the legislation of Great Britain during the first half of the present century. Such a life-story cannot but be full of encouragement for the young of all conditions; and inasmuch as the triumphs of Lord Brougham were, for the most part, achieved before the present generation were born, it has been thought well to narrate as succinctly as may be the leading incidents of the long and splendid career which, commencing in Edinburgh ninety years ago, closed at Cannes, in France-the winter retreat of the illustrious Lord Chancellor. May 11th, 1868. LIFE AND LABOURS OF HENRY, LORD BROUGHAM. CHAPTER I. ANCESTRY AND BIRTH. A.D. 1778. The Ancestry of Lord Brougham-Romantic Story of his Father's Marriage-Brougham's Birth-Contrast between the Epoch of his Birth and the Present Times. LORD BROUGHAM started in life the inheritor of no noble title, and with no further advantages than the not inconsiderable benefit of occupying the position of the eldest son of a country squire, possessing not more than average wealth and acres. He came into the world, however, with what seems a tolerably authentic pedigree, which carries us much farther into the past than the genealogical trees of nine-tenths of the peers and ancient county families of England. That the subject of our memoir attached some importance to and took some pride in his possession of ancient and accredited gentle blood, is obvious from the fact that when his forensic achievements and political merits were rewarded with the Lord High Chancellorship of England, he elected as B the titles of his barony his own paternal surname and that of an illustrious ancestress who had married into the family of Brougham in a remote age. Although the curiosity of our readers is vastly more concerned with the actual deeds and services of the last representative of the ancient name than with any account of its former owners, yet we should needlessly depart from what is, to say the least, the harmless precedent of biographers, were we to omit all notice of what Lord Brougham's countrymen call the "forbears," and what the English call the "ancestors "* of the man whose biography we have undertaken to write. The Broughams are a Saxon family; they claim to have occupied before the Conquest the lands which the late peer owned. Camden, in his "Britannia," published in 1600, mentions the family as then owning land in the parish of Brougham, in the county of Westmoreland. He and others assert that the name of the place and family was derived from a Roman station called Broviacum, situate on the Roman wall and road which transected the north of England. Hutchinson, in his "History of Cumberland," says, "This family may be said to stand unusually eminent in point of antiquity, from having originally assumed the name of the Roman station, an area to the south of Brougham Castle, the 'vallum' and outward ditch of which are yet very distinguishable." What is now written and pronounced "Brougham," we find was for many ages spelt "Burgham." A Walter de Burgham was Lord of the Manor in the time of • In Latin, anti-sessores; in English, etymologically translated fore-sitters, those who sat before, in possession of one's patrimony. |