committee of thirty-eight, who were appointed to draw up the charge; but he never attended the sittings, and refused afterwards to pronounce his approval of the proceedings of the high court of justice. His memorandum on the king's death is thus expressed :-" Jan. 30, I went not to the house, but stayed all day at home, in my study and at my prayers, that this day's work might not so displease God as to bring prejudice to this poor afflicted nation." Yet there was certainly a degree of trimming and vacillation about Whitelocke's conduct at this crisis, for, in the month of February following, we find him pronouncing his disapprobation of the vote of the house, of the 5th of December, namely, "that his majesty's concessions to the propositions of the parliament were sufficient grounds for settling the peace of the kingdom;" and he even drew up the act for abolishing the house of lords, with his own hand, although he had formally dissented from that contemplated measure.

On the 8th of February, he was appointed one of the three lords commissioners of the new great seal of the commonwealth of England. He urges the following reasons as his apology for the acceptance of this trust: "because he was already very deeply engaged with this party; and because the business to be undertaken by him was the execution of law and justice, without which men could not live one by another—a thing of absolute necessity to be done." On the 14th of the same month he was chosen one of the thirty members of the council of state, and a few months after he was elected high-steward of Oxford. Cromwell still continued to favour him with much of his confidence, and frequently consulted him on professional points. He at last got him appointed ambassador to Christina of Sweden. In this situation he displayed very respectable diplomatic talents, and concluded a well-based alliance between the two countries in 1654. The journal which he kept while employed in this embassy, was published by Dr Morton in 1772. It is a curious and valuable document, and is printed literally from Whitelocke's manuscript. After his return home, he received the thanks of parliament, and had £2000 ordered him for the expenses of his embassy. He appears, however, to have been dissatisfied with his treatment upon the whole, and talks of himself in the conclusion of his journal as having performed a most difficult and dangerous work" for a very thankless government.

66

Richard Cromwell restored the great seal to him, which he had resigned in 1655; but his office ceased on Richard's deposition. During the confusion which followed, it has been suspected that Whitelocke negotiated a good deal with Hyde and the leading men among the royalists; but there is no clear proof of this; and the neglect amounting to contempt with which he was subsequently treated by Charles is some testimony in favour of his integrity. He died on the 28th of January, 1676. The first edition of his 'Memorials of the English affairs,' was published in 1682; the second in 1732. He also wrote Memorials of early English history which were published in 1709.

Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle.

BORN A. D. 1592.-died a. d. 1676.

THIS accomplished nobleman was the eldest son of Sir Charles Cavendish, younger brother to the first earl of Devonshire. He was born in the year 1592, and privately educated under his father's roof. In 1617, he succeeded to his father's fine estate, and in 1620 was raised to the peerage by the titles of Lord Ogle and Viscount Mansfield.

Charles I. advanced him, in 1627, to the earldom of Newcastle-onTyne. He now got involved in politics in spite of his unambitious and retiring disposition. He excited the jealousy of Buckingham, and won the friendship of Wentworth; but the king withstood the attempts of the favourite to displace the earl from his confidence, and in 1638 appointed him governor to the prince of Wales. The earl proved a munificent as well as faithful subject. He gave the king a most superb reception at Welbeck house when on his way to his coronation in Scotland; and within a year or two afterwards made the king and queen "a more stupendous entertainment" at Bolsover castle. He also assisted Charles's necessities with a free gift of £10,000, and a body of horse equipped at his own expense, when preparing to awe the Scottish covenanters into submission. Soon after his return from Scotland, whither he had accompanied Charles, he resigned his office of governor to the prince.

In the beginning of 1642 he met the king at York, and took possession with troops raised by himself, of Newcastle-on-Tyne. One of the first subsequent acts of the parliament was to declare Newcastle a traitor to the state, and excepted from any pardon; while the king, on his part, appointed him general of all forces to be levied north of the Trent. In his military command he was at first very successful, and was rewarded by a grant of the title of Marquess of Newcastle; but the battle of Marston-moor annihilated his army, and with difficulty he made his escape to Scarborough where he immediately embarked for Hamburgh. After spending some time successively at Hamburgh, Amsterdam, and Paris, he finally settled at Antwerp, where, though greatly depressed in his finances, he contrived to beguile the tedium of exile with literary composition, encouraged, doubtless, by the example of his countess, herself an authoress of high reputation in these times. He wrote four lays, and a treatise on the training and management of horses.

After an absence of eighteen years, he once more set foot on his native land in the suite of Charles II.; and on the 16th of March, 1664, he was elevated to the dignities of Earl of Ogle and Duke of Newcastle. He died on the 25th of December, 1676, having passed the closing years of his life mostly in retirement. Clarendon thus sketches his character: "he was a very fine gentleman, active, and full of courage, and most accomplished in those qualities of horsemanship, dancing, and fencing, which accompany a good breeding, in which his delight was. Besides that, he was amorous in poetry and music, to which he indulged the greatest part of his time; and nothing could have tempted him out of those paths of pleasure, which he enjoyed in a full and ample fortune,

but honour and ambition to serve the king when he saw him in distress, and abandoned by most of those who were in the highest degree obliged to him and by him."

Sir Matthew Hale.

BORN A. d. 1609.-DIED a. D. 1676.

MATTHEW HALE was born at Alderley, in Gloucestershire, on the 1st of November, 1609. His father had been educated for the bar, but abandoned his profession from conscientious scruples. Burnet says, "he gave over the practice of the law, because he could not understand the reason of giving colour in pleading, which, as he thought, was to tell a lie." The father dying before Matthew was five years old, his guardian placed him under the tuition of a puritan teacher, and afterwards sent him to Magdalene hall-Oxford, where Obadiah Sedgwick then presided-with the intention of educating him for the ministry. His proficiency, both at school and at college, was for a time extraordinary. According to the custom of the age, he studied Aquinas, Saurez, and Scotus; but the young puritan at last fell into bad company and habits, and for a time abandoned study altogether. Being gifted by nature with a powerful and agile frame, he became fond of all athletic exercises, and acquired great skill in the art of fencing. At last he renounced divinity and resolved to trail a pike in the prince of Orange's army.

From this resolution he was turned aside by an apparently trifling circumstance. Being obliged, in a suit of law, to watch the progress of the case himself, and act as his own solicitor, he was brought into frequent contact with Sergeant Granville, who soon discovered that his young client was possessed of many of those qualities which would fit him for the successful study of the law. He conjured him to give up his military views, and finally succeeded in marching his protegee to Lincoln's inn, where he was admitted towards the close of the year 1629. He now made up for the time which he had lost, by pursuing his studies with astonishing ardour and diligence. One of his first resolutions, on coming to London, was, that he would never again visit the theatre, from which he was conscious he had received the greatest injury. He also exchanged the gay clothing of a young man of fashion for a plain and student-like habit, and with such intense resolution did he enter upon the work now before him, that for some years he devoted no less than sixteen hours each day to study. Yet he still occasionally mixed with gay company, nor did he wholly abandon such society until an incident occurred which deeply affected him. One of his companions, at a convivial party, having indulged so deeply in draughts of wine as to fall speechless and senseless on the floor, Hale was so deeply affected by the sight that he instantly retired into another room, and solemnly vowed never more to be guilty of intemperance, nor drink a health while he lived. His friend recovered, but he religiously observed his vow, though he was sometimes railed at for not drinking the king's health after the Restoration. An entire change appeared now to be produced on his mind: he forsook vain company, and devoted himself

exclusively to the duties of religion, and the study of his profession; he also took a strict account of his time, and probably composed that scheme for the daily distribution of his time and regulation of his life, which Bishop Burnet has preserved. He was afterwards enabled to declare, that for a space of thirty-six years he had never on one occasion been absent from public worship; yet he was far from being an ostentatious professor, and neither prayed nor gave alms to be seen of men.' He also kept the hours of the hall constantly in term time, and seldom put himself out of commons, as it is called, in the vacation. He was very diligent in his researches; and, according to the laborious practice of the day, compiled a common-place book of what he read, mixed with his own observations, of which an eminent judge, who afterwards had an opportunity of inspecting it, was heard to say, that "though it was composed by him so early, he did not think any lawyer in England could have done it better."

It was Hale's good fortune, at this early period of life, to secure the friendship of two no less distinguished persons than Selden and Vaughan. The former prompted him to extend his pursuit of learning beyond the strict limits of his profession. He soon became skilled in the Roman law and ancient history. He also made considerable progress in the mathematical sciences, and added to his other acquirements a respectable knowledge of medicine, and a more than ordinary acquaintance with divinity. His indefatigable industry enabled him to achieve what, in the case of ordinary men, would have been an impossible task, and to acquire an extent and variety of learning which would have utterly distracted minds of a weaker texture and less energetic habits. He rose early, was never idle; scarcely ever inquired after, or talked about, the news of the day; entered into no epistolary correspondence, except such as business demanded; and spent very little time at his meals or in bodily recreation.

Mr Hale was called to the bar about the commencement of the civil war between Charles I. and the parliament. The time was unpropitious, and particularly trying for the members of the legal profession. He chose Pomponius Atticus for his model at this juncture; and like that distinguished Roman, he passed unhurt through those distracted times, by adhering steadily to two rules of conduct; the one of which was to engage in no faction, nor meddle with any public business,-the other, always to lean to the side of the oppressed. There was prudence at least in this conduct. He seems, however, from the very first, to have had a bias towards the presbyterian party, influenced, doubtless, by the principles of puritanism which had been so early instilled into his mind. This avowed neutrality in politics, and the high personal respect in which he was held by both parties, pointed him out from the first as a desirable advocate to such of the prerogative party as were put upon trial for political offences. He accordingly appeared as counsel for the earl of Strafford, Archbishop Laud, the duke of Hamilton, and the lords Holland, Capel, and Craven. On the trial of the latter nobleman, the attorney-general threatened Hale with the displeasure of the government, but he spiritedly answered, that "he was pleading in defence of those laws which they declared they would maintain and preserve; that he was doing his duty to his client, and was not to be daunted with threatenings." Wood informs us that Hale

subscribed the solemn league and covenant in 1643, and that he appeared several times, with other laymen, in the Westminster assembly. His views of prelacy must at this time have been very different from what they were at a later period of his life.

On the death of Charles I. Hale, less scrupulous than Vaughan, took the engagement, "to be true and faithful to the commonwealth of England, without a king or house of lords." Soon after this, he was appointed one of a committee to consider the reformation of the law. The committee met several times, but effected little. On the death of the king, and the resignation of six out of the twelve judges, Hale was offered a seat in the common pleas. At first he scrupled to accept the proffered dignity, but upon being urged to it by all his friends, and having had his scruples satisfied by Drs Shelden and Henchman, he came to the resolution, "that, as it was absolutely necessary to have justice and property kept up at all times, it was no sin to take a commission from usurpers." On his appointment to the bench, he refused to take any part in the proceedings instituted against individuals for political offences; and at last declined even to sit on the crown side at the assizes, being doubtful of the legality of the commission under which he acted. In 1654, Hale was elected one of the representative knights of the shire, for the county of Gloucester. On taking his seat, he moved that the legislative authority should be affirmed to be in the parliament of the people of England, and a single person qualified with such instructions as that assembly should authorise; but that the military power, for the present, should reside in the protector. He likewise exerted himself greatly in exposing the madness, injustice, and mischief, of a proposition which had been made for destroying all records in the tower, and settling the nation on a new foundation; and such was the zeal and success with which he acted on this occasion, that "he stopped even the mouths of the frantic people themselves." When the protector died, Hale refused to receive a new commission from Richard Cromwell, In the same year, he was returned as one of the members for the university of Oxford; and, in 1660, he appeared as knight of the shire for the county of Gloucester, in the parliament which recalled Charles II. He was not, however, for admitting the king without reasonable restrictions, being no friend to the indefeasible right of prerogative. He moved that a committee be appointed to look into the propositions that had been offered by the king during the war, that from thence such propositions might be digested as would be fitting to send over to his successor. The motion was opposed by Monk, who urged the danger of delay in the then agitated state of the country.'

After the Restoration, Hale was of opinion-that nothing could be done more beneficial to all parties, than to pass an act of indemnity; and he applied himself with great diligence to frame and carry through such a measure; but the design was ultimately abandoned in consequence of a vote of the servile commons in opposition to it. It was not without considerable real reluctance that Clarendon had persuaded Hale again to undertake the arduous duties of a judicial station. Among other serious objections, he urged the smallness of his estate, and the greatness of his expenses and debts. "My estate," he says, "is

'Burnet's Own Times.