false and prejudiced accounts he has perused of former travellers, on whom he obstinately pins his faith, in opposition to the evidence of his own senses.'

As might be conjectured from this Report, Lord Redesdale was the leading authority on the law of peerages. In some cases, especially the Banbury and L'Isle peerages, he is supposed to have carried his rigid scruples against obsolete claims to an unreasonable excess. He led the opposition to Lord Erskine's motion, that General Knollys had made out his claim to the title, dignity and honour of Earl of Banbury; and prefaced his ingenious remarks with an appeal to the prejudices of his hearers. "This is a question not simply between the crown and the claimant; it affects every earl, whose patent is of subsequent date to the patent of William, Earl of Banbury." It would be difficult, says Sir Harris Nicolas, in a note to his report of the trial, "to comment upon this sentence with too much severity. As evidence of the animus with which the speaker approached the subject, it is, however, very important, and when it is remembered that his lordship was then acting both as a judge and a juryman, and was addressing a body of persons to whom the same duties were entrusted, that he had once filled a high judicial office, and that his opinions had great weight, this appeal to the prejudices of his auditors was, to say the least, highly objectionable. Let it be supposed for a moment that a judge should commence his charge to a jury in these words: This question affects every one of you, gentlemen of the jury, who holds his lands by a deed of a subsequent date to that on which the plaintiff's title rests, and the validity of which you are now to determine.'"*

"When the petition," added the learned lord, " of Nicolas, the ancestor of the claimant, came under the consideration of the House in 1661, the Committee of Privileges, to which it was referred, instead of reporting whether the claimant was legitimate, or illegitimate, came to the extraordinary resolution, that he was legitimate in the eye of the law. It may safely be inferred that the expression could only be introduced to show that the law and the fact were at variNow what was the law, which the committee followed * Sir H. Nicolas' Report of the Banbury Peerage Case.

ance.

on this occasion? Not the law of England, for it would have led them to a different conclusion: but a certain law, laid down by Lord Coke in his Commentary on the Institutes. I have a great respect for the memory of Lord Coke, but I am ready to accede to an observation, made by some of his contemporaries, that he was too fond of making the law, instead of declaring the law, and of telling untruths to support his own opinions. Indeed, an obstinate persistance in any opinion he had embraced, was a leading defect in his character. His dispute with Lord Ellesmere furnishes us with a very strong instance of his forcing the construction of terms, and making false definitions when it suited his purpose to do so."

Sir Harris Nicolas submits that those who are best acquainted with the speeches and opinions of the noble lord, will smile at his description of Lord Coke, and may perhaps exclaim

"Mutato nomine, de te

Fabula narratur."

Whatever objections, however, may be pointed out by deep antiquarians, or black letter lawyers, to his judgment, it must be admitted that he placed the law of legitimate descent on a more rational footing than it had ever stood before, and that, in exploding the old doctrine of quatuor maria, he consulted the dictates of sound common sense.

Lord Redesdale was so jealous of claims to peerages made after a lapse of centures, that he gave notice of his intention to introduce a bill into parliament to make a limitation of time, as applicable to a question of peerage, as to a right of any other description. We are glad that he never carried his intention into effect, for there would be a palpable injustice in fettering the claim to a barony with the same limitations which bar a civil action, in extinguishing by statute that right of an ancient heir, which the crown itself is unable to destroy.

Incensed at the consequent rejection of his claim to the peerage, of his right to which he was so satisfied, that he persisted in describing himself as Baron Sudeley per legem terræ, Sir Egerton Brydges penned in revenge a violent

critique on Lord Redesdale's judgment, and condescends even to caricature his personal appearance. "His arguments on the Banbury Case," says the disappointed critic, "are unintelligible, full of contradictory sophistries, and suicidal. He seemed to be in the habit of taking each crotchet of his mind separately; all his mind was broken into exilities. He was a sallow man, with round face (vide Cleopatra), and blunt features, of the middle height, thickly and heavily built, and had a heavy, drawling, tedious manner of speech."

The passage in Shakspeare, to which the splenetic baronet refers, is doubtless act 3, scene 3, of Anthony and Cleopatra, where the Egyptian queen, inquiring of her rival Octavia, asks,

"Bear'st thou her face in mind; is't long, or round?

Messenger.-Round, even to faultiness.

Cleo. For the most part too they are foolish that are so."

The commentators add, "This is from the old writers on physiognomy. So in Hill's Pleasant History, &c. 1613. The head very round to be forgetful and foolish.'" But when Sir Egerton gravely attributes foolishness to the great law lord for this peculiarity, he only proves his own.

I remember seeing Lord Redesdale, then eighty years of age, conducting Miss Turner's divorce bill from Gibbon Wakefield through the House of Lords. He was looking round and rubicund, and presenting that appearance of cheerful old age, "frosty, but kindly," of which our peerage affords more numerous examples than any other nobility in Europe. He had a look of good humoured intelligence, that bore no approach to weakness, the model of a hearty old gentleman, such as all who knew and admired the passages of his life, as lovely and of good report in private as useful and estimable in public, would have wished him to appear. For a few months more he continued in full enjoyment of his intellectual and bodily health, and then sank by gradual, unperceived decay, expiring painlessly at his seat at Batsford Park on the 16th January, 1830, in his eighty-second year.

Few lawyers have filled with credit so many and such distinct offices of trust and power, nor have any crowded into twenty-five years of unofficial life such an infinite variety of legislative and judicial good. By the well-applied exertions of a long and active life, he has become a benefactor to all classes of his countrymen. Of his own order he commands the grateful esteem, for he watched the rights and privileges of his brother peers with almost jealous vigilance, and contributed to raise their Court of Appeal in the last resort, to that high consideration which it still bears. To his profession he has bequeathed an excellent legacy, in his writings, and admirable judgments, elucidating and confirming the law of real property. But of the humbler members of this great community, he merits in an especial manner the respect and homage, exposed as they are to fluctuations and distress; for it was he who first turned aside the law from indiscriminately visiting misfortune with the penalties due to crime alone, and stamped upon the Statute Book the great Christian precept, "to proclaim liberty to the captive, and the opening of the prison to those that were bound."

CHAPTER IV.

THE LIFE OF SIR WILLIAM GRANT.

THE lineage and name of Grant are of the highest antiquity and consideration in Scottish annals. In a singular work published in 1795, intituled "Memoires Historiques, Généalogiques, &c. de la Maison de Grant, tant en Ecosse qu'en Normandie, en Allemagne, en Suède, en Dannemarc, &c., par Charles Grant, Vicomte de Vaux," the author, a French emigré, but hearty clansman, traces the name by its etymology to the French Le Grand, and enumerates, among the worthiest modern scions of the house, "Monsieur William Grant, membre du Parlement Britannique." Lion King of Arms, he informs us, can certify the greatness of this powerful, ancient and numerous race. The descent from former renown to that obscure branch of the family, from which this great lawyer sprung, is like tracing a mighty stream into its creeks and shallows.

William Grant, descended from the Grants of Baldornie, was born at Elchies, on the banks of the Spey, in Morayshire, in 1755. His father had been a small farmer in that county, but migrated soon after his birth to the Isle of Man, where he filled the office of collector of the customs. Both his parents dying when he was very young, the care of his education devolved on an uncle, a wealthy merchant of London, and afterwards proprietor of Elchies, who discharged his duty well. The boy William was brought up, together with a younger brother, who afterwards became a collector of customs at Martinico, at the grammar school of Elgin, and boarded at the house of Mr. John Irvine, nephew to the minister. The grateful scholar contributed largely to the rebuilding of the school-house thirty years later, when the old house at home' required ample funds for its restoration. Having completed