it is, that lawyers were now in bad odour. Thomas de Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, was in this reign chancellor for the fifth time: which appears to indicate, on the one hand, that his administration of the office was appreciated; and on the other, that he was not well satisfied with himself for undertaking it. What a contrast to St. Thomas !

This brings us to the age of Cardinal Beaufort, whose name will readily occur to our readers as one of the most illustrious holders of the great seal, and as the predecessor, and in many respects perhaps the exemplar, of Wolsey. To those who have formed their ideas of history upon Protestant authorities, or who have not disabused their minds of the mendacious and calumnious misrepresentations of Shakspeare, the great cardinal of Henry V. will be as much, or more, an object of prejudiced dislike as the great cardinal of Henry VIII.; and both will very much be associated in their minds with aversion to Catholic ecclesiastics in general, and to cardinals in particular. But though very likely Beaufort was not scrupulously careful as to his episcopal duties, no complaint was ever made of neglect in his judicial, and none can be substantiated of misconduct in his political duties. He was unquestionably faithful to the country and the crown; and if failing in fidelity, it was rather to the Pope than to his prince, and it was the Church, not the State, that had a right to complain. Mr. Foss does this illustrious ecclesiastic no more than justice; but in a Protestant it displays a praiseworthy freedom from prejudice when he declares, that "though more attentive to his political than his episcopal duties, there is little that can affect his character as a man anxious at once to serve his sovereign and promote his country's welfare;" and he says, that the imputations against him of being a party to the Duke of Gloucester's death are not supported even by probability. The cardinal had for some years retired from court, and at the time his own dissolution was rapidly approaching, taking place in six weeks afterwards. His personal neglect of episcopal duties was only during the time he was occupied with others of greater importance, perhaps, to the country at large; and it does not at all appear that he forgot to make full provision for the management of his diocese by vicars-general. Beaufort was not a Borromeo; but taking the whole of his long episcopal career of half a century, he was not a bad bishop. The time during which he was engaged in duties not episcopal he was exerting himself for the benefit of his country (and we may observe, in passing, that these illustrious ecclesiastics constantly did the state good service by embassies of peace), and he expended vast sums in works of piety and charity:

in completing the cathedral of Winchester; in the endowment of the hospital of St. Cross; and in gifts to the poor, for whom he made abundant provision in his will. This is the man whom Shakspeare represents as dying a murderer and a maniac! No more monstrous instance could be adduced of the false traditions by which-as Sir F. Palgrave and Dr. Newman have shewn-the people of this country are duped and deluded. Cardinal Beaufort was never chancellor, having resigned the great seal before he received the hat. Some of his predecessors and successors in the chancellorship, with abilities not so striking, yet attained to higher rank. Langley, Archbishop of York, was chancellor, and afterwards cardinal (temp. Henry IV.), and resembled Beaufort, if not in ability, in liberality. He resigned all secular offices towards the close of his life to attend to his episcopal duties, and occupied himself in many magnificent and charitable works in his diocese, founding schools and enriching colleges. The successor of Beaufort was Kempe, who was Archbishop of York, chancellor, and cardinal. He was a man of such extraordinary energy and ability, that after resigning the chancellorship, he was, when past the age of seventy, entreated to resume it, and exercised the office at the time of his death, on hearing of which his sovereign said, "One of the wisest lords in this land is dead!" And he, at least, is an instance of an ecclesiastic holding these high offices irreproachably, for Mr. Foss informs us that "his character was unblemished." His name is remembered in the University of Oxford, to the schools of which, as well as to his own college (Merton), he was a munificent benefactor. He also beautified the collegiate church of Southwell; and in 1447 founded a college of secular priests, for the celebration of divine service and the instruction of youth; the idea of which seems somewhat of an anticipation of the vocation of the Jesuits and Oratorians.

We now naturally pass to the age of Wolsey, the last in the long line of illustrious ecclesiastics who held the chancellorship. Of him we need not say much. No historian denies the ability with which he exercised the offices he held, or disputes the sincerity of his dying exclamation, "Had I but served my God as faithfully as I have served my prince!" an exclamation clearly implying a consciousness of fidelity to his sovereign and his country; and amply confirming what we contend is a summary of the history of the great seal up to this time, that the possession of it by ecclesiastics was good for the country, though bad for themselves and for the Church. Prejudiced must that man be, who, in spite of the magnificent catalogue of ecclesiastical chancellors-illustrious with such

names as Wykeham and Waynefleete and Wolsey, Beaufort and Kempe and Langley, can cherish the vulgar idea, that ecclesiastical rule is injurious to a nation. England was never better ruled than by these Premier-Primates or rather Primate-Premiers-whose magnificent minds were equal to the overwhelming duties of prime minister, primate, papal legate, and chancellor. Truly there were giants in those days. These men were great not merely intellectually, but morally. Wealth they valued only as the means of a magnificent liberality and a large-minded charity; and colleges, churches, cathedrals, and schools are monuments of the princely and pious character of our ecclesiastical chancellors.

The successor of Wolsey in the chancellorship was, however, Sir Thomas More; and the first of our line of lay chancellors was the first of martyrs to the Papal Supremacy. What manner of man he was, no Catholic need be told. He was one of the few chancellors whose life and character is well known and worth knowing. More was, when a youth, in the household of Cardinal Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, a splendid specimen of the old race of ecclesiastical chancellors. He had been an eminent civilian and canonist, and was primate and premier during most of the reign of Henry VII., and until his own death, which happened at the advanced age of ninety. He lived to perceive and predict the coming greatness of More, who thus described his venerable predecessor in the chancellor's chair: "He was a man of great natural wit, very well learned, and honourable in behaviour."* "He was venerable for his wisdom and virtues, and for the high character he bore. His looks begot reverence rather than fear; his conversation was easy, but serious and grave; he spoke gracefully and weightily; he was eminently skilled in the law, and had a vast understanding and a prodigious memory; and those talents with which nature had furnished him were improved by study and experience. The king depended much on his counsels, and the government seemed chiefly supported by him."+

It is to be noted that More, infinitely the most illustrious of the long series of lawyer-chancellors which commenced with him, was in early youth brought up in the house of the venerable Morton, and was the immediate successor of Wolsey. He seems to have imbibed something of the grandeur of character which belonged to these cardinal-chancellors and the age they had adorned. He was certainly very unlike his successors, not one of whom can compare with him. His immediate successor, Audley,-who was such a striking contrast + More's Utopia.

*More's Hist. Rich. iii.

to him, and who is remembered merely on that account,-far more fairly represents them, marked as they are by selfish servility and clever mediocrity.

It is interesting to observe how the first of lay-chancellors spoke of the last of ecclesiastical. On his installation, More said of Wolsey, "When I looke upon this seate; when I thinke how great and what kind of personages have possessed this place before me; when I call to mind who he was that sate in it last of all-a man of what singular wisdome, of what notable experience; what a prosperous and favourable fortune he had for a great space, and how at the last he had a most grievous fall, and died inglorious, I have cause enough to think dignity not so grateful to me as it may seem to others; for it is a hard matter to follow with like grace or praises a man of such admirable wit, prudence, authority, and splendour, to whom I may seem but as the lighting of a candle when the sun is down."*

The class of men of whom such a one as More could thus speak could not but have merited eulogium and admiration; and a modern Protestant biographer thus speaks of Wolsey's chancellorship: "We possess unquestionable evidence of the ability and general impartiality of the Cardinal's administration in the Court of Chancery, in which he spared neither high nor low, but judged every one according to their merits and deserts. He established courts for protecting the poor against the oppression of the rich; and his ingenuity and influence were sedulously applied during his entire career in rendering the laws intelligible, simple, cheap, and respected."†

Of the successor of More, the infamous Audley, it is enough to say, that he (with such a man as Spelman, to his shame be it recorded) sat on the commission which condemned the illustrious lawyer as a traitor for not submitting to the blasphemy of the royal supremacy. And it is the most simple, though the most severe way of describing the moral calibre of the successors of Audley, to say that they resembled him rather than More, and have upheld that blasphemy and all its hideous consequences with courtly servility, and down to our own days with crafty cruelty. This is true of them all; from Bacon to Hardwicke, from Hardwicke to Eldon, from Eldon to Cottenham and Langdale,—all have remorselessly carried out the penal policy of the royal supremacy, so long as public opinion would permit them, by proscription, and even in our

* In a letter to Erasmus, More speaks of "the Cardinal of York" (Wolsey) discharging the duties of the chancellorship so admirably, as to surpass the hopes of all. + Lardner's Lives of British Statesmen.

own times by confiscation. A new system had now sprung up; the great seal now became the prize of the ablest practising lawyers of the day, men whose hearts were hardened by the keen pursuit of wealth in the practice of the profession, and generally depraved by the bloody training which the holding of office as crown-lawyers under the Tudors and Stuarts too often involved. Under such men Chancery became corrupted into that execrable and abominable system which for generations has been a curse, a scandal, and a shame to the country; and to which the public hope (perhaps vainly) that a death-blow has been dealt in the Chancery Reform Act of last session. Such a system could never have been the growth of true greatness. It never could have been constructed under the auspices of men either intellectually or morally meriting the epithet of great. The popular idea, the notorious truth, as to the Court of Chancery, must be in itself a monument and epitaph for the Protestant chancellors who made it what it was.

Let all our readers remark this plain historical fact, that all this system grew up under Protestant governments and Protestant judges, and ripened into its rank luxuriance of injustice and iniquity under the fostering care of the House of Hanover. This might dispense with any further notice of the Protestant chancellors in the interval. Truly, indeed, if we wished to say much of them, it would scarcely be possible; and if it were possible, they would not be worthy of it. For they were for the most part-almost universally-a mercenary race: narrow-minded among statesmen (even such as were counted large-minded among lawyers), insomuch that they soon ceased to be premiers, and often were not even leading ministers, indeed, not unfrequently were the least influential members of the Cabinet. In a word, so soon as England ceased to be Catholic, her chancellors ceased to be statesmen, and sank into mere lawyers. No trace can be found of the magnificence of character which marked our ecclesiastical chancellors. The Protestant lawyer-chancellors have lived but for themselves, "to put money in their purse," or at the utmost dispense patronage. They left no monuments behind them of a grand and princely charity. The only one among them intellectually great was morally mean; and the name of Bacon is degraded by bribery.

The old English chancellors were remarkable for their princely charity, and spent the wealth they acquired upon the country. The modern race of chancellors spent their money only on their own families, and not only were the loss of charity themselves, but caused the loss of it in others.