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Hilary term we had none, by reason of the &c.—the diarist's singular method of alluding to the abdication of King James."

He drew up an address from the Inns of Court to James II., · remarkable for the slavish character of its doctrine; but the monarch's attack on the church startled him, along with many others, into sobriety.

"That he should have been selected one of the counsel for the seven bishops seems at the first glance more extraordinary, but Sir Bartholomew was a stronger churchman than loyalist, had sacrificed his office from love to the Church of England, and would, even to wearisomeness, assert the independence of the bar. The following instances during the trial sufficiently attest his pertinacity. Several counsel had been heard in the bishops' case, when the recorder rose. C. J. Wright.—' What again! Well, go on, Sir Bartholomew, if we must have a speech!' The counsel gave way, but when there was a pause for the arrival of Lord Sunderland, the judge interposed: Sir Bartholomew, now we have time to hear your speech, if you will.' Nothing daunted by the sarcasm, the persevering advocate repeated his objection, was answered, and again jumped up. 'Will your lordship be pleased to spare me one

word?'

"Chief Justice. I hope we shall have done by and by.' "Shower. If your lordship don't think fit, I can sit down.'

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Chief Justice. No, no; go on, Sir Bartholomew, you'll say I have spoiled a good speech.""

This mode of asserting the independence of the bar, though no one now dreams of assailing it, is still practised. The present chief justice is too well bred to adopt the same style of interruption; but juniors would do well to take a hint from the expression of his face when a third or fourth counsel rises on the same side.

Shower wrote two or three clever pamphlets, made sundry violent speeches, and died at Harrow in 1700, "an unlucky moment," says Mr. Townsend, "for his prospects of deserved promotion, on the eve of a Tory court and high church government." Not exactly on the eve, if the constitution of Queen Anne's first ministries be remembered.

Equally rapid, impetuous, and eccentric in his meteoric

course with the subject of the preceding memoir, was that eminent Whig lawyer, who more than any other profited by the accession of the House of Hanover, Mr. Nicolas Lechmere, the descendant of an ancient family, which came originally from the Low Countries, and served under William the Conqueror. The grandson of a baron of the exchequer, he selected the same profession and signalized the early part of his career by a romantic adventure.

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Having pleaded before the Lords, on the return to a habeas corpus contrary to a resolution of the House of Commons, he was ordered, in requital of his manly daring, into the custody of the serjeant, and evaded the attempts of the messengers to seize him with clever hardihood. The baffled serjeant, failing to produce his prisoner, made a special report to the angry Commons, that he had like to have taken Mr. Lechmere, but that the young gentleman got out of his chambers in the Temple, two pair of stairs high, at the back window by the help of his sheets and a rope.' The prorogation of parliament relieved the fugitive lawyer from further danger. At the Revolution he was made serjeant with eleven others, and gave rings, the mottoes on which conveyed a graceful compliment to King William, Veniendo restituit rem.'

"Returned to parliament for Appleby in the following reign (1708), he was impetuous enough to speak the instant he had taken the oaths, upon which a country gentleman interrupted his maiden speech, and facetiously objected to his right to be heard, as he was not a sitting member' (he had never sat down since he entered the house, and could not have qualified). Much as the race of ready talkers has increased, this alacrity of address exceeds any modern instance. Mr. Hunt spoke three times the first night of taking his seat; the Earl Cowper did the same. Mr. Praed (query?) and other lawyers are reported to have been equally quick of tongue, but they one and all took a longer breathing time.”

In most of the political trials he took a leading part in support of Whig principles; and when Bolingbroke caused fourteen booksellers to be taken up at once for publishing political pamphlets and ballads, "he applied to the Queen's Bench for a habeas corpus with indignant vehemence, declaring that, if the duties of a secretary of state in England were discharged

with outstretching tyranny like this, they would be as bad as those of an inquisitor of Spain !"

At the accession of George I. he was made solicitor and afterwards attorney-general. The most curious passage in his life is the charge of corruption preferred against him by the solicitor-general, Sir William Thompson:

“The pest of joint-stock companies at that time overran the country, and the fees upon their patents of incorporation formed no inconsiderable addition to the revenues of the law officers of the crown. The solicitor-general, Sir William Thompson, feeling jealous at the attorney's receiving much larger sums of money than himself from some of these companies, and being alone consulted. by others, in a fit of peevish folly denounced his colleague to the committee that had been appointed to inquire into all joint-stock companies applying for charters, and charged him not only with pocketing large bribes, contrary to his oath of office, but with permitting public biddings for charters at his chambers, as at an auction. Mr. Lechmere asserted his entire innocence with characteristic and honourable warmth. He had the honour to be a privy councillor, chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, attorney-general, a member of that house, and, more than all, a gentleman. Such an accusation of sordid baseness could not therefore but fall more heavily upon him. He owned himself liable to a great many human frailties and imperfections, but his conscience wholly acquitted him of the crimes laid to his charge. He defied all the world, the worst and bitterest of his enemies, to prove him guilty of corrupt or unwarrantable practices, and demanded an immediate inquiry.'

"The infamy of the imputation rendered an early investigation essential, and a committee sat at once to hear the evidence. Sir William Thompson called, as his principal witnesses, the attorneys for the mines and battery companies, who proved that they wanted a charter of insurance, and had nine attendances before the attorneygeneral, with an array of six counsel on their side, and three or four on that of their opponents, and kept up the discussion at his chambers from six till ten at night. Sir William Chapman and some others of the petitioners waited on Mr. Lechmere with his fee. He said, 'What do they come to me for! Why do they not leave it with my clerk?" They said it was a matter of weight, and desired to give it into his own hands. The fee they gave was sixty guineas. Other witnesses proved that they also gave fifty guineas: a large fee, certainly, but far too little for a bribe. Mr. Lechmere's clerk said, in a cursory way, 'They paid handsomely on the other side.'

"The clerk to the privy council proved that these references were sometimes ordered to be made to the attorney and solicitor jointly; there had been in the proportion of five to one at least to the attorney-general alone. Though the attorney-general's clerk had been too eager, there did not rest even a passing shadow of suspicion on his master. It was resolved unanimously, that the informations of Sir William Thompson were malicious, false, scandalous, and utterly groundless, and the committee adopted with one voice a resolution, that it appears the Right Honourable Nicholas Lechmere has discharged his trust in the matters referred to him with honour and integrity.' The report was ordered to be printed, that the vindication of his character might be complete, and the futile malice of his accuser become generally known."

Thompson was dismissed from his office, but afterwards became Recorder of London and a baron of the Exchequer. Lechmere was afterwards selected as the antagonist of Walpole, who however generally carried the House with him.

"Their heat in discussing the South Sea scheme is naively described in the private letter of a spectator. Mr. Lechmere answered Walpole, but little, God wot, to the matter in hand, for quitting that, he fell into invectives against his former scheme, giving great preference to this. Walpole, being irritated, rose again, and began by showing, by papers in his hand, how very unfairly Lechmere had represented facts—then proceeded to show his fallacious mode of reasoning, and concluded with going more particularly into the scheme, which, in several material facts, he exposed sufficiently. Lechmere rose up, having taken time to consider whilst another had spoken, in order to reply: but this was prevented by the whole committee rising at once, and going into the floor; the chairman tore his throat with 'To order, hear your member,' but all to no purpose, other than to mortify Lechmere, by the members crying out, We have heard him long enough.'

Lechmere was called up to the House of Lords in 1721 by the title of Lord Lechmere, Baron Evesham; but he left no family, and his honours died with him, 1727.

We shall look with impatience for the appearance of Mr. Townsend's future volumes; for the work, if not quite a History of the House of Commons, promises to make large and valuable additions to the materials for composing one.

H.

ART. VII.-PROGRESS OF THE NEW RECORD SYSTEM.-CONSOLIDATION OF RECORDS AND OFFICES.

The Second, Third, and Fourth Reports of the DeputyKeeper of the Public Records, presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty, 1841, 1842, 1843.

DURING the last two years the Master of the Rolls, who was constituted by the Public Records Act (1 & 2 Vict. c. 94) the Keeper General of great part of the Public Records, made a virtual "Magister Rotulorum" for the rolls of all courts as well as his own, and invested with a general superintending care over all Records, has not suffered the operation of this act to remain a dead letter, but has carried out its intentions vigorously and extensively, as far as the means at his disposal enabled him.

Of the arrangements adopted for giving effect to the new act, we gave our readers some account at the commencement of the new system,1 and we now present them with a brief statement of the most important changes which have resulted from these arrangements during the last two years.

It must be borne in mind, however, that whilst these changes have greatly promoted the public convenience in the use of the Records, and have tended to further the ulterior and permanent objects of the Record Act, they can only be considered as temporary and incomplete measures, until a general public office is erected, that grand and indispensable panacea for all past mismanagement, and the only certain guarantee for permanent good.

Yet, temporary as the present state of the Record system must confessedly be considered, a knowledge of it is indispensable to those members of the profession who are accustomed to make practical use of the Public Records.

The first steps of amelioration under the new system were obviously to give the public a free access to the Records, which was virtually denied to them under the old. This was at once accomplished by the provision of uniform and methodical attendance at each office, and the removal of obstruc

124 Law Mag. 357.