Thomas Egerton 02
Continued
Politics etc
Even during Elizabeth's reign, he was as much statesman as judge - a confidential adviser on domestic and foreign policy, close to the Cecils but with an independence the Queen valued, and one employed on diplomatic negotiations. He was one of few privy councillors (from 96) to witness the scene (1598), when Essex insulted the queen and she boxed his ears.
Under James he became still more valued and - though willing to raise questions - increasingly aligned himself with James's absolutist conceptions of monarchy. In addressing the judges (04) he declared that ‘the king's majesty, as it were inheritable and descended from God, hath absolute monarchical power annexed inseparably to his crown and diadem, not by common law nor statute law, but more anciently than either of them’. His views on the constitution were expounded at length in his celebrated judgment in Calvin's Case (08) determining that persons born in Scotland after James's accession were not aliens in England. The four hour speech was published 1609. He did not regard the king as being above the law and recognised the importance of a balance of power, but his increasingly elevated position in the state placed an ever growing distance between his political thinking and that of his old profession, and he seemed unable or unwilling to understand concerns shared by many lawyer MPs and judges, at what they saw as growing absolutism.
He was at odds with the judiciary on several occasions (from 04) when they opposed the king's project of a legal union between England and Scotland. He fell out with them over the use of writs of prohibition, mandamus and certiorari, which he thought were being issued too lightly and without proper supervision. Prohibitions, in particular, were depriving the ecclesiastical courts of their tithe jurisdiction, and (09) the judges were hauled before the privy council to explain themselves. Worst of all, king's bench was assuming a power of judicial review over governmental activities. Ellesmere was angry that Coke and others had taken to reviewing the activities of municipal corporations, provincial councils and even the high commission, ‘as if the King's Bench had a superintendency over the government itself’. However, the principal clash came over his claim to be able to reopen cases which had proceeded to judgment at common law, long held to be illegal (in 98 the judges in the exchequer chamber confirmed this latter position). He resumed the practice of issuing decrees after judgment under the justification that his jurisdiction was concerned not with the judgment but with the conscience of the parties. In 1615 Coke released on habeas corpus a number of prisoners committed by him in such cases.
One of the parties released, a rogue called Glanville, embarked on the foolhardy course of trying to secure an indictment upon the Statute of Praemunire not only against his opponent but also against Ellesmere himself. He made a strong complaint to James and had the matter referred to the privy council and king's counsel (particularly Bacon), with a view to disgracing Coke. In this connection he compiled (doubtless with Bacon's help) A Breviate or Direction for the King's Learned Counsel, defending his disputed jurisdiction. In 1616 the King, primed by Ellesmere and Bacon, pronounced in favour of chancery. Coke (a nuisance to the government in several respects) was thrice called before privy council, suspended and ordered to revise some supposed defects in his reports as set out in writing by Ellesmere. Timothy Tourneur, a young barrister, saw these proceedings as symbolic of a new form of tyranny for which Ellesmere was largely to blame.
Coke perceived the threat to the rule of law even earlier. Since around 09 he had been noting ‘dangerous and absurd opinions affirmed before the king’ by Ellesmere. By 1616 he had 18. Coke said Ellesmere had told James he could decide cases in person without consulting the judges, a matter on which Coke had engaged in a famous altercation with the king. Coke was especially exercised over the new practice - engineered by Bacon and Ellesmere - of summoning judges before the privy council to answer for decisions, which were openly reproved by the law officers. The result drove a wedge between the king and his judges. When Ellesmere was asked to stand with the judges on these occasions, ‘his continual answer was that he would not lie in the gap for any man’. These were serious accusations, but Coke was out of favour so was ignored. Later (16) to the profession's horror, he was peremptorily dismissed from office. Ellesmere dragged himself from his sickbed to swear in a successor, and delivered an ungracious speech warning him not to imitate his predecessor, listing his faults in detail. The Stuart form of government was set on a disastrous course.
Even during Elizabeth's reign, he was as much statesman as judge - a confidential adviser on domestic and foreign policy, close to the Cecils but with an independence the Queen valued, and one employed on diplomatic negotiations. He was one of few privy councillors (from 96) to witness the scene (1598), when Essex insulted the queen and she boxed his ears.
Under James he became still more valued and - though willing to raise questions - increasingly aligned himself with James's absolutist conceptions of monarchy. In addressing the judges (04) he declared that ‘the king's majesty, as it were inheritable and descended from God, hath absolute monarchical power annexed inseparably to his crown and diadem, not by common law nor statute law, but more anciently than either of them’. His views on the constitution were expounded at length in his celebrated judgment in Calvin's Case (08) determining that persons born in Scotland after James's accession were not aliens in England. The four hour speech was published 1609. He did not regard the king as being above the law and recognised the importance of a balance of power, but his increasingly elevated position in the state placed an ever growing distance between his political thinking and that of his old profession, and he seemed unable or unwilling to understand concerns shared by many lawyer MPs and judges, at what they saw as growing absolutism.
He was at odds with the judiciary on several occasions (from 04) when they opposed the king's project of a legal union between England and Scotland. He fell out with them over the use of writs of prohibition, mandamus and certiorari, which he thought were being issued too lightly and without proper supervision. Prohibitions, in particular, were depriving the ecclesiastical courts of their tithe jurisdiction, and (09) the judges were hauled before the privy council to explain themselves. Worst of all, king's bench was assuming a power of judicial review over governmental activities. Ellesmere was angry that Coke and others had taken to reviewing the activities of municipal corporations, provincial councils and even the high commission, ‘as if the King's Bench had a superintendency over the government itself’. However, the principal clash came over his claim to be able to reopen cases which had proceeded to judgment at common law, long held to be illegal (in 98 the judges in the exchequer chamber confirmed this latter position). He resumed the practice of issuing decrees after judgment under the justification that his jurisdiction was concerned not with the judgment but with the conscience of the parties. In 1615 Coke released on habeas corpus a number of prisoners committed by him in such cases.
One of the parties released, a rogue called Glanville, embarked on the foolhardy course of trying to secure an indictment upon the Statute of Praemunire not only against his opponent but also against Ellesmere himself. He made a strong complaint to James and had the matter referred to the privy council and king's counsel (particularly Bacon), with a view to disgracing Coke. In this connection he compiled (doubtless with Bacon's help) A Breviate or Direction for the King's Learned Counsel, defending his disputed jurisdiction. In 1616 the King, primed by Ellesmere and Bacon, pronounced in favour of chancery. Coke (a nuisance to the government in several respects) was thrice called before privy council, suspended and ordered to revise some supposed defects in his reports as set out in writing by Ellesmere. Timothy Tourneur, a young barrister, saw these proceedings as symbolic of a new form of tyranny for which Ellesmere was largely to blame.
Coke perceived the threat to the rule of law even earlier. Since around 09 he had been noting ‘dangerous and absurd opinions affirmed before the king’ by Ellesmere. By 1616 he had 18. Coke said Ellesmere had told James he could decide cases in person without consulting the judges, a matter on which Coke had engaged in a famous altercation with the king. Coke was especially exercised over the new practice - engineered by Bacon and Ellesmere - of summoning judges before the privy council to answer for decisions, which were openly reproved by the law officers. The result drove a wedge between the king and his judges. When Ellesmere was asked to stand with the judges on these occasions, ‘his continual answer was that he would not lie in the gap for any man’. These were serious accusations, but Coke was out of favour so was ignored. Later (16) to the profession's horror, he was peremptorily dismissed from office. Ellesmere dragged himself from his sickbed to swear in a successor, and delivered an ungracious speech warning him not to imitate his predecessor, listing his faults in detail. The Stuart form of government was set on a disastrous course.
Last years, 1610–1617
His last years were rendered miserable by affairs of state, his wife and illness (gout and the stone and perhaps dementia). He was fond of fresh air, moderate country living and a healthy diet, and many believed him apt to feign illness to escape duties. He petitioned the king several times to be allowed to resign, though it was widely thought that he clung to office unaware of his growing incompetence. Having begun life in circumstances then considered ignoble, he was always covetous of rewards and dignities, and finally set his heart on an earldom.
Late in 1616, already in failing health, he was made Viscount Brackley (‘Break-Law’ some mispronounced it ). Early in 1617 he was allowed to retire, temporarily, with the promise of an earldom. In March 1617 he surrendered the great seal and died at York House, his London home, shortly after. He was buried at Dodleston, Cheshire, his principal seat since the 80s.
In 1610 he had prepared some ‘notes and remembrances’ for peace between his wife and son and (15) made his last will, ‘finding no true comfort nor contentment in this miserable life, but feeling the mighty hand of God in many grievous afflictions both in body and in mind’. His ‘loving wife’, who was left her jointure and paraphernalia but nothing else, contested the will unsuccessfully. Most of the considerable fortune (est £12K pa) went, after provision for his daughters, to his only surviving son. Sir John gained the viscountcy and soon after the earldom promised his father.
Panegyrics written in his lifetime (eg Jonson) can hardly be considered objective. It was widely agreed that he was deeply learned in the law and wise in judgement, eloquent in speech and with a pleasing voice. He liked to coin a nice phrase but did not waste words. According to an admirer ‘the grave chancellor Ellesmere, affecting matter rather than affectation of words, tied the same to laconical brevity’. Many of his aphorisms have been preserved, in addition to set speeches. On the other hand, in his later years virtues were offset by defects. John Chamberlain wrote, on hearing of his death, that he ‘left but an indifferent name, being accounted too sour, severe, and implacable, an enemy to parliaments and the common law, only to maintain his own greatness and the exorbitant jurisdiction of his court of Chancery’. Judge Richard Hutton wrote similarly in his diary of 'a man of great and profound judgment, an eloquent speaker, and yet in his later times he became more choleric and opposed the jurisdiction of the common law and enlarged the jurisdiction of the Chancery, and in many things he derogated from the common law and the judges.' Tourneur, while praising his judgement and voice, said he was the bane of the law; yet not for any hate he bare it, but for the love he bare to his own honour to greaten himself by the fall of others.
Nor were his judicial endeavours appreciated as highly as in Elizabeth's reign. Overwork and decrepitude combined to leave an enormous backlog of undecided cases. The office of Lord Chancellor was undoubtedly too much for one man but he had abandoned earlier attempts to improve chancery, and in furthering James's absolutist tendencies for his own aggrandisement had apparently forfeited his profession's general esteem.
(Based on ODNB)
His last years were rendered miserable by affairs of state, his wife and illness (gout and the stone and perhaps dementia). He was fond of fresh air, moderate country living and a healthy diet, and many believed him apt to feign illness to escape duties. He petitioned the king several times to be allowed to resign, though it was widely thought that he clung to office unaware of his growing incompetence. Having begun life in circumstances then considered ignoble, he was always covetous of rewards and dignities, and finally set his heart on an earldom.
Late in 1616, already in failing health, he was made Viscount Brackley (‘Break-Law’ some mispronounced it ). Early in 1617 he was allowed to retire, temporarily, with the promise of an earldom. In March 1617 he surrendered the great seal and died at York House, his London home, shortly after. He was buried at Dodleston, Cheshire, his principal seat since the 80s.
In 1610 he had prepared some ‘notes and remembrances’ for peace between his wife and son and (15) made his last will, ‘finding no true comfort nor contentment in this miserable life, but feeling the mighty hand of God in many grievous afflictions both in body and in mind’. His ‘loving wife’, who was left her jointure and paraphernalia but nothing else, contested the will unsuccessfully. Most of the considerable fortune (est £12K pa) went, after provision for his daughters, to his only surviving son. Sir John gained the viscountcy and soon after the earldom promised his father.
Panegyrics written in his lifetime (eg Jonson) can hardly be considered objective. It was widely agreed that he was deeply learned in the law and wise in judgement, eloquent in speech and with a pleasing voice. He liked to coin a nice phrase but did not waste words. According to an admirer ‘the grave chancellor Ellesmere, affecting matter rather than affectation of words, tied the same to laconical brevity’. Many of his aphorisms have been preserved, in addition to set speeches. On the other hand, in his later years virtues were offset by defects. John Chamberlain wrote, on hearing of his death, that he ‘left but an indifferent name, being accounted too sour, severe, and implacable, an enemy to parliaments and the common law, only to maintain his own greatness and the exorbitant jurisdiction of his court of Chancery’. Judge Richard Hutton wrote similarly in his diary of 'a man of great and profound judgment, an eloquent speaker, and yet in his later times he became more choleric and opposed the jurisdiction of the common law and enlarged the jurisdiction of the Chancery, and in many things he derogated from the common law and the judges.' Tourneur, while praising his judgement and voice, said he was the bane of the law; yet not for any hate he bare it, but for the love he bare to his own honour to greaten himself by the fall of others.
Nor were his judicial endeavours appreciated as highly as in Elizabeth's reign. Overwork and decrepitude combined to leave an enormous backlog of undecided cases. The office of Lord Chancellor was undoubtedly too much for one man but he had abandoned earlier attempts to improve chancery, and in furthering James's absolutist tendencies for his own aggrandisement had apparently forfeited his profession's general esteem.
(Based on ODNB)
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