sail Montague and
Orford, though with somewhat less ferocity than while Montague had the
direction of the finances, and Orford of the marine. But the utmost
spite of all the leading malecontents were concentrated on one object,
the great magistrate who still held the highest civil post in the realm,
and who was evidently determined to hold it in defiance of them. It was
not so easy to get rid of him as it had been to drive his colleagues
from office. His abilities the most intolerant Tories were forced
grudgingly to acknowledge. His integrity might be questioned in nameless
libels and in coffeehouse tattle, but was certain to come forth bright
and pure from the most severe Parliamentary investigation. Nor was he
guilty of those faults of temper and of manner to which, more than
to any grave delinquency, the unpopularity of his associates is to be
ascribed. He had as little of the insolence and perverseness of Orford
as of the petulance and vaingloriousness of Montague. One of the most
severe trials to which the head and heart of man can be put is great and
rapid elevation. To that trial both Montague and Somers were put. It was
too much for Montague. But Somers was found equal to it. He was the son
of a country attorney. At thirty-seven he had been sitting in a stuff
gown on a back bench in the Court of King's Bench. At forty-two he
was the first lay dignitary of the realm, and took precedence of the
Archbishop of York, and of the Duke of Norfolk. He had risen from a
lower point than Montague, had risen as fast as Montague, had risen as
high as Montague, and yet had not excited envy such as dogged Montague
through a long career. Garreteers, who were never weary of calling the
cousin of the Earls of Manchester and Sandwich an upstart, could not,
without an unwonted sense of shame, apply those words to the Chancellor,
who, without one drop of patrician blood in his veins, had taken his
place at the head of the patrician order with the quiet dignity of a man
ennobled by nature. His serenity, his modesty, his selfcommand, proof
even against the most sudden surprises of passion, his selfrespect,
which forced the proudest grandees of the kingdom to respect him, his
urbanity, which won the hearts of the youngest lawyers of the Chancery
Bar, gained for him many private friends and admirers among the most
respectable members of the opposition. But such men as Howe and Seymour
hated him implacably; they hated his commanding genius