a cavalier eating-house; but, his customers being
needy, he soon broke, and came for England, and being a genteel
youth, was taken in among the chancery clerks, and got to be under a
master.... His industry was great; and he had an acquired
dexterity and skill in the forms of the court; and although he was a
bon companion, and followed much the bottle, yet he made such
dispatches as satisfied his clients, especially the clerks, who knew
where to find him. His person was florid, and speech prompt and
articulate. But his vices, in the way of women and the bottle, were
so ungoverned, as brought him to a morsel.... When the Lord
Keeper North had the Seal, who from an early acquaintance had a
kindness for him which was well known, and also that he was well
heard, as they call it, business flowed in to him very fast, and yet
he could scarce keep himself at liberty to follow his business....
At the Revolution, when his interest fell from, and his debts began
to fall upon him, he was at his wits' end.... His character for
fidelity, loyalty, and facetious conversation was without
exception"--Roger North's Lives of the Norths (Lord Keeper
Guilford), ed. Jessopp, vol. i., pp. 381-2. He was originally made
Lord Chancellor of Ireland in the reign of James II., during the
viceroyalty of Lord Clarendon, 1686, when he was knighted. "He
was," says Burnet, "a man of ready wit, and being poor was thought a
person fit to be made a tool of. When Clarendon was recalled,
Porter was also displaced, and Fitton was made chancellor, a man who
knew no other law than the king's pleasure" ("Own Time"). Sir
Charles Porter was again made Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1690,
and in this same year he acted as one of the Lords Justices. This
note of Lord Braybrooke's is retained and added to, but the
reference may after all be to another Charles Porter. See vol.
iii., p. 122, and vol. vi., p. 98.]

talking of a great many things: and I perceive all the world is against
the Duke of Buckingham his acting thus high, and do prophesy nothing
but ruin from it: But he do well observe that the church lands cannot
certainly come to much, if the King shall [be] persuaded to take them;
they being leased out for long leases. By and by, after two hours' stay,
they rose, having, as Wren tells me, resolved upon send