e, that he would have risen to the bench, even if he had labored
under the disadvantages of pure morality and amiable temper.

Women declared him irresistible. At court he had the ear of Nell Gwyn
and the Duchess of Portsmouth--the Protestant favorite and the Catholic
mistress; and before he attained the privilege of entering Whitehall--at
a time when his creditors were urgent, and his best clients were the
inferior attorneys of the city courts--he was loved by virtuous girls.
He was still poor, unknown, and struggling with difficulties, when he
induced an heiress to accept his suit,--the daughter of a rural squire
whose wine the barrister had drunk upon circuit. This young lady was
wooed under circumstances of peculiar difficulty; and she promised to
elope with him if her father refused to receive him as a son-in-law.
Ill-luck befell the scheme; and whilst young Jeffreys was waiting in
the Temple for the letter which should decide his movements, an
intimation reached him that elopement was impossible and union
forbidden. The bearer of this bad news was a young lady--the child of a
poor clergyman--who had been the confidential friend and paid companion
of the squire's daughter.

The case was hard for Jeffreys, cruel for the fair messenger. He had
lost an advantageous match, she had lost her daily bread. Furious with
her for having acted as the _confidante_ of the clandestine lovers, the
squire had turned this poor girl out of his house; and she had come to
London to seek for employment as well as to report the disaster.

Jeffreys saw her overpowered with trouble and shame--penniless in the
great city, and disgraced by expulsion from her patron's roof. Seeing
that her abject plight was the consequence of amiable readiness to serve
him, Jeffreys pitied and consoled her. Most young men would have soothed
their consciences and dried the running tears with a gift of money or a
letter recommending the outcast to a new employer. As she was pretty, a
libertine would have tried to seduce her. In Jeffreys, compassion roused
a still finer sentiment: he loved the poor girl and married her. On May
23, 1667, Sarah Neesham was married to George Jeffreys of the Inner
Temple; and her father, in proof of his complete forgiveness of her
_escapade_, gave her a fortune of L300--a sum which the poor clergyman
could not well afford to bestow on the newly married couple.

Having outlived Sarah Neesham, Jeffreys married again--taking for his