raced through a succession of illegitimate
births. Not only did eminent lawyers live openly with women who were not
their wives, and with children whom the law declined to recognize as
their offspring; but these women and children moved in good society,
apparently indifferent to shame that brought upon them but few
inconveniences. In Great Ormond Street, where a mistress and several
illegitimate children formed his family circle, Lord Thurlow was visited
by bishops and deans; and it is said that in 1806, when Sir James
Mansfield, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, was invited to the
woolsack and the peerage, he was induced to decline the offer more by
consideration for his illegitimate children than by fears for the
stability of the new administration.

Speaking of Lord Thurlow's undisguised intercourse with Mrs. Hervey,
Lord Campbell says, "When I first knew the profession, it would not
have been endured that any one in a judicial situation should have had
such a domestic establishment as Thurlow's; but a majority of judges had
married their mistresses. The understanding then was that a man elevated
to the bench, if he had a mistress, must either marry her or put her
away. For many years there has been no necessity for such an
alternative." Either Lord Campbell had not the keen appetite for
professional gossip, with which he is ordinarily credited, or his
conscience must have pricked him when he wrote, "For many years there
has been no necessity for such an alternative." To show how far his
lordship erred through want of information or defect of candor is not
the duty of this page; but without making any statement that can wound
private feeling, the present writer may observe that 'the
understanding,' to which Lord Campbell draws attention, has affected the
fortune of ladies within the present generation.

That the bright and high-minded Somers was the debauchee that Mrs.
Manley and Mr. Cooksey would have us believe him is incredible. It is
doubtful if Mackey in his 'Sketch of Leading Characters at the English
Court' had sufficient reasons for clouding his sunny picture of the
statesman with the assertion that he was "something of a libertine." But
there are occasions when prudence counsels us to pay attention to
slander.

Having raised himself to the office of Solicitor General, Somers, like
Francis Bacon, found an alderman's daughter to his liking; and having
formed a sincere attachment for her, he made his wishes