don was confined by an attack of gout, refused
to take his departure without a promise that his friend should have
the vacant place. How this royal influence was applied to the
Chancellor, is told in the 'Anecdote Book.'

Fortunately Jekyll was less incompetent for the post than his enemies
had declared, and his friends admitted. He proved a respectable master,
and held his post until age and sickness compelled him to resign it;
and then, sustained in spirits by the usual retiring pension, he
sauntered on right mirthfully into the valley of the shadow of death. On
the day after his retirement, the jocose veteran, meeting Eldon in the
street, observed:--"Yesterday, Lord Chancellor, I was your master;
to-day I am my own."

From Bedford Square, Lord Eldon, for once following the fashion, moved
to Hamilton Place, Piccadilly. With the purpose of annoying him the
'Queen's friends,' during the height of the 'Queen Caroline agitation,'
proposed to buy the house adjoining the Chancellor's residence in
Hamilton Place, and to fit it up for the habitation of that not
altogether meritorious lady. Such an arrangement would have been an
humiliating as well as exasperating insult to a lawyer who, as long as
the excitement about the poor woman lasted, would have been liable to
affront whenever he left his house or looked through the windows facing
Hamilton Place. The same mob that delighted in hallooing round whatever
house the Queen honored with her presence, would have varied their
'hurrahs' for the lady with groans for the lawyer who, after making her
wrongs the stalking-horse of his ambition, had become one of her chief
oppressors. Eldon determined to leave Hamilton Place on the day which
should see the Queen enter it; and hearing that the Lords of the
Treasury were about to assist her with money for the purchase of the
house, he wrote to Lord Liverpool, protesting against an arrangement
which would subject him to annoyance at home and to ridicule out of
doors. "I should," he wrote, "be very unwilling to state anything
offensively, but I cannot but express my confidence that Government will
not aid a project which must remove the Chancellor from his house the
next hour that it takes effect, and from his office at the same time."
This decided attitude caused the Government to withdraw their
countenance from the project; whereupon a public subscription was opened
for its accomplishment. Sufficient funds were immediately proffered; an