llect of
Guildford was clear, his industry great, his proficiency in letters and
science respectable, and his legal learning more than respectable. His
faults were selfishness, cowardice, and meanness. He was not insensible
to the power of female beauty, nor averse from excess in wine. Yet
neither wine nor beauty could ever seduce the cautious and frugal
libertine, even in his earliest youth, into one fit of indiscreet
generosity. Though of noble descent, he rose in his profession by paying
ignominious homage to all who possessed influence in the courts. He
became Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and as such was party to some
of the foulest judicial murders recorded in our history. He had sense
enough to perceive from the first that Oates and Bedloe were impostors:
but the Parliament and the country were greatly excited: the government
had yielded to the pressure; and North was not a man to risk a good
place for the sake of justice and humanity. Accordingly, while he was in
secret drawing up a refutation of the whole romance of the Popish plot,
he declared in public that the truth of the story was as plain as
the sun in heaven, and was not ashamed to browbeat, from the seat of
judgment, the unfortunate Roman Catholics who were arraigned before him
for their lives. He had at length reached the highest post in the law.
But a lawyer, who, after many years devoted to professional labour,
engages in politics for the first time at an advanced period of life,
seldom distinguishes himself as a statesman; and Guildford was no
exception to the general rule. He was indeed so sensible of his
deficiencies that he never attended the meetings of his colleagues on
foreign affairs. Even on questions relating to his own profession his
opinion had less weight at the Council board than that of any man who
has ever held the Great Seal. Such as his influence was, however, he
used it, as far as he dared, on the side of the laws.

The chief opponent of Halifax was Lawrence Hyde, who had recently
been created Earl of Rochester. Of all Tories, Rochester was the
most intolerant and uncompromising. The moderate members of his party
complained that the whole patronage of the Treasury, while he was First
Commissioner there, went to noisy zealots, whose only claim to promotion
was that they were always drinking confusion to Whiggery, and lighting
bonfires to burn the Exclusion Bill. The Duke of York, pleased with
a spirit which so much resembled hi