pplication to his patron: "The Chief
Justiceship of Chester is vacant; am I to have it?" and received the
following laconic answer: "No! by G--d! Kenyon shall have it."

Scarcely less courteous was this Lord Chancellor's treatment of a
solicitor who endeavoured to prove to him a certain person's death. To
all his statements the Chancellor replied, "Sir, that is no proof," till
at last the solicitor losing patience exclaimed: "Really, my lord, it is
very hard and it is not right that you should not believe me. I knew the
man well: I saw the man dead in his coffin. My lord, the man was my
client." "Good G--d, sir! why didn't you tell me that sooner? I should
not have doubted the fact one moment; for I think nothing can be so
likely to kill a man as to have you for his attorney."

As Keeper of the Great Seal Thurlow had the alternate presentation to a
living with the Bishop of ----. The Bishop's secretary called upon the
Lord Chancellor and said, "My Lord Bishop of ---- sends his compliments
to your lordship, and believes that the next turn to present to ----
belongs to his lordship."--"Give his lordship my compliments," replied
the Chancellor, "and tell him that I will see him d--d first before he
shall present."--"This, my lord," retorted the secretary, "is a very
unpleasant message to deliver to a bishop." To which the Chancellor
replied, "You are right, it is so; therefore tell the Bishop that _I
will be_ d--d first before he shall present."

Lord Campbell in his life of Thurlow says that in his youth the
Chancellor was credited with wild excesses. There was a story, believed
at the time, of some early amour with the daughter of a Dean of
Canterbury, to which the Duchess of Kingston alluded when on her trial
at the House of Lords. Looking Thurlow, then Attorney-General, full in
the face she said, "That learned gentleman dwelt much on my faults, but
I too, if I chose, could tell a Canterbury tale."

But with all his bitterness and sarcasm Lord Thurlow had a genuine
sense of humour, as the following story of his Cambridge days
illustrates--days when he was credited with more disorderly pranks and
impudent escapades than attention to study. "Sir," observed a tutor, "I
never come to the window but I see you idling in the Court."--"Sir,"
replied the future Lord Chancellor, "I never come into the Court but I
see you idling at the window."

* * * * *

[Illustration: WILLIAM MURRAY, EARL OF