Page:Chronicle of the law officers of Ireland.djvu/319

294 reduced on common occasions to systematic practice. Corbet's keen judgment supplied that defect, and blends in one luminous act the craft, corruption, and unexampled presumption of those upstart and innovating usurpers; he modestly solicited and obtained the station of Chief Baron, even in opposition to the Irish Lord Deputy, for in 1655, when the four courts were to be reestablished, Deputy Fleetwood sagaciously remarked, that in his opinion two courts of justice, the Chancery and Upper Bench would be sufficient, and causes formerly cognizable in the Common Pleas be tried in the latter. He added, with suitable official modesty and lust for patronage, that he could offer six or more fit judges for the courts of justice. The Common Pleas and Exchequer were to be buried by the fiat of this arbitrary enthusiast: the lock of the common law and the established key of the treasury, (to borrow the phrase of Lord Coke,) must melt beneath the pressure of a republican talisman, nor leave a trace behind. The Deputy shewed himself a weak statesman, and his employers treated the advice with suitable contempt.

Corbet became Chief Baron. The last effort of this extraordinary man was to puzzle the Judges about the doctrine of peremptory challenges, and the regularity of the form by which his attainder was brought into the Court of King's Bench. He was led to the one point by the authority of some ancient and ill-considered cases, and on the other it may be doubtful whether the law, as it then stood, was not with him; an intelligent people were, however, fully satisfied of two things—that he was the person named in the attainder, and that his crimes merited death; which, adds an eye witness who reported his case, the prisoner met with as little concern as he shewed in the court, or at the perpetration of the treasonable deeds.

The modern town of Kilworth and the adjacent district of the Condons was divided between Lord Deputy Fleetwood and the Chief Baron. These political rivals had even a dispute about the change of its Irish appellation, Clogleigh; finally the Lord Deputy triumphed, and the seat of his nativity prevailed: thus the name of a Leicestershire plain was transferred to an