Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 06.djvu/331

Bridgeman have been expected to run riot—with remarkable moderation. He appears to have especially distinguished himself by his effective reply to Cook, one of the prisoners, who 'delivered himself lawyer-like for two or three hours to the judges' (Hist. MSS. Comm. 5th Rep 18lb). At the conclusion of this trial he was made lord chief justice of the common pleas, the patent being dated 22 Oct. 1680, though he is mentioned as chief justice as early as 29 May (ib. 153). During the seven years that he held this office he preserved a high and undiminished reputation. 'His moderation and equity were such that he seemed to carry a chancery in his breast' (, Worthies of Devon). His love of legal exactitude was great enough to become proverbial, and an illustration of it is furnished by North, who states that when it was proposed to move his court, which was draughty, into a less exposed situation, Bridgeman refused to allow it, on the ground that it was against Magna Charta, which enacts that the common pleas shall be held 'in certo loco,' and that the distance of an inch from that place would cause all pleas to be 'coram non judice.' Reports of his judgments were edited from the Hargraves MSS. by S. Bannister in 1823. He was during these years several times commissioned to execute the office of speaker in the lords during the absence of the lord chancellor (Hist. MSS. Comm. 7th Rep. 100 a, 142 b, 175 a). On 26 March 1664 he was appointed one of the first visitors of the Royal College of Physicians, London (ib. 8th' Rep. 234 b).

On the disgrace of Clarendon the great seal was given to Bridgeman on 30 Aug. 1667, not as lord chancellor, but with the inferior title of lord keeper. In May of the same year he received a grant of the reversion of the surveyorship of the customs (Cal. of State Papers, Dom. Ser., 1666–7, p. 139). Until 23 May 1668, when he was succeeded in the chief justiceship by Sir John Vaughan, he filled both offices. At this time he resided at Essex House in the Strand; but he had also a seat at Teddington, Middlesex, where he was dangerously ill in March 1667 (Hist. MSS. Comm. 7th Rep. 485), and apparently another residence at Bowood Park (Cal. of State Papers, Dom, Ser., 1660–1). According to general testimony Bridgeman did not retain in this new office his former high reputation. Thus Burnet says that 'his study and practice had lain so entirely in the common law that he never seemed to know what equity was.' His love of moderation and compromise had evidently grown upon him. North describes him as 'timorous to an impotence, and that not mended by his great age. He laboured very much to please everybody, a temper of ill consequence to a judge. It was observed of him that if a case admitted of diverse doubts, which the lawyers call points, he would never give all on one side, but either party should have something to go away with. And in his time the court of chancery ran out of order into delays and endless motions in causes, so that it was like a fair field overgrown with briars.' There was, too, another cause for his failure: 'What was worst of all, his family was very ill qualified for that place, his lady being a most violent intriguess in business, and his sons kept no good decorum whilst they practised under him; and he had not the vigour of mind and strength to coerce the cause of so much disorder in his family' (North, Life of Lord-keeper Guildford, p. 180).

As lord keeper, Bridgeman was of course the mouthpiece of Charles to the parliament, and delivered the king's speech on 10 Oct. 1667, 19 Oct. 1669, 14 Feb. and 24 Oct. 1670, and 22 April 1671 (Parl. Hist. vol. iv.) Actually, however, he was, during all the transactions connected with the treaty of Dover in 1670, kept in ignorance of the real intentions of Charles. As a staunch protestant it was necessary to withhold from him the clause by which Charles bound himself to declare his conversion to Romanism in return for a special subsidy from Louis XIV, and he was therefore, with others, tricked by the duplicate treaty which Buckingham, also too protestant to be trusted, was allowed to imagine that be had concluded (, Memoirs). His general views, however, and his personal integrity made him an obstacle to the full carrying out of Charles's plans. 'He boggled at divers things required of him;' he refused to put the seal to the Declaration of Indulgence, as judging it contrary to the constitution; he heartily disapproved of the closing of the exchequer, refused to stop the lawsuits against the bankers, which resulted from this step, by injunction, although Charles was known personally to wish it; and remonstrated against the commission of martial law, although at that time there was colour for it by a little army encamped on Biackheath (, Life of Guildford, 181). 'For the sake of his family, that gathered like a snowball while he had the seal, he would not have formalised with any tolerable compliances; but these impositions were too rank for him to comport with' ( Eramen, p. 38). He appears also to have refused to put the great seal to various grants designed for the king's mistresses. It was decided to remove him, and on 17 Nov. 1672 the seal was taken from him and given to