Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 31.djvu/151

 peevish censure of the Toleration Act into a ‘malicious, scandalous, and seditious libel.’ On their return to power after the general election, the tories retaliated by moving (10 June 1712) that the preface to the recently published sermons of Fleetwood, bishop of St. Asaph, deserved burning by the common hangman, a motion which King stoutly, but in vain, resisted. He defended gratuitously William Whiston [q. v.], on his trial for heresy in July 1713 (, Memoirs, 1749, p. 227). On the arrival of George I in the country, King, as recorder of London, attended with the mayor and corporation to receive him at St. Margaret's Hill, Southwark, on his progress from Greenwich to St. James's (20 Sept. 1714). Soon afterwards, at the suggestion of Lord Cowper [q. v.], he was designated to succeed Lord Trevor [q. v.] in the common pleas, and accordingly on 26 Oct. 1714 he took the degree of serjeant-of-law, and on 22 Nov. the oaths, as chief justice of the common pleas. His salary was fixed at 2,000l., double that of his predecessor. On his consequent resignation of the recordership of London he was presented by the mayor and corporation with a piece of plate ‘as a loving remembrance of his many good services done to the city.’ On 29 March 1715 he was sworn of the privy council (, Polit. State of Great Britain, ix. 238). During the tenure of his new office King gained the reputation of an eminently able, learned, and impartial judge, but, as the business of his court was entirely civil, had not much opportunity of trying notorious cases. He tried the commoners implicated in the rebellion of 1715; but these cases are not reported, though, from some excerpts printed by Lord Campbell from his manuscript report to the secretary of state, he appears to have been lenient. In a case tried by him in 1722 King has been censured for putting too liberal a construction upon the Coventry Act (22 & 23 Car. II. c. 1), which made malicious maiming or wounding, with intent to disfigure the person, felony, without benefit of clergy. A man had been left for dead by his intending murderers, but had recovered. King directed the jury that the intent to murder included the intent to maim or wound, and the prisoners were convicted and executed.

In January 1717–18 King concurred with the majority of his colleagues in advising George I that the custody of the royal grandchildren was vested not in their father, but in the crown, a fact which was probably not forgotten when the Earl of Macclesfield resigned the great seal in January 1724–5 [see, 1666–1732]. King was at once commissioned to supply the late chancellor's place as speaker of the House of Lords, in which capacity he presided at his trial on the articles of impeachment subsequently exhibited against Macclesfield, and read the sentence of the house on 25 May. On 28 May he was raised to the peerage as Lord King, baron of Ockham, Surrey, and took his seat in the House of Lords on the 31st. On 1 June the king delivered to him the great seal, and he was forthwith sworn lord chancellor and appointed one of the lords justices in whom the regency was vested during the king's approaching visit to Hanover. A patent of the office of lord chancellor was also made out to him in the form ‘quamdiu se bene gesserit,’ and besides the ordinary emoluments of his office, which then consisted chiefly of fees, a pension of 6,000l. a year was settled upon him, with an additional 1,200l. a year in lieu of the profits arising from the sale of offices, then for the first time expressly declared illegal. He resigned the chief justiceship on 2 June. On the occasion of George I's last visit to Hanover he was again nominated one of the lords justices, 31 May 1727 (, Polit. State of Great Britain, xxix. 500, 553, xxxiii. 516). On 16 June following he surrendered the great seal to George II on his accession, but immediately received it back, and took the oaths as lord chancellor, being informed by George (8 July) that he intended to nominate to all benefices and prebends that were in the gift of the chancellor. This pretension King quietly, but firmly and successfully, resisted, hoping his majesty ‘would not put things out of their ancient course,’ and after some discussion the matter dropped.

Few chancellors ever took their seat on the woolsack with greater reputation than King, and quitted it with less. An admirable common lawyer, he was little versed in either the theory or the practice of equity; and though he diligently studied abridgments and reports, and even took private lessons from eminent counsel, he was never able to acquire a competent knowledge of the law he had to administer. He was morbidly diffident, and inclined to defer judgment as long as possible, thus grievously aggravating the dilatoriness of chancery procedure. Arrears multiplied exorbitantly, and King was compelled to prolong his sittings far into the night. Still the arrears were not overtaken, and the decrees thus tardily pronounced were only too frequently reversed by the House of Lords. During the last few years of his life he became so drowsy and inattentive that the suitors were left almost entirely at the mercy of the leading counsel, the decrees