Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 37.djvu/174

 opposed so much of the abortive bill for the preservation of the king's person as proposed to make it high treason to assert by word of mouth the legitimacy of the Duke of Monmouth (June), and likewise the extraordinary supply for the creation of a standing army demanded by the king after the suppression of the western rebellion. Though not, it would seem, a privy councillor, he was summoned, as king's ancient serjeant, to the council held to establish the birth of the Prince of Wales on 22 Oct. 1688, and also to the meeting of the lords spiritual and temporal held on 22 Dec., to confer on the emergency presented by the flight of the king, and as doyen of the bar was presented to the Prince of Orange on his arrival in London. William congratulated him on having outlived so many rivals; Maynard replied: ‘And I had like to have outlived the law itself had not your highness come over.’

In the convention which met on 22 Jan. 1688–9, Maynard sat for Plymouth, and in the debate of the 28th on the state of the nation, and the conference with the lords which followed on 2 Feb., argued that James had vacated the throne by his Romanism, and attempted subversion of the constitution, and that as during his life he could have no heir, the choice lay between an alteration of the succession and a regency of indefinite duration. He supported the bill for declaring the convention a parliament on the very frank ground that a dissolution, owing to the ferment among the clergy, would mean the triumph of the tory party. On 5 March he was sworn lord commissioner of the great seal, jointly with Sir Anthony Keck and Sir William Rawlinson. This office did not exclude him from the House of Commons, and he continued to take an active part in its proceedings. On 16 March he moved for leave to introduce a bill for disarming papists; and while professing perfect confidence in the queen, he energetically opposed the bill for vesting the regency in her during William's absence from the realm, the passing of which into law was closely followed by his retirement or removal from office, his last appearance in court being on 14 May 1690. So brief a tenure of office at so advanced an age afforded Maynard little or no opportunity for the display of high judicial powers. As to his merits, however, all parties were agreed; the bench, as Fuller quaintly wrote before the Restoration, ‘seeming sick with long longing for his sitting thereon.’ Roger North admits that he was ‘the best old book lawyer of his time.’ Clarendon speaks of his ‘eminent parts,’ ‘great learning,’ and ‘signal reputation.’ Anthony à Wood praises his ‘great reading and knowledge in the more profound and perplexed parts of the law,’ and his devotion to ‘his mother the university of Oxon.’ As a politician, his moderation and consistency were generally recognised, though for his part in the impeachments of Strafford and Stafford he was savagely attacked by Roscommon in his ‘Ghost of the late House of Commons,’ 1680–1. Though hardly eloquent, Maynard was a singularly facile and fluent speaker—Roscommon sneers at ‘his accumulative hackney tongue’—and could sometimes be crushing in retort. Jeffreys once taxing him in open court with having forgotten his law, he is said to have replied: ‘In that case I must have forgotten a great deal more than your lordship ever knew.’ He humorously defined advocacy as ‘ars bablativa.’ Manningham (Diary, Camden Soc., p. 157) attributes to him the aphorism, ‘Felices essent artes si nulli de eis judicarent nisi artifices’ (cf., Letters to Hurd, xci.). He amassed a large fortune, bought the manor of Gunnersbury, and there in 1663 built from designs by Inigo Jones or his pupil Webbe a palace (afterwards the residence of the Princess Amelia, daughter of George II). He died there on 9 Oct. 1690, his body lying in state until the 25th, when it was interred with great pomp in Ealing Church.

Portraits are in the National Portrait Gallery, London, and at Exeter College, Oxford.

Maynard married, first, Elizabeth, daughter of Andrew Henley of Taunton, Somerset, buried in Ealing Church, 4 Jan. 1654–5; secondly, Jane, daughter of Cheney Selhurst of Tenterden, and relict of Edward Austen, buried in Ealing Church in 1668; thirdly, Margaret, daughter of Edward, lord Gorge, and relict (1) of Sir Thomas Fleming of North Stoneham, Hampshire; (2) of Sir Francis Prujean [q. v.], physician to the king; fourthly, Mary, daughter of Ambrose Upton, canon of Christ Church, Oxford, and relict of Sir Charles Vermuyden, M.D. who survived him and remarried Henry Howard, fifth earl of Suffolk and Berkshire. Except by his first wife Maynard had no issue; by her he had one son, Joseph, and four daughters, Elizabeth, Honora, Joan, and Martha. His eldest daughter married Sir Duncumbe Colchester of Westbury, Gloucestershire; the second, Edward Nosworthy of Devonshire; the third, Thomas Leigh of Addington; and the fourth, Sir Edward Gresham, bart. Maynard's son, Joseph, had two daughters, Elizabeth and Mary. The former married Sir Henry Hobart, and was the mother of Henrietta, the celebrated Mrs. Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk [see ]. The latter married Thomas, second