Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 56.djvu/449

 law. He supported the union, and was advanced to be chief justice of the court of common pleas in succession to Hugh Carleton, viscount Carleton [q. v.], on 20 Dec. 1800. He was elevated to the peerage as Baron Norbury of Ballyorenode, co. Tipperary, on the 29th of the same month. His appointment to the chief-justiceship was deprecated by Lord Clare, who thought him, with reason, unfitted for the bench. ‘Make him,’ Clare is reported to have said, ‘a bishop, or even an archbishop, but not a chief justice.’

Norbury held the appointment for nearly twenty-seven years; although his scanty knowledge of law, his gross partiality, his callousness, and his buffoonery, completely disqualified him for the position. His court was in a constant uproar owing to his noisy merriment. He joked even when the life of a human being was hanging in the balance. He presided at the trial of Robert Emmet [q. v.] To Daniel O'Connell (1775–1847) [q. v.], who made more than one effort to procure his removal before he ultimately succeeded, he was an especial object of abhorrence; but Norbury was sometimes able to turn the tables on his adversary. It happened that O'Connell, shortly after his return to Ireland from London, where he had been arrested on his way to the continent to fight a duel with Peel, was arguing a case before Norbury to which the latter was apparently paying no attention. ‘I am afraid your lordship,’ said O'Connell severely, ‘does not apprehend me.’ ‘I beg your pardon, Mr. O'Connell,’ replied the chief justice, with a sneering chuckle, ‘no one is more easily apprehended than Mr. O'Connell when he wishes to be.’ The bons mots ascribed to him are innumerable, and doubtless many spurious ones were fathered upon him.

As a staunch supporter of protestant ascendency, and one whose creed was summed up in the words ‘stare super vias antiquas,’ Norbury's influence in the government of Ireland during the early years of the century was very great. The discovery in 1822 of a letter addressed to him some years previously by William Saurin [q. v.], then attorney-general, urging him to use his influence with the gentry composing the grand juries on circuit against the catholics, did not improve his reputation for impartiality, and at the instigation of O'Connell the matter was brought before parliament by Brougham. The attack greatly exasperated him. ‘I'll resign to demand satisfaction,’ he is reported to have said; ‘that Scottish Broom wants to be made acquainted with an Irish stick.’ His presence on the bench was, however, ultimately felt by all parties to be a scandal and an obstacle to the establishment of a better understanding with the catholics. In 1825 O'Connell drew up a petition to parliament calling for his removal on the ground that he had fallen asleep during a trial for murder and was unable to give any account of the evidence when called on for his notes by the lord-lieutenant. The petition was presented, but no motion was based upon it, as Peel gave an assurance that the matter would be inquired into. But it was not till the accession of Canning as prime minister in 1827, when Norbury was in his eighty-second year, that he was induced to resign, or, as O'Connell put it, ‘bought off the bench by a most shameful traffic,’ by his advancement in the peerage as Viscount Glandine and Earl of Norbury, with special remainder to his second son, together with a retiring pension of 3,046l. He died at Dublin on 27 July 1831, aged 85. He had his joke to the last; for hearing that his neighbour, Lord Erne, was expiring, and feeling his own end near, he called his valet: ‘James,’ said he, ‘run round to Lord Erne and tell him, with my compliments, that it will be a dead-heat between us.’

Toler married, on 2 June 1778, Grace, daughter of Hector Graham, esq., and by her, who was created Baroness Norwood in 1797 and died on 21 July 1822, he had two sons and two daughters. His elder son, Daniel, lord Norwood, who succeeded his mother in that title in 1822, was of unsound mind. The second son, Hector John, second earl of Norbury, after his eviction of a tenant, was shot near Durrow Castle on 1 Jan. 1839, and died three days later (Times, 5 and 7 Jan. 1839); he was succeeded by his son, Hector John, third earl, the father of the fourth and present earl.

Somewhat short in stature and rather pursy in advancing years, with a jovial countenance and merry twinkling little grey eyes, Toler's appearance ‘set dignity at defiance and put gravity to flight.’ In speaking he had an extraordinary habit of inflating his cheeks at the end of every sentence, and was consequently nicknamed Puffendorf. He sat a horse well, and, in addition to his other accomplishments, could sing a good song, and often did so in miscellaneous company long after he became chief justice. He had an excellent memory, knew much of Shakespeare and Milton by heart, and declaimed well. He had the reputation of being an excellent landlord and a gentle and forbearing master. [Gent. Mag. 1831, ii. 368, 478; Annual Register, 1831, p. 251; Burke's Peerage; Smyth's