Page:EB1911 - Volume 04.djvu/382

 sandy clays In the Middle Bagshot group. In the Paris Basin the “Calcaire grossier” lies upon the same geological horizon.

 BRACKLEY, THOMAS EGERTON, (c. 1540–1617), English lord chancellor, was a natural son of Sir Richard Egerton of Ridley, Cheshire. The exact date of his birth is unrecorded, but, according to Wood, when he became a commoner at Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1556, he was about seventeen. He entered Lincoln’s Inn in 1559, and was called to the bar in 1572, being chosen a governor of the society in 1580, Lent reader in 1582, and treasurer in 1588. He early obtained legal renown and a large practice, and tradition relates that his skilful conduct of a case against the crown gained the notice of Elizabeth, who is reported to have declared: “In my troth he shall never plead against me again.” Accordingly, on the 26th of June 1581, he was made solicitor-general. He represented Cheshire in the parliaments of 1585 and 1586, but in his official capacity he often attended in the House of Lords. On the 3rd of March 1589 the Commons desired that he should return to their house, the Lords refusing on the ground that he was called by the queen’s writ to attend in the Lords before his election by the House of Commons. He took part in the trial of Mary, queen of Scots, in 1586, and advised that in her indictment she should only be styled “commonly called queen of Scots,” to avoid scruples about judging a sovereign. He conducted several other state prosecutions. On the 2nd of June 1592 he was appointed attorney-general, and was knighted and made chamberlain of Chester in 1593. On the 10th of April 1594 he became master of the rolls, and on the 6th of May 1596 lord keeper of the great seal and a privy councillor, remaining, however, a commoner as Sir Thomas Egerton, and presiding in the Lords as such during the whole reign of Elizabeth. He kept in addition the mastership of the rolls, the whole work of the chancery during this period falling on his shoulders and sometimes causing inconvenience to suitors. His promotion was welcomed from all quarters. “I think no man,” wrote a contemporary to Essex, “ever came to this dignity with more applause than this worthy gentleman.”

Egerton became one of the queen’s most trusted advisers and one of the greatest and most striking figures at her court. He was a leading member of the numerous special commissions, including the ecclesiastical commission, and was the queen’s interpreter in her communications to parliament. In 1598 he was employed as a commissioner for negotiating with the Dutch, obtaining great credit by the treaty then effected, and in 1600 in the same capacity with Denmark. In 1597, in consequence of his unlawful marriage with his second wife, in a private house without banns, the lord keeper incurred a sentence of excommunication, and was obliged to obtain absolution from the bishop of London. He was a firm friend of the noble but erratic and unfortunate Essex. He sought to moderate his violence and rashness, and after the scene in the council in July 1598, when the queen struck Essex and bade him go and be hanged, he endeavoured to reconcile him to the queen in an admirable letter which has often been printed. On the arrival of Essex in London without leave from Ireland, and his consequent disgrace, he supported the queen’s just authority, avoiding at the same time any undue severity to the offender. Essex was committed to his custody in York House from the 1st of October 1599 till the 5th of July 1600, when the lord keeper used his influence to recover for him the queen’s favour and gave him kindly warnings concerning the necessity for caution in his conduct. On the 5th of June 1600 he presided over the court held at his house, which deprived Essex of his offices except that of master of the horse, treating him with leniency, not pressing the charge of treason but only that of disobedience, and interrupting him with kind intentions when he attempted to justify himself. After the trial he tried in vain to bring Essex to a sense of duty. On the 8th of February 1601, the day fixed for the rebellion, the lord keeper with other officers of state visited Essex at Essex House to demand the reason of the tumultuous assemblage. His efforts to persuade Essex to speak with him privately and explain his “griefs,” and to refrain from violence, and his appeal to the company to depart peacefully on their allegiance, were ineffectual, and he was imprisoned by Essex for six hours, the mob calling out to kill him and to throw the great seal out of the window. Subsequently he abandoned all hope of saving Essex, and took an active part in his trial. On the 13th of February he made a speech in the Star Chamber, exposing the wickedness of the rebellion, and of the plot of Thomas Lea to surprise Elizabeth at her chamber door. In July 1602, a few months before her death, Elizabeth visited the lord keeper at his house at Harefield in Middlesex, and he was one of those present during her last hours who received her faltering intimation as to her successor.

On the accession of James I., Sir Thomas Egerton was reappointed lord keeper, resigning the mastership of the rolls in May 1603, and the chamberlainship of Chester in August. On the 21st of July he was created Baron Ellesmere, and on the 24th lord chancellor. His support of the king’s prerogative was too faithful and undiscriminating. He approved of the harsh penalty inflicted upon Oliver St John in 1615 for denying the legality of benevolences, and desired that his sentencing of the prisoner “might be his last work to conclude his services.” In May 1613 he caused the committal of Whitelocke to the Fleet for questioning the authority of the earl marshal’s court. In 1604 he came into collision with the House of Commons. Sir Francis Goodwin, an outlaw, having been elected for Buckinghamshire contrary to the king’s proclamation, the chancellor cancelled the return when made according to custom into chancery, and issued writs for a new election. The Commons, however, considering their privileges violated, restored Goodwin to his seat, and though the matter was in the present instance compromised by the choice of a third party, they secured for the future the right of judging in their own elections. He was at one with James in desiring to effect the union between England and Scotland, and served on the commission in 1604; and the English merchants who opposed the union and community of trade with the Scots were “roundly shaken by him.” In 1608, in the great case of the Post Nati, he decided, with the assistance of the fourteen judges, that those born after the accession of James I. to the throne of England were English subjects and capable of holding lands in England; and he compared the two dissentient judges to the apostle Thomas, whose doubts only confirmed the faith of the rest. He did not, however, always show obedience to the king’s wishes. He opposed the latter’s Spanish policy, and in July 1615, in spite of James’s most peremptory commands and threats, refused to put the great seal to the pardon of Somerset. In May 1616 he officiated as high steward in the trial of the latter and his countess for the murder of Overbury. He was a rigid churchman, hostile to both the Puritans and the Roman Catholics. He fully approved of the king’s unfriendly attitude towards the former, adopted at the Hampton Court conference in 1604, and declared, in admiration of James’s theological reasoning on this occasion, that he had never understood before the meaning of the legal maxim, Rex est mixta persona cum sacerdote. In 1605 he opposed the petition for the restitution of deprived Puritan ministers, and obtained an opinion from the judges that the petition was illegal. He supported the party of Abbot against Laud at Oxford, and represented to the king the unfitness of the latter to be president of St John’s College. In 1605 he directed the judges to enforce the penal laws against the Roman Catholics.

His vigorous and active public career closed with a great victory gained over the common law and his formidable