Page:Imperialdictiona03eadi Brandeis Vol3b.pdf/96

ROM suppress the existing disorders. But the commanders, jealous of his influence, appealed to the pope, Gregory XIII., against the election. The grand-master and Romegas were summoned to Rome to plead their respective causes; and both died there within a few days of each other, in December, 1581, and were buried in the same tomb.—J. T.  * ROMILLY,, master of the rolls, is the second son of the late Sir Samuel Romilly, and was born in London in 1802. Educated at Trinity college, Cambridge, he was called to the bar in 1827, and entered the house of commons on liberal principles in 1832, as member for Bridport. Distinguishing himself at the bar, he was appointed queen's counsel in 1843, solicitor-general in 1848, when he was knighted, and in 1850 attorney-general. He has been a zealous and successful law reformer. Since 1851 he has filled the judicial office of master of the rolls. The historical literature of England owes to him the series of valuable works, "Materials for English History," issued, and to be issued, at the expense of the government, under his superintendence. Literary men are also indebted to Sir John Romilly for the improved accessibility which he has given them to the documents under his jurisdiction at the record office, and for his eminent courtesy to historical inquirers.—F. E.  ROMILLY,, descended from foreign ancestors and born in a humble sphere of life, with no higher education than the knowledge acquired by his indomitable and almost unaided efforts, rose to distinguished eminence among the statesmen and judges of his adopted country. He was the grandson of a French refugee, who, when a youth of seventeen, with a sternness of resolve characteristic of his illustrious descendant, determined to embark on the precarious and lonely life of an exile, rather than bend under the crushing religious tyranny of Louis XIV. Having settled in London in the year 1701, he succeeded so well in the business of a waxbleacher that he found himself in a position to marry Judith de Monsallier, the daughter of another French refugee. They had a large family, of which Peter, the father of Sir Samuel Romilly, was the youngest son. The waxbleacher apprenticed Peter to a jeweller in Broad Street, City. A short time before his marriage to Miss Gamault, Peter Romilly commenced business as a jeweller on his own account. At one time its returns amounted to about £20,000 a year. But although the income was large, the profits were small. This is the only explanation of the limited and imperfect education which his children received. Samuel was born in London on the 1st March, 1757. Out of a large family only three, two sons and a daughter, lived to a mature age. Samuel and his brother were sent when quite young to a school conducted by a Mr. Flack, perhaps from kindly feelings towards him as a refugee rather than from any flattering estimate of his talents. Indeed, he was a most inefficient teacher. His professed erudition embraced reading, writing, arithmetic, French and Latin; but his knowledge of Latin was even more imperfect than of the other branches of his accomplishments. However, Samuel Romilly probably received here, through the very vices of his master, a species of instruction which turned out of more value to posterity than ever so much knowledge of Latin and Greek. Flack was a dyspeptic, rheumatic, and severe man. The frequent chastisements he inflicted on the little urchins were more for the relief of his feverish excitability than for the punishment of their imagined delinquencies. "Young as I then was," observes Romilly, "I was struck with the bad effects of this severe treatment. There were some boys who were always in scrapes, and constantly punished with increasing severity. Their faults and the mischievousness of their dispositions seemed to increase in proportion to the severity with which they were treated." This philosophizing upon the connection between punishment and reform in the dreamy hours of childhood, was the archetype of that farsighted and humane statemanship, which under the varied forms of argument, of declamation, of scorn, and pathos, roused the country and compelled the legislature to tear out one by one the bloody pages that had long been the crowning barbarity and capital disgrace of our statute law. From the first, the father's plan was to make Samuel an attorney and his brother a jeweller; but from what the boy had seen of a certain Mr. Liddel, a city solicitor and a family friend, he felt a strong disinclination to adopt that profession. The father did not press him. It was his maxim that a child should not be forced to any business, but after having been advised and informed beforehand, allowed to make his own choice. The next scheme was to get Samuel a clerkship in the great commercial firm of the Fludyers, of which Sir Samuel Fludyer was one of the partners. The Fludyers were closely related to the Romillys, Sir Samuel being the godfather of the aspiring clerk. A tutor was engaged to teach him the mysteries of ledgers, waste-books, and bill-books, &c.; but both partners died suddenly, and the scheme came to nothing. Not knowing what was to be done next, Samuel remained for two years till he was sixteen, hanging about his father's shop chiefly, and to some purpose, occupied in reading books from the lending libraries in history, English poetry, and works of criticism. With the aid of a clever old Scotchman, he made good progress in Latin. In the course of three or four years he had read every prose writer of the age of pure Latinity, except those which treated of technical subjects. By and by he stole away to the lectures on painting, architecture, and anatomy, at the Royal academy. But an event occurred about this period which gave a turn to his life, and put an end to his desultory habits. Mr. De la Haize, a wealthy relative, by "his last will and testament," bequeathed the handsome legacy of between £14,000 and £15,000 to the Romillys, to be divided among them in certain shares. Samuel's own legacy was £2000. He determined at once to pursue some calling in earnest. His father's business he hated. The law was again thought of, and at this time more favourably. At that time a good deal might be realized in the form of fees, in the office of the six clerks in chancery. Samuel was forthwith articled for five years to a Mr. Lally "one of the sworn clerks," with no higher ambition at this time than that of buying up an appointment, and thereby becoming himself a "sworn clerk." He was no ordinary lawyer's clerk, however. After office hours he went on with his education, read the Latin classics, and the Greek authors with the aid of Latin translations, and studied the best English authors, Addison, Swift, Bolingbroke, Robertson, and Hume, "noting down every peculiar propriety and happiness of expression." It does not clearly appear how he came to relinquish this certainty for the hazards and chances of the bar. It was probably for no other reason than that the purchase of the clerkship in chancery would involve an outlay of the £2000 in one sum, whereas the circumstances of his father made the payment of that amount in instalments more convenient. At all events he entered himself of Gray's inn. May, 1778, having served his clerkship and completed his twenty-first year. By this time he had become a very good self-educated scholar. Like more than one of the distinguished orators who have adorned the bench, he translated and retranslated the writings of Cicero, Livy, Tacitus, and Sallust. Besides, it was about this period that he placed so high a value upon his poetic genius, a delusion to which he was wont to allude in after years with much good nature and frankness. In 1780 his health fairly broke down from hard reading. This was the immediate occasion of his visit to Geneva, where his sister and her husband, the Rev. J. Roget, were then living. After his health had much improved, he returned to England through Paris, where he was introduced to D'Alembert and Diderot. In Easter term, 1783, he was called to the bar, and went on the Midland circuit for the first time in the spring of 1784. His final object was to confine his practice to the equity courts, in the meantime to work up a connection on circuit and in town. Being of a quiet, unobtrusive demeanour, with exquisite sensibility and gentleness of manner approaching to diffidence, Romilly had to wait some time before the solicitors detected his rare merits. For some years his practice consisted in drawing chancery pleadings, which of course gave him no opportunity to raise his voice in court. Romilly's clerk was known on circuit as "the Quaker." His appointment to that office is a touching example of Romilly's kindly disposition. Who would have imagined, à priori that an introduction to Mirabeau would have led to Romilly's promotion from "stuff" to "silk," and from being a law officer of the crown to a seat on the bench? And yet it was so. In the latter end of 1784 one D'Ivernois introduced Romilly to that man, whose name and fate were in a few years later to be wondrously interwoven with some of the most terrible and fatuous events that history has yet recorded. What ripened the introduction into close intimacy was the ready acceptance and successful accomplishment by Romilly of the task of translating into English Mirabeau's tract against the order of the Cincinnati, not long before established in America. Mirabeau introduced him to Mr. Benjamin Vaughan, and through Mr. Benjamin Vaughan he became acquainted with Lord Lansdowne. 