Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 07.pdf/625

 582

the course of a long interview, fully ex plained to her its nature and effect. It ap pears that Mrs. Swinfen had also repeatedly and in unequivocal terms expressed her in tention of giving Mr. Kennedy £20,000 when she came into her estates. Before this promise was fulfilled, Mrs. Swinfen, who had been a widow since 1854, gave herself in marriage to one Charles Wilsone Brown. Mr. Kennedy then sought to enforce pay ment of his long-promised outstanding fee. But the court held that no binding contract could be founded on a promise to pay a barrister for his services — a doctrine with which the case of Kennedy v. Brown is now in legal minds inseparably associated. The next scene in the play was the filing of a bill by Charles Wilsone Brown and Patience, his wife, to set aside the deed of May, 1859, and here again Mr. Kennedy was unsuccessful. The Master of the Rolls, Sir John Romilly, held ( 1 ) that the influence arising from the

relation between the parties still subsisted strongly at the date of the deed, and there fore that the transaction could not stand as a gift; (2) that theprevious promises of Mrs. Swinfen to pay Kennedy £20,000 for his services were insufficient to support the deed founded on contract; and (3) that the deed could not be upheld as having been exe cuted in the fair performance of a moral ob ligation. Brown v. Kennedy is a case not less important than Kennedy v. Brown. So far Mrs. Swinfen had won all along the line, but an action which she raised against Sir Frederick Thesiger—then Lord Chelms ford — (Swinfen v. Lord Chelmsford) for having exceeded his authority as counsel, was dismissed, and the immunity of English barristers was settled on the principles after wards affirmed and amplified in Strauss v. Francis (1866, L. R. 12 B. 379) and Munster v. Lamb (49 Law Times, 252). Lex.