Page:The History of the Church & Manor of Wigan part 2.djvu/280

Rh gave various sums to purchase tithes and fee farm lands for such churches as he had to do with, and which were not, as he thought, sufficiently endowed, as, for example, those of Castle Bromwich, in Warwickshire, and Teddington, in Middlesex. In his legal capacity. Lord Campbell says that "he was a profound master of the common law;" and the editor of his valuable work, Precedents and Conveyances, hesitates not to call him "the great oracle, not only of his fellow-sufferers (the royalists), but of the whole nation, in matters of law; his very enemies not thinking their estates secure without his advice." Dr. Lloyd, also, in his memoirs of the noble, reverend and excellent personages that suffered for their faithful allegiance to their sovereign, says that Sir Orlando was "a great honour to his profession; his moderation and equity as Chief Justice being such in dispensing his Majesty's law, that he seemed to carry a kind of chancery in his breast in the Common Pleas, endearing as well as opening the law to the people, as if he carried about him the King's conscience as well as his own." And another authority bears this high testimony to his learning and character: " In the arguments of Chief Justice Bridgeman methinks I find that evisceratio causæ as the Roman Orator calls it, an exact anatomy of the case, and a dexterous piercing into the very bowels of it; and it was no small commendation of an eminent professor of our law, and one that afterwards was advanced to the highest office a person of that profession can be capable, that he always argued like a lawyer and a gentleman." The portraits of Sir Orlando and some other judges were placed in Guildhall, about the year 1671, in testimony of the gratitude of the city of London for their signal services in having settled, without expense of lawsuit, the properties of the citizens after the fire of 1666. King Charles II. appears to have entertained a high opinion of Sir Orlando, and as a mark of his esteem he voluntarily offered to raise him to the Peerage. But his prudence prompted him to decline the offer. He was at that time married to a second wife, and as he meant to divide his property between his eldest son and his issue