Pepys as Chief Justice. His entry on the King's Inn's Roll is Attorney-General to the state: it can scarce be called a blemish to transfer allegiance from such a government to Oliver Cromwell. His services and situation enabled him to acquire large property, a considerable part of which was reclaimed by the legal owners at the restoration; thus the village of Donnycarney reverted to the Corporation of Dublin, and which Basil obtained as a bribe on the settlement in 1653.
Steele was Lord Chancellor of Ireland; he had been Recorder of London, Chief Baron in England, and was appointed counsel at the trial of the unfortunate Charles. Some of his speeches prove him a lawyer of ability, whilst his personal character was that of a proud, crafty, insincere man: he was raised by Cromwell, (if it be not a contradiction in terms,) to the rank of a republican Lord. The confiscated estates had been completely disposed of before this man came to Ireland, and Chancery had scarce any business but what flows from the common law side, so that Steele could not enrich himself even by the property of suitors through the medium of surrounding satellites ; his ambition and avarice were therefore bounded by state confidence and salary; this gave him a timely view of the Restoration, and he secured his personal safety by betraying the secrets of Henry Cromwell to Clarendon and Ormond.
Pepys was Chief Justice of the Upper Bench, to which situation he had been removed from the station of Puisne Judge in England. Obscurity is merit in a period teeming with every vice which can flow from irreligion or hypocrisy. We do not hear of Pepys as a judicial bloodhound, soliciting the properties of convicted criminals, let us therefore presume him reasonably innocent, and transfer some respect to the father of Pepys, secretary to the admiralty.
Sir Gerard Lowther, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, died in April 1660; he acquired a large landed property by steering with unprincipled craft through the boisterous ocean of cotemporary troubles, and dying without issue, left it to relations
