Among Hardwicke's minor offices were those of governor of Greenwich Hospital, governor of the Charterhouse, high steward of Bristol, governor of the Foundling Hospital, and high steward (appointed 4 July 1749) of the university of Cambridge, from which he received the degree of LL.D. on 15 June 1753. He was also F.R.S. (elected 15 March 1753) and a trustee of the British Museum.
Hardwicke married, on 16 May 1719, Margaret, daughter of Charles Cocks of Worcester [cf. Somers or Sommers, John, Lord Somers], and widow of John Lygon, by whom he had (with two daughters) five sons. His heir, Philip; his second son, Charles; and his third son, Joseph, are all separately noticed. His fourth son, John, died in 1769, clerk of the crown in chancery; and his fifth son, James, in 1808, bishop of Ely. His elder daughter, Elizabeth, married George, lord Anson [q. v.]; his younger daughter, Margaret, married, in 1749, Sir Gilbert Heathcote, bart.
Hardwicke was one of the handsomest men of his day, and, though of a delicate constitution, preserved by temperate living even in old age the elasticity and mien of youth. His personal advantages, which included a musical voice, enhanced the effect of his eloquence, which by its stately character was peculiarly adapted to the House of Lords. His statesmanship was of a somewhat mixed type. While his coolness and resource during the Jacobite rebellion deserve unstinted commendation, it must not be forgotten that the rebellion itself was the consequence of the entanglement of the country in the war of the Austrian succession, for which, jointly with Newcastle, Hardwicke was responsible. His plan for the pacification of Scotland presents a strange blending of wisdom and folly. Few measures have been more judicious than the abolition of heritable jurisdictions, few less so than the proscription of the tartan. His foreign policy is perhaps fairly open to the charge of shiftiness. He was chiefly responsible for the acceleration of the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, an end in itself eminently desirable, but accomplished in some degree at the expense of our ally, Maria Theresa. It is also a melancholy fact that in 1752 he was party to a scheme for securing the election of a king of the Romans by sheer corruption. His desertion of Pitt for Bute in 1761, and his subsequent desertion of Bute for Pitt, betray a lamentable want either of judgment or of resolution. His constitutionalism was somewhat stiff, not to say antiquated. His opposition to the reorganisation of the militia was determined by the old whig prejudice against permanent military establishments; but his solicitude for liberty did not prevent him from postponing (1757) for nearly half a century a much-needed reform of the process by writ of habeas corpus at common law, and for the liberty of the press he can hardly be said to have had any respect whatever. His reverence for the British constitution as fixed by the revolution of 1688 was almost unbounded, and he approached the task of legislation reluctantly, and only under pressure of what he believed to be urgent necessity.
Among English lawyers his position is unique. With less than the ordinary advantages of education, he proved more than competent in youth for offices which usually tax the powers of mature age. His maturity fulfilled the promise of his prime, and his later career crowned the whole with unperishable lustre. The term of his chief-justiceship was, indeed, too brief and uneventful to afford him an occasion of displaying his qualities to full advantage, but during his prolonged tenure of the great seal they found such scope as had been allowed to none of his predecessors; nor did he fail to turn his opportunity to noble account. It is hardly too much to say that in the course of somewhat less than twenty years he transformed equity from a chaos of precedents into a scientific system. This grand revolution he effected in the quiet, unobtrusive, almost imperceptible manner in which the most durable results are usually achieved. Far from despising precedent, he diligently sought for and followed it whenever practicable. But the use which he made of it was such as the Baconian philosopher makes of the instances positive and negative upon which he founds a generalisation. Each case as it came before him he reviewed in the light of all discoverable relevant authorities, and never rested until he had elicited from them an intelligible ground of decision. Where English precedents failed he drew freely upon the learning of the civilians, and, in the last resort, upon his own large and luminous sense of natural justice. Thus in Hardwicke the rational and architectonic spirit of the Roman jurisprudence penetrated English equity, with the result that in a multitude of intricate questions his decisions have traced the lines within which his successors have undeviatingly proceeded; and close and frequent scrutiny has only served to confirm their authority. His judgments, which in important cases were usually written,
