BRIBING A CHANCELLOR
711
BRIBING A CHANCELLOR BY M. S. THE English House of Lords in May, 1726, presented an impressive spec tacle. The peers in their robes of office were sitting as a court, the matter before them was an impeachment, the accused was the highest law officer in the realm, the "Keeper of the King's Conscience," Lord Chancellor Macclesfield, the charge against him was bribery, and the prosecutors were the people of England through the man agers appointed by the House of Commons. Against these managers appeared three learned counsel and mirabile dictu the Chancellor himself, who acted as his own advocate, not only by suggestions to his counsel, but by personal cross-examination of witnesses, arguing points of law, and by making the closing address in his own be half. The public interest in the trial was so great that, during the thirteen days it lasted, although the court sat from 10 A.M. till 9 P.M., great crowds assembled in Palace Yard to learn what was said and done within the House. The cause of the trial was in part a system of the Court of Chancery, and in part the fact that at length there came a chancellor who was a great lawyer, eminent both in law and equity, but who was also a politician who "worked for his own pocket all the time," and who developed the system which had for years been known and accepted as a necessary evil, into a business method, whereby in the eight years he held office, he acquired a fortune so large that, after paying a fine of thirty thousand pounds and the heavy costs of his trial, he was able to live in affluence. Let us first consider the system whence the trouble originated. In the early part of the eighteenth century, there were in England no trust or safe-deposit companies and no banks of any standing except the Bank of England. There were no deposi
GILPATRICK tories of court funds and when property was brought into Chancery, and it was the fact that most of the estates in England came at least once into Chancery every thirty years, this .property was given in charge of the Master, to whom the proceed ings were referred during the years that elapsed between filling the bill and final decree. Such property was in the abso lute control of the master. If he paid on demand such sums as the Court ordered during the long progress of the litigation, no one except the chancellor could call him to account. As the funds in Chancery amounted to a vast sum — at the time of the Macclesfield trial it was claimed they were four million pounds — it may be seen that the possession of such an amount of capital, which could be used in private business or speculation, made the office of Master in Chancery very desirable. So desirable was it that when a master gave up his office he sold it as a man now sells a "seat" in the stock exchange. But, as admission to the exchange depends on a committee, so the incumbency of a master ship by transfer or original appointment was vested in the chancellor. To secure an appointment or to validate a transfer, every sort of influence was brought to bear, and it was well known that this sometimes took the form of gifts of money. In the hands of Lord Macclesfield this patronage became a business wherein he generally employed an agent, one Peter Cottingham, although he sometimes dealt directly with the applicants. Those who succeeded in getting the office for which they had paid, proceeded to recoup themselves by using the trust funds for their own profit, and when the South Sea Bubble produced its excitement, the Masters in Chancery were among the most daring speculators. When the bubble burst it was widely rumored
