This affair at length occasioned so violent a contest between the two houses, that queen Anne could find no method of putting an end to the dispute, but dissolving the parliament; which was accordingly done on the 5th of April, 1705. As to Holt, in all the concern which he had in this affair, he behaved with a firmness, integrity and courage, which were generally applauded,

Sir John Holt held the office of the chief-justice of the kings bench for the space of twenty-one years, with the highest credit to himself, and advantages to his country. He died on the 5th of March, 1709; about three o'clock in the afternoon; at his house in Bedford-row, after a lingering illness, in the 68th year of his age; and was interred in the parish church of Redgrave, in the county of Suffolk, where a sumptuous marble monument was. erected to his memory. He married Anne, daughter of sir John Cropley; but left no issue by her.

The following character is given of this great judge, by the author of the British Biography:

“Lord-chief-justice Holt was one of the ablest and most upright judges that ever presided in a court of justice. He was a perfect master of the common-law, and applied himself with great assiduity to the functions of his important office. He possessed an uncommon clearness of understanding, and great solidity of judgment; and such was his integrity and firmness of mind, that he could never be brought to swerve in the least from what he thought to be law and justice. He was remarkably strenuous in nobly asserting, and as vigorously supporting, the rights and liberties of the subject, to which he paid the greatest regard; and would not suffer any reflections, tending to depreciate them, to pass uncensured, or indeed without a severe reprimand.”

In 1701, when the case for an appeal for murder was agitated, in which the king cannot pardon, it was observed by judge Treby, that an appeal was an odious revengeful prosecution, and therefore deserved no encouragement; upon which occasion Holt, with great vehemence and zeal, said, "he wondered that any Englishman should brand an appeal, with the name of an odious prosecu-tion; for his part, he looked upon it to be a noble remedy, and a true badge of the English rights and liberties."

He had a just sense of the extreme danger of calling the civil military power, under the pretence of assisting the civil magistrates in the execution of the laws; and he would on no occasion countenance any thing of this kind. Whilst he held the office of chiefjustice, there happened a riot in Holborn, occasioned by a wicked practice, in which some people had engaged, of decoying young persons of both sexes to the plantations. The persons so decoyed they kept prisoners in a house in Holborn, 'till they could find an opportunity of shipping them off; which being discovered, the enraged populace were going to pull down the house. Notice of this being sent to Whitehall, a party of the guards were commanded to march to the place; but they first sent an officer to lordchief-justice Holt, to acquaint him with the design, and to desire him to send some of his people to attend the soldiers, in order to give it the better countenance. The officer having delivered his message, the chief-justice said to him, "Suppose the populace should not disperse at your appearance what are you to do then ?” "Sir," (answered the officer) we have orders to fire upon them." "Have you, sir?" (replied his lordship) " then take notice of what I say: If there be one man killed, and you are tried before me, I will take care that you, and every soldier of your party, shall be hanged." "Sir," (added he) "go back to those that sent you, and acquaint them, that no officer of mine shall attend soldiers; and let them know, at the same time, that the laws of this kingdom are not to be executed by the sword; these matters belong to the civil power, and you have nothing to do with them." Upon this, the lord-chief-justice ordered his tipstaves, with a few constables, to attend him; and he went himself in person to the place where the tumult was, expostulated with the mob, and assured them, that justice should be done upon the persons who were the objects of their indignation; upon which all dispersed quietly.

Holt's integrity and uprightness as a judge are celebrated in the 14th number of the Tatler, under the character of Verus. His lordship published sir John Keyling's Reports in 1708, with some notes of his own, and three modern cases annexed, to which we refer the curious student: but two entertaining incidents of his life are preserved in a collection of anecdotes of eminent persons,

published in two pocket volumes, in 1756; which, for the amusement of our readers, we insert in this place; though the truth of them is somewhat doubtful;

Lord-chief-justice Holt, it is said, had been very wild in his youth, and was once out with some of his raking companions, on a journey into the country; they had spent all their money, and after many consultations what to do, it was resolved, that they should part company, and try their fortune separately. Holt got to an inn at the end of a straggling village, and putting a good face on the matter, ordered his horse to be well taken care of, ealled for a room, and bespoke a supper," and looked after his bed. He then strolled into the kitchen, where he saw a lass about thirteen years old, shivering with an ague; he enquired of his landlady, a widow, who the girl was, and how long she had been ill. The good woman told him, that she was her daughter, an only child, and that she had been ill near a year, notwithstanding all the assistance she could procure from physic, at an expence which had almost ruined her. He shook his head at the doctors, and bade the woman be under no farther concern, for that her daughter should never have another fit. He then wrote a few unintelligible words, in court hand, on a scrap of parchment, which had been the direction to a hamper, and rolling it up, ordered that it should be bound on the girl's wrist, and remain there till she was well. As it happened, the ague returned no more; and Holt has ving continued there a week, now called for his bill, with as much courage as if his pockets had been filled with gold; "Ah! God bless you, says the old woman, you are nothing in my debt, I am sure; I wish I was able to pay you for the cure you have performed upon my daughter, and if I had had the happiness of seeing you ten months ago, it would have saved me £40 in my pocket." Holt, after some altercation, accepted of his week's accomodation, as a gratuity, and rode away.

It happened, that many years afterwards, when he was one of the judges of the king's-bench, he went a circuit into the same county; and among other criminals, whom he was appointed to try, there was an old woman that was charged with witchcraft; to support this charge, several witnessess swore that she had a spell, with which she could either cure such cattle as were sick, or de

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stroy those that were well: in the use of this spell they said she had been lately detected, and it having been seized upon her, was ready to be produced in court; the judge then desired it might be handed up to him; it appeared to be a dirty ball covered with rags, and bound many times round with packthread; these coverings he removed with great deliberation one after another, and at last found a piece of parchment, which he knew to be the same that he had used as an expedient to supply his want of money. At the recollection of this incident he changed colour, and sat silent; at length, recollecting himself, he addressed the jury to this effect: "Gentlemen, I must now relate a particular of my life, which very ill-suits my present character, and the station in which I sit; but to conceal it, would be to aggravate the folly - for which I ought to atone, to endanger innocence, and countenance superstition. This bauble, which you suppose to have the power of life and death, is a senseless scrawl, which I wrote with my own hand, and gave to this woman, whom for no other cause you accuse as a witch." He then related the particular circumstances of the transaction; and it had such an effect upon the minds of the people, who now blushed at the folly and cruelty of their zeal, that judge Holt's landlady was the last person that ever was tried for witchcraft in that county.

It is related of the same magistrate, that being once upon the bench at the Old Bailey, a fellow was tried and convicted of a robbery on the highway, whom the judge remembered to have been one of his old companions. He was moved by that curiosity which is natural, upon a retrospection on past life, to know the fortune of the contemporaries with whom he was once associated,▸ and of whom he had known nothing for many years; he therefore asked the fellow what was become of Tom such-a-one, and Will such-a-one, and the rest of the knot to which they belonged." The fellow fetched a deep sigh, and making a low bow, "Ah! my lord, (said he), they are all hanged but your lordship and I.", Authorities. Biog, Britan. Macaulay's History of England. Life of Sir John Holt, 8vo. 1764. British Biography, vol. vii. 8vo. 1772.

14

THE LIFE OF

GILBERT BURNET,

BISHOP OF SĂLISBURY.

[A. D. 1643, to 1715.]

GILBERT BURNET, the celebrated bishop of Salisbury, was born at Edinburgh, in the year 1643. His father was the younger brother of an ancient family in Aberdeenshire, and bred to the civil law; in which, though he made no shining figure at the bar, his modesty too much depressing his abilities, he raised himself to so great reputation, that at the restoration of king Charles II. he was, in reward for his constant attachment to the royal party, appointed one of the lords of session at Edinburgh. His mother was sister to the famous sir Alexander Johnstoun, and a warm zealot for presbytery.

Mr. Burnet being out of employment during the Inter-regnum, owing to his refusing to acknowledge Cromwell's authority, he took upon himself the charge of his son's education, who at ten years of age, was sent to the college of Aberdeen. His father, who still continued to be his principal instructor, obliged him to rise to his studies at four o'clock every morning; by which means he con tracted a habit of early rising, which he did not discontinue till a few years before his death, when age and infirmities rendered a great er portion of rest necessary to him.

Though his father had designed him for the church, yet he would not divert him from pursuing his own inclination to the civil and feudal law, to which study he applied himself a whole year, and received from it, as he was often heard to say, juster notions concerning the foundations of civil society and government than are maintained by some divines. He altered his resolution of prosecuting this study, and applied with his father's warm approbation to that of divinity.

In his hours of amusement, he ran through many volumes of his. tory; and, as he had a very strong constitution, and a prodigious