in 1796 for libelling the constitution by describing the House of Commons as a mere adjunct of monarchy (ib. xxvi. 590); the trial of Thomas Williams in 1798 for publishing Paine's ‘Age of Reason’ (ib. 703); and the trial of Hadfield for attempting the life of George III. Like Mansfield, Holt, Loughborough, and Eyre, he attended the examinations before the privy council of state prisoners, whom in many instances he afterwards tried (Lord Colchester, Diary, ii. 42). He took up the position of a judicial censor of public morals, denounced gaming, directed heavy damages in actions of crim. con., and in 1800 charged grand juries, by way of remedy for the prevailing scarcity, to present indictments under the long obsolete laws against regrating and forestalling. Both as master of the rolls and as chief justice he set his face against the practice of selling offices in his gift, by which his salary, which during the fourteen years that he held the chief-justiceship averaged only 6,500l., might have been much increased; and though he successfully urged Pitt to raise the salaries of puisne judges to 3,000l., he refused any increase of his own, and himself brought in a bill to abolish sinecure clerkships of assize. He did, however, bestow valuable sinecures—those of custos brevium and of filazer of the king's bench—upon his two eldest sons as they attained their majority. George III honoured him with his particular friendship, constantly asked his advice, and visited him at his house at the Marshgate, Richmond Park. He was commissioned by the king to endeavour to make peace between Pitt and Thurlow on several occasions between 1789 and 1792, and was much consulted by him in 1795 on the extent to which the coronation oath would forbid the royal assent to any relaxation of the laws against Roman catholics. Attendance in the House of Lords became increasingly distasteful to him, and he almost ceased to speak in debate. In 1794 he presided in the House of Lords during Lord Loughborough's illness and at Hastings's trial, which he in vain endeavoured to shorten and bring within reasonable bounds. The death of his eldest son in 1800 so distressed him that he was all but compelled to resign the chief-justiceship. In the autumn of 1801 his health failed; he in vain tried to sit in court during Hilary term 1802, and, dying at Bath on 4 April, was buried at Hanmer Church—where there is an effigy of him by Bacon—and was succeeded in the barony by his eldest surviving son, George.
In person he was about five feet ten inches in height, spare of figure, stern in countenance, chary of speech. He was a pure lawyer, rarely wrong, but rarely venturing on any broad exposition of the law, and always leaning to the strictness of law rather than to the flexibility of equity. No judge who presided so long in the king's bench has been as seldom overruled; yet he hardly ever consulted a book, and could dispose of a score of cases in a day. He was no statesman and disliked politics. His gains, which were large, and his savings, which were larger, he invested in land in Wales, often buying estates on indifferent titles; for, as he said, if he bought property he would find law to keep it till twenty years' occupation gave him a title better than deeds. He became lord-lieutenant of Flintshire in 1797. There are two portraits of him by Romney and one by Opie.
[The principal authority is G. T. Kenyon's Life, published 1873, which corrects the errors of Townshend's anecdotic life in the Lives of Twelve Eminent Judges, and of Lord Campbell's very hostile life in the Lives of the Chief Justices. See, too, Foss's Lives of the Judges; Espinasse's Note-book of a Retired Barrister; Twiss's Life of Lord Eldon; Campbell's Lives of the Lord Chancellors, vol. v. (Lord Thurlow's Life); Wraxall's Posthumous Memoirs; Stevens's Memoirs of Horne Tooke.]
KEOGH, JOHN (1650?–1725), Irish divine, born at Clooncleagh, near Limerick, about 1650, was son of Denis Keogh, of an old Irish family, which had lost its possessions in the Cromwellian wars, by his wife, the widow of a clergyman named Eyres. His mother's maiden name was Wittington. Keogh entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1669, and proceeded M.A. in 1678. He obtained some reputation for his skill in mathematics, was appointed to a living by his kinsman, John Hudson, bishop of Elphin, and settled down to a scholar's life at Strokestown, co. Roscommon. The prebend of Termonbarry in the church of Elphin was conferred on him in February 1678, and he appears for some time to have kept a school and prepared pupils for Dublin University (Vindication of Antiquities of Ireland, p. 140). His favourite studies seem to have been Hebrew and the application of mathematics to the solution of mystical religious problems. Among his works was ‘A Demonstration in Latin Verse of the Trinity,’ which ‘he was often heard to say was as plain to him as two and three make five.’ Keogh's son, during a visit to London, showed this work to Sir Isaac Newton, ‘who seemed to approve of it mighty well.’ In his ‘Scala Metaphysica’ Keogh demonstrated mathematically ‘what dependence the several degrees of beings have on God Almighty, from the highest angel to
